The Nostalgia of Liberty

It can’t be long before I take my last breath. I don’t know if it will be days, months or years. I just know at my age the clock is ticking and soon the alarm will go off.

Yes, I’m nostalgic, but then so is every decent American. I want to return to the days when the President doesn’t rip apart national shrines to turn them into icons to himself. I would rather live in the age when federal thugs weren’t waging war on cities in the name of a racist agenda, trampling the rule of law underfoot and murdering Americans along the way for daring to protest this evil inhumanity.

Sure, there were always monsters in suits who committed treason to the Constitution, all while invoking “patriotism” as their motive: men like Huey Long, George Wallace, or Father Coughlin — men who wrapped a flag around their cruelty while waving a Bible in the air. But these depraved creatures did not occupy the Oval Office, they didn’t cheer on criminal gangs attacking the Capitol and then proclaim them the victims of the violence they initiated.

It was an era when brownshirts were our enemies, not our rulers. It wasn’t a time where a fragile Narcissist could get free speech canceled by the billionaires he’s subsidizes with taxpayer funds. The 1st Amendment drew the lines, not greedy “entrepreneurs” (sic) who are political cronies not genuine market-based innovators.

The Founders spoke of rights, but not as accomplishments achieved but those for which they yearned. In so many ways they fell far short of the lofty goals they wished to see.

But, a difference as large as life and death themselves, is they did not wage war on those values. For the history of this nation the direction we traveled was toward those principles no matter how far short we fell of achieving them. We were not a people actively waging war upon them. Because of those values I lived my life as an optimist but now the optimism is gone.

Today those values are being intentionally swept under the rug as one party demands state control of universities, the media, and actively works to remove books that offend them from the library shelves. In the name of protecting “parental rights” they are stripping parents of such rights — especially parents of trans individuals.

A small percentage of American youth are transgender but this doesn’t stop Republicans from presenting them as some new Godzilla destroying everything in their path. In order to “protect women” in public bathrooms they have actually forced women to prove they are female. They want to force individuals who present as female to use male facilities while trans men with beards who look more masculine than the elected GOP are being sent into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms.

All this from a party led by a man who bragged about intruding on women changing clothes at beauty pageants he owned. Four of his victims intruded upon, from the Miss Teen USA pageant said they remember him doing this.

Trump bragged about it saying, “No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. … ‘Is everyone OK?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”

He spoke of how he would sexually grab women and do so aggressively. He was recorded saying, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful… I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.” When asked for clarification the soon-to-be leader of ultra-moralists in America said, “Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.”

His “you can do anything” morality meant multiple marriages with different mistresses yet now his cult scream “one man, one woman, for life!” He was sued by E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and she won but now he’s retaliating by sending his Department of Justice after her.

That reveals another problem with today’s Republican party. They are the party where their leader uses political power to settle scores with those who dared offend them. Just ask Jimmy Kimmel.

I well remember hearing the mantra years ago that when it came to Republicans and Democrats, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference. Today the differences are well above the dime level and is more like a billion’s worth of difference and taxpayers are paying those billions. They are paying to create shrines to Trump. They paid billions in higher food costs due to import taxes. They are paying billions more at the gas pumps all because they are paying billions in taxes to wage war on Iran.

When I was young the Democrats were weaker on economic liberty but stronger on social freedoms while Republicans were weak on social freedom but better economically. In the last few years the GOP changed so it is now weaker on economic freedom and is actively waging war on social freedom.

I yearn for the day when there is no longer a dime’s worth of difference similar to that of the past. That would be a vast improvement over the darkness coming out of the Republican party of today.

So while I don’t know if I have weeks, months or years left I do cringe at the thought that American democracy and our liberal values are already in the ICU with the hearse waiting at the door. I never imagined I could live longer than our nation’s values. I hope enough people have woken up to the threats we face so it can be stopped.