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| Maybe the USA president should speak here: Crazy Horse Memorial |
We'd feel uplifted by mere contact with other people. Normally we'd circulate and take such an environment for granted.
The thing about extreme adversity is, once we've experienced it we no longer take the little things for granted.
We are not long into our current travail, the isolation, so it's hard to know how we all will come out of it. The Great Depression era was quite the precedent. Once people got thrown into the throes of it, they had no idea how they'd come out on the other side. There's a belief that WWII pulled us out of it. That's macabre to weigh. If only the war could have been fought with rubber bullets.
The WWII generation was able to create the great middle class in the years following. My goodness, they never took the little things for granted again! Sadly, they raised their own children without instilling the real feeling of thankfulness. Did they even try hard enough? That's a good question. Maybe their efforts were just going to be futile. Or maybe they were so relieved the Depression was fully behind them, they just didn't care much about how their kids behaved. Ironically, prosperity did not boost positive values among the kids - the reverse seemed true largely.
Remember the movie "That's Entertainment" where Frank Sinatra narrates at the start? The purpose of the movie was heavy nostalgia for a type of movie or entertainment that seemed to exude real class. You might say the older movies were more "conservative," but that term has a nebulous understanding. Libertarians are supposedly conservative but they often depart from the bulk of that ideology.
Our president behaves like a dominant national leader as he gets in our face with pronouncements (or whatever they are) daily, and I mean on Sunday too. Libertarians along with many more standard conservatives are not supposed to like strong central authority emanating from the capital. Wouldn't you think Alex Jones' website would want to take aim at such power? Isn't the authoritarian model anathema to what Jones and his ilk stand for? But then the culture wars aspect enters in, with racism less and less disguised as time goes on. And then, so many people who call themselves "conservative" respond to the symbols and rhetoric and behave in a way remindful of the crowds in Nuremberg in the 1930s. This is not a stretch.
Trump's speech for July 4, in an appearance billed as a White House event and not campaign rally, was combative, I wouldn't even say ideological. Ideology requires some mental rigors and discipline. He stepped right past the dog whistle.
A proper president, Republican or Democrat, would be striving to tamp down the current stresses in our society. Could you imagine Barack Obama in a White House-sanctioned event simply throwing darts at the Republicans as if the GOP was a hulking menace? Can you imagine all the hair-on-fire people on Fox News?
How will history remember Fox News 50 years from now? It has departed so far from its original purpose of being a respectable professional news outlet with a perspective somewhat to the right of center. As one of the four major cable outlets, it could not present itself on the extreme end of the political spectrum. So, am I suggesting that this is where it has drifted to now? Again, a truly ideological stance would require some intellectual rigor and discipline. So much easier to dispense a simple "attitude." Fox unabashedly does this now, so what does this say about America?
And whatever happened to basic courtesy and respect, civil traits that "conservatives" have always propped up? My late uncle Howard of Glenwood thought George W. Bush was getting too hard-edged in some things. Howard was once proud to show us his Goldwater cigars. He started talking down the younger Bush. He is deceased so he does not have to digest where the Republican Party has gone since the Bushes. "Proper" people like him - remember the importance of simple propriety? - might have to take medications to digest the news about Trump.
The Access Hollywood tape? Hush money to a porn star? Talking about "s--thole countries?" Family separation and kids in cages? Diverting defense money to a futile border wall, now at risk for falling into the Rio Grande River? Refusal to spend money when a substantial number of people are at risk through no fault of their own? This is what government is for. How about stockpiling PPE? How about taking charge instead of "taunting" governors who are put in a fishbowl and must fight the virus with limited resources? It so happens that Democratic governors are more in the crosshairs. Wonder how that happened.
Voter suppression. Want to know what one-party government looks like? We may find out. The "Trump base" in the electorate remains strong to a disturbing degree. Trump is pulling strings with an exceedingly cynical campaign, insulting Joe Biden instead of countering Democratic Party ideas. It's a dirty secret that "negative campaigning" often works. I guess Roger Ailes understood that.
We could hope for Trump and his people, as a matter of principle, to just be a little more classy. But Trump probably feels like he has to pull out all stops, lest he be prosecuted when out of office. He will pull strings to try to avoid an economic downturn, never mind that capitalism has as a defining feature the periodic downturns. Desperation to avoid such a thing could have disastrous consequences down the road.
Trump tries talking up the economy right now, as if optimism ought to reign. With things picking up, if they really are, wouldn't we be expecting an uptick in interest rates? But now, Trump uses all of his power to berate the Federal Reserve and keep the supposedly independent agency on his leash. It's done through that Mnuchin fellow. A non-independent central bank? Do you knaves realize how incredibly risky this is?
Obama let the influential people around him keep their turf, like the attorney general. Trump has William Barr as an unabashed ally now.
I can shout from the rooftop over and over, as I have in my online writing, and obviously my reach is almost negligible. But we need to see voices raised.
Will we even make it to the November election? And will the election simply fall apart because of "suspicions" of the Trump crowd? Oh, and lawsuits. Lawsuit after lawsuit after lawsuit. Heaven help us all. Our best hope is for an Obama-like president again who might choose to speak at the Crazy Horse Memorial. Almost makes me misty.
It is Sunday so let's acknowledge the spiritual realm. In that spirit I'll invite you to visit my podcast where I speak on such things. Here's the permalink and thanks:
https://anchor.fm/brian-williams596/episodes/Drive-in-church-not-fulfilling-egbdd0
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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