You cannot save what is already lost. You cannot lead if nobody follows. Such is the plight of the Republican Party. The rank and file membership is hurtling towards full-throttled revolt. Only God is in the category of “What was, and is, and is to come”.
We were less enamored with George W. Bush during his second term. We consider President Obama a bumbling disaster, but for different reasons. It is a verifiable fact that the American constituency has lost control of both parties. And with a prior vague understanding of how this has happened, the current race has crystallized vision within our intellectual battle space.
The political malaise which I have felt and which many others expressed dates back to 2007. It somewhat feels like America’s strong red meat which dutifully showed up at the polls was quickly reduced to an unrecognizable sausage product within days of our elected candidate touching down in Washington. We were ground up in “the machine”. All of us, collectively. Resentment bred anger, and anger is now on wheels: Humvee wheels.
With a wink and a nod, the Republicans offered up their candidate for eight years. The Democrats waited their turn and then slid their own political darling into the White House for the following two-term cycle. This process has a predictability which carries a whiff of offal. Now when either party “wins”, both parties “win”. The President of the United States is a figurehead and proxy for political power. That power is wielded by Congress. The rest of us are the peasants beyond the moat. And the moat is stocked with Super PAC alligators.
Both sides continue along with their crony capitalism. Both sides embrace a failed model. It is that of a market state (globalist) vision as opposed to a strong nation-state model. We saw a display of that model during the Bush 1 presidency. Today we do not yet have to deal with Chancellor Merkel and her free-wheeling, unaccountable market state ways. But we have to deal with 535 mini-Merkel’s in our Houses of Congress.
Our grand political experiment has failed. And it has not failed because it does not work. The failure is due to acts of sabotage against the spirit in which democracy was intended to work.
“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light?” We see now. And we are in open revolt against our own party. We cannot clean the house of another. But we are taking responsibility for our own home, the Republican haunted house.
We have no need to determine “who”. We know the individuals involved in corrupted leadership practice – both public face and the not-so-protected identities of those cooking the back room deals. We know “when” this first happened. This dynamic exists within a determinable decade when democracy became grossly corrupted by powerful political aspirations. We do not need to determine “why”, because it lies in the murky realm of retrograde political aspirations. We know where we are today and we also know what we want. And it is on the wings of powerful blogging groups that journalism’s bedrock principles are reaching across the nation to foment this revolt. I am part of this process.
Journalism should be neither song bird nor bird of prey. But mainstream media has functioned within both roles with its nest feathered by Washington. We are about to change that. Hence, our powerful revolt against our political father.
“On earth as it is in Heaven.” Perhaps it is not a coincidence that EarthSky’s Meteor Shower Guide for 2016 tells us to “Watch for fireballs around March equinox.” To quote a bit further:
“Around the March equinox… fireball season. A fireball is an especially bright meteor. Northern spring and southern autumn – for a few weeks around the March equinox – is a good time to see one. It’s fireball season – a time of year when bright meteors appear in greater numbers than usual. In fact, in the weeks around the equinox, the appearance rate of fireballs can increase by thirty percent.”
March 2016 has been and will continue to be politically invigorating. And while Donald Trump may be the meteor about to decimate the Republican house, the “family” can only blame themselves.
The BBC informs us that the Economist Intelligence Unit tags Donald Trump as one of the top ten global risks. The BBC headline is wrong. A rising American electorate is one of the top ten global risks. Donald Trump is just a mirror. Americans are fair. Really, we are. But the pendulum has swung too far left. We understand that the pendulum must swing far right for a short period of time to come back to center. Trust us, please.
The fatal error of the Republican leadership is based in an erroneous belief that intelligence is tied to wealth and power. The peasants beyond the moat are ignored. We are viewed as existing on the shallow end of some vague Darwinian gene pool. Surely, we cannot be intelligent. We live in middle class neighborhoods and work twelve hour shifts to support our families. Intelligent people don’t really work. They just manage the stage.
We have been told what is good for us, told what to do, and kept in check and in our rightful place. The Republican Party believes we can be duped. CNN Politics quoted Eric Erickson:
“If that unity ticket is unable to get 1,237 delegates prior to the convention, we recognize that it took Abraham Lincoln three ballots at the Republican convention in 1860 to become the party’s nominee and if it is good enough for Lincoln, that process should be good enough for all the candidates without threats of riots,” Erickson wrote in a statement after conservatives gathered in Washington to discuss ways to thwart Trump’s march to the nomination.
Hey, Eric! We are not the party of Lincoln. We are not even the party of Reagan. We are an invigorated, highly intelligent Republican electorate. And we are here to tell you that we are red meat.
