Dark Waters

While rational people in America breath a sigh of relief, I’m struggling with this uneasy feeling. I fear that the next week may be the most dangerous for this country since the first half of April, 1861. We have a huge number of elected officials of the Trump Party, including three from our state, who have decided to abandon the oath they took to protect the Constitution of the United States of America and follow the whims of their leader. In past times, we would have considered this the bottom. I fear, though, that there is no bottom for the followers of this deluded megalomaniac. There is always a next step lower for this man. Will, “Boys get your guns,” be next? Four things give me hope, on an otherwise cloud-foreboding day.

1.     The “boys” he would be talking to are a group of overweight, marginally functional, cowardly, irresponsible nitwits who would end up shooting one another more frequently than they would others.

2.     We have a military composed of fine women and men who took the same oath I did and still, as I do, honor it. It is much easier to abandon that oath as a politician without scruples than as a warrior whose comrades, as well as their country, depend on shared honor and the duty for which it calls. They are there to protect us.

3.     There is what I call “The Thomas Beckett Syndrome” in which people, like Saul on the road to Damascus, or John Newton on the decks of a slave ship, turn from evil and embrace a better life.

4.     I don’t think the political party of Winthrop Rockefeller, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Theodore Roosevelt will continue to sink into this mire.

If I have given offense, I can’t apologize. It’s that oath I mentioned. One can’t take an oath to protect his country and then forebear standing up to those who have either never taken the oath, and thus disparage it, or, worse, have taken and abandoned it. If we disagree on the facts of governing a country, you are still my brothers and sisters. I still love you. We can talk. I’m just asking that we stop this dangerous foolishness. We can save our country if we hold fast.