The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion--Edmund Burke
These times really amaze me. Orwell would not be surprised.
The other day someone whose friendship I value called me a leftist on Facebook because of my take on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's meeting with United States President Donald Trump last Friday.
You know--the one where Vice President J.D. Vance interrupted the meeting with his comments about Zelenskyy's supposed ingratitude for our war assistance, and then the Trump/Vance tag team beat down. I guess a little professionalism and decorum among state leaders was too much to ask.
To clear the air, I'm not rude. I strive for politeness always. As a Christian, it's my duty to do so. It makes me cringe when people we've elected to office don't behave with polity or professionalism, or when the people who elected them make excuses for them or follow a narrative that makes rude behavior acceptable. I am also a capitalist who values his resources, even if his elected leaders don't seem to, or assemble narratives that lead its citizens to a preferred truth, not the actual truth.
I have many friends who are Christian, and many who are not. It makes no fundamental difference to me how they roll, so long as I have the opportunity to show them why I believe, and how my conversion as a college sophomore, with its long journey, affected my life--much for the better--and could help theirs, if they heard me out. No Bible-thumping required. No judgment of past behaviors, either. Have you noticed that legal systems are singularly ill-equipped to address these? This is the essence of love to me.
Some people would say I'm delusional, and that's O.K. Let's talk it out with love and civility. But that's for another time.
It seems to me that, no matter the issue, America's opinions can rapidly turn on a dime. We can delude ourselves into believing patent lies, and accept them as ultimate truths, as if they had existed since the founding of the world. The news networks cover stories in different ways to accommodate differing opinions of how people think the narrative would best serve them. After all, they have a bottom line to satisfy.
Never has this reflected more than in recent years, in the history of elected government. At every level of governance we have allowed ourselves as a nation to be duped, and made comfortable with the narrative lie that America transcends every nation on earth, in history, as the greatest, strongest, richest, and most ethical country ever.
In Washington, D.C., the city that was designed specifically for a limited federal government a long time ago, hundreds of billions of dollars per year flow down one street, and into the halls of Congress, and the Executive branch--some would say the Judicial, also--in order to get us to buy into a narrative of a truth never proven, investigated, or upheld by logic, even. Welcome to the world of K Street Lobbyists.
George Orwell had a saying that I think you might agree with:
A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.
Our trouble today is that we don't know, really, when the trouble began, how or if it has been properly diagnosed, if we can overcome our troubles as a free nation, and if our current leadership is capable of leading us to a better, freer, more prosperous place. The K Street crowd influences nearly everything that arises from the halls of government in Washington, D.C. . People who were once elected, get jobs with some of these firms when they end their elected tenure.
Ask yourself how someone on an annual salary of between $175K and $225k can become worth tens of millions of dollars within a decade of election, and it's probably because a K Streeter has "helped" along the way. Some of these work in finance, and Congress has insured there are laws from which they have excluded themselves from participating in--like certain insider trading laws. Some of these Congresspersons more than double their investments each year. Party affiliation makes no difference in this club.
We like to believe the best of the officials we elect but lately, unelected people in the federal government--some call them "The Deep State"--have turned into the Fallen Angels that were cast out by God during the rebellion in Heaven. With their boss, the Devil, these souls only exist to torment the people of America, and they should be eradicated immediately! Apparently Elon Musk, and DOGE--The Department of Government Efficiency-- has been created just for that reason.
Don't get me wrong. Like I have said before, I am conservative, Christian, and a Republican. But I am no fool, and I did not vote for what we have landed in now. Many people I know are also having what is now being called Trump Voter's Remorse. Yep, it's a thing, and it's not just people like me. We're talking about the dyed in the wool MAGA folks, who must walk in lockstep behind the President or face political consequences of their own.
Even with the weakness of the opposition Democrats, Trump, Musk, and DOGE manage to shoot themselves in both feet every time they make a move. So much so, that they rely on the weakness of their opponents, instead of their potential strengths. A little planning, and proper execution of that plan would go a long, long way. The question begs: Do they have any idea how to do that?
One of the reasons the tawdry display in Friday's Oval Office meeting between Trump, and Zelensky (with the world's press to report it to everyone immediately) played so poorly was just how amateurish Trump and Vance seemed in treating a much weaker, and friendly, nation. No leader to my knowledge, in American History, ever behaved like that to someone looking for help. Characterize it how you will.
The narratives that have defined every federal branch, and presidency will continue apace until the fall of the union. Trump, and his crowd are no different than Biden, who was no different than Trump's first try, and so on. It is the nature of what we have, and it is our fault. Sure, the powerful have been very successful in developing and maintaining systems that protect themselves and we can do little to stop it.
We by our ignorance, and lack of fortitude in just about every area of life have brought ourselves to this: Trump saying out loud that he could be a dictator, and our next choice would have been someone who would squander every asset we have to allow no borders that define our once great country, and millions--criminal gangs included--to take over the streets in major cities, using our dollars.
We've been forced into a tyrannical cage, and we hardly recognize it.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~ C. S. Lewis
