A Call to Patriotism

Like it or not, we are at war. The enemy is ignorance. It abides in about 46 percent of our population. Those afflicted by it want to take control of our national and state legislatures so that ignorance and greed become the driving forces of our social, economic, and moral fabrics. They want to rewrite the laws so that despots, liars, cheats, misfits, cowards, misogynists, bullies, thugs, thieves, and morons are the dominant players who get to redefine our national character. They are against education, facts, science, logic, honesty, fair play, and the pursuit of excellence. They are content to watch our infrastructure of roads, bridges, waterways, airports, and railways, collapse and fall into ruination. They favor watching our human infrastructure decay as they support any change that takes the last dime from the poor, the sick, the disabled, the aged, and children and send it to the very wealthy. They would arm all their followers with battlefield weapons while they burn the Constitution. They pretend to honor our Armed Forces in order to win their protection even though they haven’t the courage or the desire to serve one minute with them. We see them in every state where the Covid-19 virus infection rates are rising. They refuse to take vaccination shots or to wear protective masks. They are collecting now in Sturgis, South Dakota pretending to be bad asses in numbers that will soon show they are no match against the virus they mock. In Congress we know them as turncoat Republicans. They disgrace our heritage, our honor, and the beacon of freedom we offer to the rest of the world.

On the other side of the chasm stand the other 54 percent of Americans. We elected Joe Biden who won by a 7 million vote majority. Many of us remember when we used to elect any noble candidate with integrity to solve issues and to lead us out of economic and world conditions with bold initiatives. FDR was such a person. So were Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson; and to a lesser extent, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. No other president in that time frame qualifies as a genuine leader. Joe Biden has the qualifications to become one of our best leaders. Whether he will be able to surmount all the barriers that are constantly being put in place to prevent him from succeeding remains to be seen.

Why do men and women with little moral standing, with virtually no demonstrated abilities to understand complex issues, and with no backbone at all refuse to do the right thing? Indeed, they coalesce around mediocrity and stupidity as if that were the honorable thing to do. Is it to hold onto their jobs as suck-ups to their tyrant leaders?

Governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbot of Texas are two examples of politicians who were scraped from the bottom of the suck-up barrel. There are many others. Both of these men are far less noble than their words proclaim. Their two states account for one-third of all the Covid-19 cases across America, yet they are doing all they can to sustain their rankings and their death rates—and to hell with the facts and the recommendations from the all the primary sources of science, medicine, and expertise. The legitimate solutions are understandable by 3rd graders: Get vaccinated and wear masks indoors. Instead, these two are working overtime to tear down our democracy under the ludicrous banner of the Big Lie that the election of 2020 was stolen from Donald Trump, while their constituents are dying by the thousands.

We need to start taking bold actions. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "We shall fight them on the beaches, we shall fight them on the landing grounds, we shall fight them in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight them in the hills; we shall never surrender...until, in God's good time, this nation, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the republic."

Let’s start by calling them what they are: birdbrains, dullards, tyrants, disgraceful, miscreants, traitors, liars, cheats, thieves, lemmings, nitwits, cowards, suck-ups, and misfits. Demand they produce their academic credentials and burn them for insulting the institutions that granted them.

Above all, vote! Do not let their gerrymandering, their pathetic anti-voting laws, their false claims of corruption, or their burgeoning war chests of campaign money deter us. This is a fight to restore our democracy, to win new respect for our Constitution, and to trample authoritarian rule in America.