By Philip Drucker
How God Continues to Bless America
In the final analysis, I am going to write off the last four years as “the time that didn’t have to be”. But was and alas, still is. Until tomorrow for it will be election day, 2020 and by the end of the day, nothing will ever be the same. Do you know why? Because the last four years have proven to me and I suspect to a great many other persons out there that we must change for the better, for the alternative is the end of our great social experiment known as the social compact and our American lives as we know it.
This is not to say Joe Biden must win tomorrow. Oh please, don’t mistake my intentions to include the possibility that one person alone can make or break the American spirit. I know it is not the number one on your list of descriptions for the Trump administration, but the word I always come back to as the best one word description is “docile”. Think about it. Trump is not his own man. He lives his life through doing the often evil and usually at least disgusting and anything but contrite bidding of other slimy people. A puppet for all times to be sure.
His skills are a rare blend of cheap con man Aqua Velvet flimflam slick tricks accented by an unusually severe case of boorishness compounded by an uncanny ability to always make the wrong choice. In return, he asks for nothing other than bank loans he doesn’t have to return, KFC, McDonald's and an occasional encounter of the grossly disgusting kind with a slightly past her prime porn star. On, and riding around in a helicopter. He really seems to like that, doesn’t he? Here boy, want to go for a ride?
You must admit this does not exactly sound like the kind of experience on a resume you’d be looking for when trying to fill an open seat in the Oval Office. Yet there is apparently somewhere around one-third of this country that would not only hire him in the first but now extend his contract for four more years of what will almost certainly go down in history as the worst president and presidency ever.
However, this is where the rubber depends diaper blubber bubble head hits the road to exile, prison and possibly perdition. I am not asking or even suggesting we give Trump a pass. The country will not “heal” by letting the perpetrators of a Sears catalog full of dastardly and despicable, often deadly acts go unpunished.
We will not be better off knowing a family of professional grade grifters, with access to national secrets, roam the world selling whatever they can to the highest bidder without even a second thought about our security. Sometimes, justice can only be served by serving justice to those who deserve it for their crimes and transgressions. Sounds rather circular, but it is part of the nature of revenge, retribution and justice, that they require the threat and administration of punishment for one’s crimes.
Our justice system is based on the philosophy behind Hammurabi’s Code “let the punishment fit the crime”. Or, in Biblical terms “an eye for an eye”. Given that we are a nation that places a very high value on “forgiveness” wouldn’t the greater moral good be served by forgiving the convicted felon of his crime before taking out his eye? His freedom, or even life? Is it me, or does mercy come before, and not after judgment, if judgement must come at all? Or, we can all stick with “he had it coming” leave it at that and feel better about ourselves in the morning.
Trump, crime family and extended clown mafia syndicate will get what they deserve. They are not going to live in a golden Trump tower in Moscow, Turkey or much less on a beach outside Pyongyang in North Korea. My best guess is Trump will do hard time. Due to his advanced age and declining health not as much as some of the other flunkies who are about to find out what it means to be thrown under the Trump MAGA bus of broken loyalty and ultimate betrayal. There will be headlines for years to come. Brace for the flood of information we are going to receive as to what they were “really up to” and prepare to have your jaw drop, and drop, and then drop. Let the monster truck rally wheels of justice be done.
Yet, at the same time, will Trumps incarceration change your life? Will his being stripped of all his assets and I would say his dignity, if I thought he had any, make us a better country? I would say no. For if as I indicated above, if true, holistic and meaningful change is our goal, we cannot start and end our journey by causing pain and expecting it to flourish into hope, faith and action taken for a new and better tomorrow. If a new consciousness in an era where kindness, compassion and care are the coin of the realm, we must remember not only the bad, but the good as well.
If you are reading this you are the Resistance and I commend you for taking your place in the hall of possibly unsung but patriots and heroes nonetheless who have come to the aid of their country when Lady Liberty called. Whatever you did was what you were meant to do and every little bit helps. Now I am asking a favor of you. As the lotus flower teaches us, the most beautiful of things grow out of the dirtiest water.
How many memories do you have of the brave, often selfless acts of mothers, fathers, teenagers and children taken for love of and in defense of our American way of life? Or fellow citizens? Those with whom regardless of their race, creed, gender or religious preferences we would opt to work with, not against in a celebration of the richness of our diversity and to truly build a better America by working together, not for the personal interests of one group or another, but for everyone, without hesitation and for no other reason necessary other than it is the right thing, the American thing to do.
In America, our goodness is what makes us great. Our ability to fight the good fight, to free the enslaved, to right the wrongs of fear, poverty and injustice that Trump and every dirty tyrant who came before him would use if for no other reason than to acquire, keep and hold power, not foster good, but for power’s sake, or perhaps if I may play junior psychologist for a moment, quell the unrelenting feelings of emptiness that no physical objects or numbers of zeros in a Swiss bank account can ever hope to satisfy. What good is a life where the goal is always “more”? Until, finally the fool dies in vain realizing in the end, there is never enough “more” to begin with?
I have several memories over the past four years that have led me to believe our future is as bright, if not brighter than it has ever been. An autistic teen named Greta who held up a sign and caused the world to stand up and take notice of climate change. The sight of several statues of Confederate traitors toppled by persons who want nothing more than the stain of slavery and racism removed not from our collective memories as is so often claimed, but from any association with honor, freedom and “God’s way”.
I have some local memories as well I’ve seen far out of the public’s eye or attention that serve me as reminders of who we are. Children sewing masks for essential medical workers. Young adults, the next generation, starting food banks for the poorest among us, their poverty exacerbated by our poorly coordinated at best responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Older persons, some old enough to remember World War II and willing to denounce, sometimes in very colorful terms I must admit, those among us who would pledge allegiance to a fascist madman with no discernible human qualities and call it macaroni, as in good for America, or part and parcel of the American way.
Not that every memory associated with the last four years needs to be a happy one. As I go through round two of chemotherapy, one of the hardest realizations I have had to ingest relates to my new-found status as an “old hand” who knows the “chemo ropes.” Not always, but sometimes I find myself sitting next to or across from someone in the Chemo Lounge who is there for their first treatment.
Generally, they have the same questions, hopes and fears you would expect. They ask about side effects, losing their hair is popular, and yet, they ask the nurses as if they really know what is going to happen to them. I know they don’t. Nobody does. But they ask, the nurses answer the best they can, and we all hope for the best in whatever way we can and life goes on. Until some day, it doesn’t.
But you know what, so far, today has not been that day. Shortly, we will have a new president and a new hope for we have weathered the storm. We have made it to the other side and we still have plenty of hope to bring, a new era to usher in and, as I personally like it, plenty of good trouble to make, and good work to do. You in?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AOAH2lv3H0 (Kate Smith “God Bless America”)
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