Desperate Times (Part 1)

Well, friends, it appears that the worst is about to come to pass.

This is not a partisan commentary.  I don’t like either option the political powers-that-be are about to set before us.  I am a conservative-leaning moderate with no love for extremists of either left or right.  I am frustrated by the increasing devolution of American politics into blame, condemnation, mindless posturing, and incompetence.

It has long been my hypothesis that for the past 30 years each President has been worse than the one before.  (By this I mean worse for the nation; this is not necessarily an indictment of the moral character of individuals who have held the office.) 

·         Reagan was great because he was amazingly positive.  He saw opportunities where others saw only obstacles.  He united us, gave us hope, broke the Soviet juggernaut, and gave a self-doubting America a new lease on life.  To a large degree, George H.W. Bush built upon the legacy of Reagan. 

·         Bill Clinton had personal moral failures, but he was not a bad president. He ran the country generally according to the Constitution and balanced the budget a couple of times.  (Many attribute those balance budgets to the conservatives in Congress.  Perhaps, but it was President Clinton who signed those balanced budgets.) 

·         George W. Bush started well.  He entered office with promises of refocusing on our own nation (as opposed to international intervention) and even the potential of a mission to Mars.  Not many remember those early days because eight months in everything changed.  President George W. Bush led us effectively through the crisis that was September 11, 2001.  He helped us regain our courage and our confidence as a nation.  But later, mostly in his second term, he went too far.  He sought and found ways around law and Constitution in his pursuit of better ways to find and stop potential terrorists.  When I learned that this man I once admired had condoned torture as an interrogation tactic, I realized he had gone over to the Dark Side. 

·         President Obama has been, in most ways, a train wreck.  He accomplished almost nothing in his first term, not even the one thing I hoped he would accomplish, closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo.  In his second term he got his ‘Affordable Health Care’ passed (barely), but it is by almost any measure not working, and the status of health care for most Americans is far worse today than it was two or three years ago.  President Obama undermined the Constitution, bypassing Congress and implementing many of his policies and procedures by executive order.  Besides all this Obama inherited an already catastrophically enormous national debt and instead of trying to fix that problem, doubled down on overspending.  Even if we were to start spending wisely next year, and we probably won’t, it would take us decades to recover.

I thought we had reached the bottom.  Practically bankrupt, more divided and hopeless than any other period in my lifetime, including the turbulent years of the late 1960s with its riots and wars.

But we have not bottomed out just yet.  Look what’s coming our way.

On the one hand we have someone who arguably may be the most corrupt politician on the national stage since Richard Nixon, who has sidestepped one scandal after another, lied with impunity, and manipulated people and systems with great disregard for laws and ethics, all the while proclaiming her compassion for the poor and disenfranchised.  She has been a model of Machiavellian efficiency. 

On the other hand we have someone who is potentially even less scrupulous and more dangerous.  A billionaire who has never worked to advance the best interests of anyone but himself, whose only moral barometers are increasing his net worth and absorbing more and yet more of the adoration of the masses.  He routinely insults everyone from the poorest immigrants to his most influential colleagues and even his own supporters.  He threatens to derail our international alliances, bomb the rest of the world into submission to “American” interests, and impose a thinly-veiled fascism on the people of the United States based upon his own view of how things ought to be.  His entire platform can be summed up as an anti-establishment, anti-immigrant, anti-intellectual, anti-everything-but-Donald.  His supporters are for the most part angry people who admire his willingness to take on the politicians and social architects who got us into all this trouble.  While their grievances are real, what they don’t realize is that this solution would be far worse than the problem it is supposed to solve. 

A Trump presidency would be reminiscent of the doctor who reported that “the operation was a success, but the patient died.”

I could go on and on about historical precedents, logical inconsistencies, and the appalling absence of ethics among the leading candidates this presidential primary year.  But you get the idea.  We can still hope, for a few more weeks, that one or the other political convention will be contested, that a better alternative will emerge.  But it’s becoming apparent to most that this election is going to present us with a Hobson’s choice between two unacceptable alternatives. 

No matter which side wins, America Is Going To Lose.  What can we do?

I have an idea. 

It’s a long-shot, an outrageous idea.  It’s an admittedly desperate move, but desperate times call for desperate measures.  We owe it to ourselves, our country, and future generations of Americans to try anything that offers a possibility, however slight, of averting the catastrophic outcome that we have almost (but not quite) come to believe is inevitable.

There is one chance we can come through this with our freedom and integrity intact.

Stand by for further details.

Gryphem