The Real American Tragedy

 

Supposedly, the number of pandemic deaths have exceeded a million. But who’s counting. While the Wuhan virus killed Americans, it cannot kill America. We’ve been through worse, and it looks like we got through this one. The pandemic appears to be burning itself out. They all do. It’s tragic, but the Wuhan virus is a transitory crisis. The real American tragedy didn’t suddenly spring at us, it’s been building for decades.

The real calamity is that we’ve lost trust in our government and in our institutions.

Whoever is in power, roughly half the people view government as malevolent. Not just Americans with different political approaches, but malicious actors out to utterly destroy opponents. The amount of hate and distrust has been illuminated by this pandemic. Governments are supposed to govern, especially during a crisis. It’s beyond difficult to implement a consistent national policy when everyone is screaming that the other party is a pack of tyrants set on stripping opponents of all their rights. There has always been tension in our system; it was designed that way. Creative tension. The kind of push and pull that kept the nation moving ahead without veering off to the extremes, but that creative tension has been twisted and engorged until it threatens to pull the nation apart. American politics have become fierce, unseemly, and harmful to our wellbeing.

Americans used to pull together in crisis. Now we bicker and argue until we amplify the damage any adversary tries to inflict on us. This level of intensity is new, or at least unknown since our Civil War in 1860.

How did our national unity disintegrate before our eyes? Three big reasons: 1) identity politics, 2) embezzled elections, and 3) judicial usurpation.

Identity Politics

Relying on a political philosophy, such as traditional liberalism, requires selling something that doesn’t excite busy people trying to get on with their lives. With identity politics, a party merely figures out a group’s foremost grievance and promises to resolve it. The Democrat Party has used this strategy to enormous success in states with major urban populations. 

Unfortunately, as long as Democrats adhere to identity politics, they will viciously attack any attempt at reconciliation. Identity politics mandates tribalism. Identity politics destroys unity.

No special interest is large enough to comprise a majority, so lots of differing and sometimes conflicting groups are gathered up. For a person to be welcomed in this supposedly big tent, they must join a tribe, never diverge from the group’s narrative, remain unquestionably loyal, and encourage other like-minded people to join. The party leadership then picks at scabs, set opponents up as the oppressors, and appeals to emotions instead of reason.

This is a formula for raucous disunity.

Embezzled Elections

Our republic functioned for almost two and a half centuries because we had faith in our Constitution, free elections, and way of government. Whichever side lost got another chance in a few years. But that trust is waning due to increasingly rigged elections and the unwillingness of Democrats to abide by our election process.

Democrats push every change making registration and voting easier, fight every check against voter fraud, support every change that opens a new path to fraud, push to legalize vote harvesting, and fight the cleansing of voter rolls. Democrat states and cities provides sanctuary, benefits, and driver licenses to illegals. They fight to eliminate the electoral college. But skewing elections goes beyond fraud. It also includes using the permanent government bureaucracy and supposedly independent enterprises to tilt elections.

If after all this, Democrats lose, they deny the legitimacy of the winner. This started in earnest with Al Gore refusing to accept defeat and has escalated to blatant attempts to overturn elections. An unrelenting string of assaults were aimed at removing President Trump from office. Examples include Russian collusion, Pelosi directing non-stop committee investigations, the Mueller probe, Ukraine as a ruse for impeachment, and politicizing the Wuhan virus as a platform for unrelenting and ever-shifting attacks.

Manipulating elections erodes confidence. None of this is by accident. The brazenness is meant to demoralize the electorate. Voting ceases to be an exercise in citizenship and instead becomes a nasty fight to prevail by any means necessary.

Judicial Usurpation

Judiciary usurpation may seem like an outlier, but in fact it is elemental to our current disarray. The Supreme Court now dictates much of our American life and social norms. It overrules Congress and the president, but no one overrules the Supreme Court. The selection of a Supreme Court Justice has become a highly charged emotional event. It’s instructive that political movements spend inordinate resources influencing nominations. They relentlessly advocate for their entrants and hyperventilate fighting a disliked nominee. Everyone knows that these are enormously powerful individuals with life tenure. Everyone also pretends their candidate is an impassive judge who measures decisions based solely on law. If that were so, no one would care who sat on the bench. 

It’s not so … and everyone knows it.

Democrats believe they own the courts and distrust any jurist who doesn’t espouse a progressive bent. Nothing illuminates Democrat duplicity more than a Supreme Court confirmation. When substantive arguments fail, Democrats infallibly turn to character assassination. Bork’s nomination started combative hearings, civil restraint was abandoned with Thomas, and the Kavanaugh hearings were downright slanderous.

The tribunal nature of the supreme court destroys confidence in elections and our system of government. It is no longer balanced, and checks seem impotent. When raw political power emanates from the bench, trust in the system deteriorates.

Americans used to set politics aside during a crisis. Those days may be gone. Now everything is a political battle, political theater, or political sabotage. Distrust, the order of the day.

Will we emerge from these dark times with our American principles reinvigorated? Can a rebirth occur? I’ll leave with the words of Abraham Lincoln.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

Busybodies Want to Rule the World

"Seeking perfection in human affairs is a perfect way to destroy them." Jaron Lanier

We live perfection. 

Right now. In this moment. No other humans in all of history can make a similar claim. Look about you. Everything is just as it should be. Even the tiniest change will derail spaceship Earth. The planet is over four billion years old, but now is its moment of perfection. How do I know this to be true? Leftists tell me. Incessantly.

• They harangue me that the temperature is just perfect, and it is worth trillions to keep it within a range of one half degree. 
• I’m reassured daily that every little species and sub-species is precious and animal diversity is perfectly aligned for all of eternity. 
• When I wander into the wilderness, I used to adhere to, "take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints." Now footprints are offensive … especially the carbon variety. 
• Every ecosystem is tuned to perfection, and none can be disturbed. 
• All native cultures are sacrosanct and must be preserved as is, with no pollution from Western culture. 
• Food must remain unaltered by man.
• If a building gets older than fifty years, slap a brass plaque on it and committees will preserve it forever … for the well-to-do.
• Apartment rents are perfectly fair and must remain controlled into perpetuity. 
• Do not even think about eliminating a government department or program because each and every one is desperately needed for eternity. 
• Zero population growth assumes the Earth has just the perfect number of people. 

Sustainability is the most powerful word in the English language, which means everything must go on forever and ever. Exactly as is. Want to destroy a movement, idea, or argument, just claim it’s none-sustainable. Want to deflect criticism of a movement, idea, or argument, claim it is vital to sustainability.

Why do Leftists worship the status quo? The simple answer is they’re control freaks.

In truth, Leftists don’t really believe everything is perfect.  They just can’t abide change. Any change. Change is frightening … shake in your boots scary. An educated populous, free speech, social and geographic mobility, and competition cause change. Nasty and unpredictable change. And capitalism is the horror of horrors because it incents massive, continuous change. The uncertainty boggles the mind. Everything must be held in balance or Earth might spin out of control.

The rest of us might ignore these phobic busybodies except for their incessant need to control not just things, but people. People cause change, so uncontrolled people represent a threat. If the public does not submit to the approved theocracy, then the progressive vision might be stifled. That cannot happen, so speech must be policed using political correctness and more stringent means. Ideas need to be managed, debates closed, and science declared settled. Education must be carefully crafted to discourage deviations from the true orthodoxy. If Leftists could only control people, they will achieve stability in their lives and heck, save the planet to boot.

We may wish that they would retreat permanently to their safe spaces, but that will never happen. Safe spaces are used to discipline apostolates, plan insurgencies, and reinvigorate the psyche. After a respite, they re-enter our disorderly world to get people to think, speak, and behave properly. Progressives believe humans can be perfected. People just need direction. Oh, a few less of those pesky humans would help too.

Is it possible for Leftists to achieve their utopian goal of a safe and predictable life for all? Of course. The Dark Ages held change in check for centuries. All you need is enough political power to keep everyone in place. The entire planet can be fundamentally transformed into a safe space. Real perfection can be achieved. Our planetary thermostat will be regulated so that melting icecaps, severe weather, illegal migration, and sweat will become things of the past. Laws will ensure that humans eat only wholesome food prescribed by learned tribunals. Speech will be harmless, albeit boring. To keep the masses pliant, sex will be encouraged for any and all purposes except procreation. Every government bureaucracy will be self-perpetuating with independent funding with no oversight from spiteful elected officials. People in the hinterlands will be rounded up and stuffed into congested cities in order to regulate their daily lives. The remainder of our planet will be set off-limit so nature's critters can frolic unmolested.

It will all work perfectly. Leftists are confident because they have deemed themselves the very best specimens of humanity. They are wise, benevolent, and non-offensive. Besides, Native American reservations have given progressives almost two centuries of experience administering controlled safe spaces.

What could possibly go wrong?

The more things change …

In 1856, Senator Sumner from Massachusetts gave a mocking speech meant to ridicule slave owning Democrats. Democrats would have none of it. They puffed up with sanctimony and called Sumner’s speech “self-righteously insolent.” They believed slavery a general good and a Republican had no right to challenge their narrative. A day or so later, Congressman Preston Brooks waltzed into the Senate chamber and marched up to Senator Sumner and blindsided him with his cane. Southern senators could have stopped him, but instead watched as he beat Sumner on the head with all his might.

Sumner was sent to the hospital and suffered incapacitation for nearly five years. Brooks was quoted as saying that it was fortuitous that he caught Sumner in “a helpless attitude” because Sumner had superior strength and if mindful, he would have needed to shoot him with his revolver.

The entire South applauded and exulted Brooks for his bravery. When Republican Congressman Burlingame chastised Brooks for his brutish behavior, Brooks challenged Burlingame to a duel. Challenges to duels then became a craze as Southerners taunted anyone brave enough to speak out against slavery.

By 1858, slavery’s extension into the territories no longer appeared imminent. In the 1916 biography Abraham Lincoln, Lord Charnwood wrote that Republicans saw “no harm in shifting towards some less provocative principle on which more people at the moment might agree. Confronted with Northern politicians who would reason in this fashion stood a united South whose leaders were accustomed to make the Union government go which way they chose and had no disposition to compromise in the least.” Lincoln objected to being forced to accept morally wrong principles, so he refused to espouse the accepted cant that slavery was a general good. Charnwood gave this as the reason why establishment Republicans initially fought Lincoln’s candidacy.

It seems, after more than one hundred and sixty years, nothing has changed in either party’s behavior. Yesterday, I saw a photograph of a person in front of the Supreme Court proudly holding a sign that said, “Abortion is good for Everyone.” 

Replace the word abortion with slavery and the slogan is identical to the Democratic Party catchphrase in 1858.

Grant Takes Command by Bruce Catton

 

When asked, what sort of man is Grant, Lincoln replied that Ulysses S. Grant was “the quietest little fellow you ever saw. The only evidence you have that he’s in any place is that he makes things git! Wherever he is, things move."

Lincoln explained that every other general briefing him before a battle told him that he was short some crucial resource to ensure victory, but, if ordered, they would proceed anyway. This essential resource was almost always cavalry. Lincoln claimed their real purpose was to shift responsibility to him. When Grant took charge, he immediately recommended reassigning twenty thousand horseless cavalrymen to the infantry. Since there was no way to acquire horses for every man designated as cavalry, these idle soldiers were only held in reserve as a handy excuse. Grant recognized the duplicity and removed the excuse before his first battle.

In this biography, Bruce Catton does an excellent job describing the man and his military philosophy. Grant reminded me of General Patton, a warrior through and through. Both believed that to decrease casualties in war, you don’t minimize the fallen in a specific battle, you win the war to stop the killing.

Catton relates a story about a grizzled sergeant leaning against a fence post when a comrade came up.  The sergeant jerked a thumb at a man in the distance and remarked: “That’s Grant. I hate to see that old cuss around. When that old cuss is around there’s sure to be a big fight on hand.”

General U.S. Grant on the Military vote

American Founding documents contend that people have a natural right to form and reform governments. The Declaration of Independence states, "Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." 

Under that principle, elections are sacrosanct. 

Despite a raging Civil War, the United States held elections on November 4, 1863. As Commanding General of the U.S. Army, Ulysses S. Grant had to set the policy for military voting. On September 27, he wrote the following letter (abridged) to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

The exercise of the right of suffrage by the officers and soldiers of armies is a novel thing. It has, I believe, generally been considered dangerous to constitutional liberty and subversive of military discipline. But our circumstances are novel and exceptional. A very large proportion of legal voters of the United States are now either under arms in the field, or in hospitals, or otherwise engaged in the military service of the United States. Most of these men are not regular soldiers in the strict sense of that term; still less are they mercenaries, who give their services to the Government simply for its pay, having little understanding of the political questions or feeling little or no interest in them. On the contrary they are American citizens, having still their homes and social and political ties binding them to the States and districts from which they come and to which they expect to return. They have left their homes temporarily to sustain the cause of their country in the hour of its trial. In performing this sacred duty they should not be deprived of a most precious privilege. They have as much right to demand that their votes shall be counted in the choice of their rulers as those citizens who remain at home. Nay, more, for they have sacrificed more for their country.

 I state these reasons in full, for the unusual thing of allowing armies in the field to vote, that I may urge on the other hand that nothing more than the fullest exercise of this right should be allowed, for anything not absolutely necessary to this exercise cannot but be dangerous to the liberties of the country. The officers and soldiers have every means of understanding the questions before the country. The newspapers are freely circulated, and so, I believe, are the documents prepared by both parties to set forth the merits and claims of their candidates. Beyond this nothing whatever should be allowed. No political meetings, no harangues from soldiers or citizens, and no canvassing of camps or regiments for votes.

 As it is intended that all soldiers entitled to vote shall exercise that privilege according to their own convictions of right, unmolested and unrestricted, there will be no objection to each party sending to armies, easy of access, a number of respectable gentlemen to see that these views are fully carried out.

Modern Americans should follow suit and ensure that secure, honest, and fair elections are a binding principle of this nation.