It seems to me that we “Americans” have been going about things the wrong way. We’ve developed a vast arsenal of city-killing bombs as well as a 200,000-member fighting force stationed in other people’s lands armed with the latest in killing devices terrorizing the rest of the world and expecting them to submit to our bullying.
What if we spent oh, maybe half that $600,000,000 a year on presents like clean water facilities for them or job training or some small human kindnesses? What if we tried to befriend them rather than calling them names and manufacturing enmity and discord? What if we realized that they might value their own nations and customs and flags even more than we do since their communities have existed many centuries longer than ours have?
What if we just stopped trying to impose our will upon them and just remained where we are? What if we resolutely resolved to stop spreading fear all over the place? Who would be encouraged to attack us? Why would they do such a thing? And what about just leaving the worldwide outrage and support following 9/11/01 to Interpol and sympathetic worldwide support? What advantages did we gain by attacking Iraq on trumped-up charges about some nuclear ban that we ourselves have clearly not honored ourselves.
It occurs to me that in the U.S., we’ve got something here that is about what one of our distant ancestors (had he or she been able to envision effortless comfort and convenience) might have described as Heaven on Earth.
Is enmity still desirable and appropriate? Now that all of our needs and most of our wants can be met fairly easily, isn’t it time to start sharing our success with people not blessed to be in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave?” Maybe some of the rest of us might join the “Billionaires Club” of people who want to share their good fortune with others less fortunate?
I noticed that the people who stormed the Capital building were angry but not starving or obviously mistreated. And I noticed that they didn’t come back the next day or the day after that. Maybe they got carried away for a while and were misled by a few people exercising their right to free speech by creating rumor, innuendo, and anger on both sides of this enmity that now divides this “democracy” that doesn’t value civil discord and wants to hold on the this righteous indignation on both sides that serves very few of us.
And I have just one idea to leave this mob and their cheerleaders with: we accepted The Donald. We didn’t riot when he took the highest office in our country by 3,000,000 less votes than his opponent. We didn’t riot when he was acquitted the first time when many of us felt that his phone call to the Ukrainian leader was a gross betrayal of our country and its sacred honor. And when our people won the popular vote by a margin of some 7,000,000 votes this time, we patiently tried to show how fair our elections had been. Isn’t it time that, despite our differences, you accept our rejection of your leaders just as we accepted yours?
And I think you might take solace in the fact that Mike Pence, our Vice President for the last four years, had the decency and good sense to stop pretending that the election was fraudulent or that the way we voted this time wasn’t legitimate. Who is this man’s friend now that he has accepted the outcome of an election where his side outspent the other side and had an undemocratic electoral college (look up the definition of democracy) still vote as their populations and their laws told them to? When does the enmity end?
Dave's World 