By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”
Ending of Gunga Din, a poem by Rudyard Kipling
As happens in our country every other year, we are entering into a time of transition. We citizens are given our chance to affect the Republic and the country for which it stands. For most of my adult life this was a social obligation I took seriously, but with little concern over the future of the nation. This century, that has all changed.
We began the century with a contested election where Florida became the battleground and the state became notorious for its “hanging chads.” We moved on to 9/11 when Arab/Islamic terrorists killed or injured almost 9,000 innocent citizens who sought only to live through that day. Of course, this led to a war that took us 20 years to end in something far from victory.
We transitioned from a President who followed in his Father’s footsteps and was aided by a Washington insider, to a historic first in the election of an African-American, to a New York real estate mogul, and finally a man who can’t really be sure how he was elected. Through those years we’ve expanded our global communication network so now everyone like me has a voice and is able to express his appreciation, or outrage. Usually, it is outrage. We have an entire generation who seems to spend their life expressing their outrage.
Along the way, those who I thought could be bridge-builders chose not to. Those who seemed to lack the experience necessary to run the nation did so with mixed results. Finally, those who’ve spent their entire adult lives as elected officials have been both unable and unwilling to pass the jobs along to the next generation.
For the past two years one party has had control of two of the three branches of government, yet their focus seems to be on building a future few can afford, or on condemning the sins of the past. The party that claims it is inclusive and wants to protect women can’t define what a woman is. Its political elite seem to spend more time in mock protest than in actually doing the peoples work.
The loyal opposition is fractured by those who believe it’s time to be as crass as the former President, those who want to “go along to get along” and those who want to place the historical core values of the nation back on center stage. Which brings up the real question we will decide on this upcoming election.
What are the core values we as a nation really want?
a) Do we want to keep the “rule of law?” If so, we seem to have work to do. It is obvious our younger generation has abandoned this idea for the idea of mob rule, and politically correct thinking as the standard of behaviour. Our law enforcement and legal institutions seem to turn a blind eye on some crimes while vilifying those who don’t conform to the desired standard. I cite as an example the Attorney General’s commitment to identify as domestic terrorists those who protest at school boards which have agendas of their own, while ignoring the protests of those who are attempting to terrorize the conservative justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. Or we can look at the district attorneys in Manhattan or Los Angeles who have implemented what their opponents call a “catch and release” where violent offenders are released almost immediately back into society while those who may have defended themselves are held pending a decision on prosecution (Jose Alba, NYC bodega clerk).
We can argue the “rule of law” has never been universally or fairly applied (e.g. African-Americans) but just because we suffer from the failures of our past, is that a reason to abandon the concept that ALL are equal under the law? We should work every day to ensure equal treatment of all accused, but when politics becomes a variable for those charged with doing the work of enforcement and judgement does the foundation of our society stand?
b) Akin to the first point, I ask does the Constitution still have value? With the decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Medical Center, the SCOTUS overturned a judicial decision which had stood for fifty years. Those who support abortion were and remain outraged over this decision, while those who would end abortion if they could, are overjoyed. If you look at the history of the U.S. Constitution we have 27 amendments, the first 10 came almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified and the first government established. The remaining 17 came in drips and drabs but usually only took a year or so to ratify. Except of course the 27thwhich took almost 203 years.
The Congress had fifty years to codify the decision of seven old white men in robes (to use the modern terms of condemnation), but chose not to. The current court decided the original decision erred in its justification of the due process clause of the 14th amendment and returned the right of determination to the political side of government. Since the rights of abortion were not inherent in the Constitution and Congress had not amended it to claim that right from the states the court returned it to the states and their citizens.
Now Congress is trying to figure out what they can do, and activist politicians are staging political theater to show their disdain for this check and balance of our government. They are threatening to “pack the court” and the opposition is outraged over this idea. If we were actually able to speak to each other and format compromises like we used to do, then there probably are some legitimate reasons for actually expanding the court from nine to eleven, or maybe even thirteen. Unfortunately, in today’s world that is a non-starter.
Unrelated, except for the traditional for/against opposition, is the ideal of the Second Amendment. Both sides have their emotional talking points and neither side has any desire to listen or understand the reasoning of the opposition. Those who think the volume of guns is the root cause would abandon the Second Amendment to restrict those guns. Those who think the amendment is there to protect the rights of the citizen against an abusive government feel equally strongly about its protection. Of course, the emotional demands mean we really will never explore to find an actual root cause of mass shootings, i.e. what is in the head of those who choose violence in this form and how did it get there? By the way, it is interesting the government has never released the finding of the largest mass shooting in recent memory, the killings in Las Vegas in 2017. I wonder why?
c) Do we want the perception of safety or the perception of freedom? As a human we will never actually be completely safe or completely free. Life is a dangerous place, and within a society we must often choose what freedoms we will sacrifice to make society function. This was one of the great debates of our founders as the wrestled with forming a government that would establish us as a nation, while maintaining the maximum number of rights and freedoms for its citizens. Along the way we’ve increasingly imposed sanctions of individual freedoms, but we are now reaching a point where we will decide if enough is enough or do we want more?
The Democratic party seems to favor the illusion of safety over individual freedom. They will spy on us to ensure those right-wing extremists are kept in check. While the Republican party offers the illusion of individual freedom, supposedly protecting individual freedoms, unfortunately I see little from them about actually reducing the amount of government available to spy on us, or control our lives. I believe many in my generation have come to value individual freedom from government mandated safety, but that is a very close call. The younger generations all seem like they want more government to provide more safety as well as all the safeguards for poor life decisions.
That about sums up what I think are the big three issues I’ll be thinking about when I go into the polls this November. I hope we make wise choices, for if we don’t at some point, we will see the end of the nation-state we call home.
