Now What?
Uncharted Waters
We’re now sailing in uncharted waters.
Waters we thought had been safely and permanently secured when colonists made the brave decision to dissent from absolute rule and try to build a nation on the radical notion that all people are created equal.
Yes, it was “men”, not people, written into the founding document, but over the past 200+ years the conviction has been spread to include all sorts and conditions of people.
Bedrock to that decision is the conviction that no one is exempt from, or above, the laws that govern all of us.
Until now.
If, as the pundits have declared, the November election was decided two weeks ago, by a made-for TV event, in which snide lying intimidated halting truth-telling, then the future looks even more bleak than the present chaos.
If you have the stomach for it, read David Brooks’ interview with Steve Bannon. Most of us have deplored the seeming strangle-hold Trump has on what was once the other political party. What you’ll see in Bannon’s comments is his insistence that the radical so-called MAGA movement has been using Trump to gain the foothold they seek in order to overturn pretty much everything many of us have held as fundamental to our national identity.
For the sake of my old age frailty, I have been keeping all this at as much arm’s length distance as I can. Which isn’t much distance as I now see. I am three years older than President Biden. I consider him the most effective president since FDR in using his office to preserve the dignity of the least of these.
I marvel that Joe Biden seems to have the will, even the energy, to carry on in the face of the unrelenting media frenzy that has latched onto his well known limits, to declare him unfit. I would fold in his place.
I hope he can soldier on. And I still believe (hope?) there is enough decency, enough love of the nobility of what increasingly looks like our lonely vigil, to consider what’s at stake when we enter the sacred sanctuary of the voting booth.
This is as frightened as I have ever been about our country surviving as a democracy. With the Supreme Court on Trump's side and Biden trying the best he can, but not inspiring confidence in his abilities, we are in a tough place. I feel almost frozen in this fear, like there is nothing I can do. Send in money to unknown sites seems to be all I am hearing from anyone. I hope I start to feel a direction or action or someway to do my part in the survival our democracy and country.
Thanks for weighing in on this most important topic, Blayney. I'm the same age as President Biden and, like you, I marvel at what he's done in his presidency. If he had announced early on that he was going to be a one-term president, he might have gone down as a truly great president and one of the nation's great protectors of democracy. Now, I fear that his legacy AND our futures are in grave jeopardy.