A Day In The Anti-Life - Useless Idiots!

Following our "so-called" President's shameful performances across the landscape of Europe reaching a crescendo in his nigh-treasonous pronouncements standing beside the loathsome Putin in Helsinki, the term "Useful Idiot" has been much bandied about by pundits, or at least some of that benighted clan that I heard recently. The Oaf-in-Chief qualifies for this description and has done for quite a while, but his hideous showcase in Helsinki only drew the whole world's attention to his true and self-evident nature. And despite the weak-kneed attempts over the days to "rehabilitate" and "walk back" his comments, the truth as Fox Mulder once muttered is out there. Or at least it will be before it like most of his prevarications and blunders disappears down the collective memory hole of the modern media world.

I am a loyal American who has seen his country slowly but surely descend into a sort of madness as unusually large swaths of people hitch their hopes and dreams onto the wagon driven by a proper villain who is a proven and prodigious liar, a demonstrable and confirmed bigot, a proud abuser of women, and as we've at long last seen in the light of day in all probability a traitor to his country. As our "so-called" President rampaged across the European continent, demolishing to some degree bonds of fealty which have tempered the last seventy years of world history with relative peace, we find that the world post-Trump will be different than the one he inherited from his noble predecessor. It will be a darker world, more tenuous with a fragile peace open to predators and warlords who want to become more powerful and rich.

My country is in the midst of a soul-searching quest for its mis-placed identity. We as Americans are adept at braying about our supposed singular standing in the world, but we are increasingly unwilling to take the steps necessary to follow through on commitments made decades ago. The infamous line by Churchill that America will do the right thing after it has exhausted all other options is hopefully the ultimate end of this debacle. We hopefully will rise to defend our European brothers and sisters and other peoples of the world, when the tanks begin to roll again into some peaceful fragment of what was once upon a time the evil empire. We "won" the "Cold War" by standing toe-to-toe with allies made so by wise and forward-thinking policies, but now we are in danger of breaching the trust and unity which have kept the enemies at bay and losing all that was gained after decades of stalwart effort and expense of a trove of treasure and a ghastly quantity of blood.

I live in constant hope that in a few months from now,  my fellow citizens will rise up and vote into office leaders who will put our Dotard-in-Chief into proper check. That we will rise up from two years of shameful kowtowing to a loud-mouthed dolt and his jackass lackeys and make this country one which is not only patriotic when it's easy but one which is patriotic when it's hard. That we will throw off the fear that rules us and give voice to the hope that enlightens us.  We've shown the capacity in the past, but I don't know about the future. America has never been as wonderful as our myths would have us believe, the long down-trodden populations in our country will attest to those significant lapses. But at the core there is an idea that we can and we ought to be better. We must become better, or we may well lose it all, and we will have only ourselves to blame. Idiots indeed!

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