The title says it all. These past Five, almost Six, years have been something our Democracy and citizens have needed for a long time.
Let me explain why.
Before Donald J. Trump descended the escalator, a good portion of the voting population had become Content with or perhaps Complacent about the direction of our Country and the efforts of their officials they had elected to represent them in Washington, DC over the past two decades.
With Trump in the race, he was only 2 of 3, out of the total of 17 Republican candidates who had no political experience. He, along with Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina, were outsiders. None of those three had held public office before, which made the Republican side of the ledger different. None of the three spoke like polished politicians.
Carson and Fiorina, however, never drew the attention or the press of Trump. Theirs were lost campaigns right from the beginning.
Trump, however, was different.
At the outset, I would guess Trump was not the first pick of most Republicans. In fact, he was probably not the second, third, forth or even the eleventh choice out of those original seventeen, But his presence, his showmanship and his attraction to and by the press, slowly moved him into contention and slowly built support.
A good portion of that support came from those Contented and Complacent voters who heard him say things they could relate to; things not said by current politicians.
They were awakened.
Whether one liked the 45th President or not, he did things many thought needed to be done: for the economy; for minorities; for the military and veterans; for healthcare; for immigration; for security, especially from China; and, for Middle East peace. The list is long and if anyone wants to see it, I’ll gladly send it along.
And every day, he was in the news because the media hated him but couldn’t get enough of him. He used the media to his advantage, which I am not sure they ever caught on to.
He raised the awareness of China as an arch enemy of freedom, democracy and all that is good about America. While many, even now, try to convince others that China is not a threat to our wellbeing, most of those who held to the outdated belief that Russia poses the greatest threat to us, now are focusing on China.
Until Trump, corporations were content to move manufacturing across the water to China and other low paying countries for profits and to skirt US employee regulations. Trump said from the beginning he intended to move manufacturing back, first because it would help the economy and produce jobs for Americans, and then later for security reasons.
The pandemic exposed the vulnerability Trump talked about.
Then Trump lost to someone who had pined for the Presidency since his early days in law school, where it is said he told his first wife the Presidency was his goal. Trump lost to a man who spent 36 years in the Senate and another 8 years as Vice President, and to be honest, if one looks at the accomplishments, significant laws written and passed, had little to show for all those years. If you don’t think that true, go read the records.
Most importantly, though, along with President Biden, came a majority in the Senate and the House for one Party, the Democrat Party.
Trump’s loss and Biden’s win came during a pandemic, when life and the economy, formerly robust, hit the skids.
In any other time, a man in the twilight of his 70’s, who was willing to do whatever it took to reach his lifelong goal, who changed long-held positions in order to not offend a vocal minority of his Party, a minority the former powers of the Party are now afraid of, would not have been the candidate. Would not have won the election.
All the while, during that campaign year, parents and children were kept at home with children going to school on their computers and ipads.
As detrimental to our economy and the mental health of those confined to home was, the lock-downs actually helped our Democracy because parents, who had in many cases turned over their children’s upbringing to teachers, had a chance to see what teachers were teaching.
That was a wakeup call for many parents, many of whom were in the Content and Complacent category.
Then what happened?
Moms and Dads started paying attention to what their children were being taught and found a lot of it had nothing to do with reading, writing or arithmetic. It had little to do to prepare them for life beyond school. They also learned history was either not being taught at all, or had been revised to tell a certain ideological story with little relationship to our history, and which is supposed to make about 70% of the children feel guilty and bad about the color of their skin.
What parents saw was something that had slowly and subtly been creeping into the education system for decades. What they saw was something that Senator Joseph McCarthy had imagined was happening in the early 50’s. As it turns out, maybe not so imagined after all. Maybe Senator McCarthy was ahead of his times and definitely misguided, but he feared what others never thought could happen.
Communism had entered the school system. Some refer to it as a more socialistic type of teaching, or as they refer to it as Socialism, but if one reads the definition of Communism, it defines exactly what many are teaching and hope to achieve.
On top of all of this awakening to what is going on in our schools, the new Presidential Administration started pushing a very far left package of spending under the guise of an infrastructure Bill, but included little about infrastructure, unless somewhere while we were sleeping, people and ideas became inanimate objects and part of the definition of infrastructure
Along with all of this, came mandates from the Federal Government saying face coverings had to be worn at all times or at least if someone was within breathing distance of them.
Then the vaccine President Trump had marshaled through with great speed to help protect and minimize the impact of the pandemic, all of a sudden became a weapon; a political weapon to divide the Country into the “clean” and “unclean,” much like the racial divide before the mid-60’s.
So we now reach the present when much of America has realized they have already lost many freedoms and will lose more if they do not act.
The Content and Complacent woke up. They realize the freedom, the America their forefathers fought and died for needed to be fought for again.
Democracy does not come naturally. It cannot be dreamed or wished into reality. It needs to be nurtured, to be safeguarded. It needs citizens to stand up against those who wish to tear it down or change it.
So, the battle, the war now being raged, is not one with guns and tanks or fighter jets. It is a war of wills. It is a Constitutional war.
The question to each of us is, do we want our Country to become one dependent on the Federal Government from cradle to grave, and of and for the few?
Do we want a Country where our Federal policing agencies, the FBI, CIA, DIA, DHS, IRS and other agencies usurp your freedom and undermine duly elected Presidents?
Or do we want a free Country where the Federal Government and its agencies work for us?
If we want the latter, then we have to get up off the sidelines and join in the battle, the new battle for Democracy.
JustAMan 