There IS something we can do about it!

Speak softly ... but carry a big stick ...

Speak softly … but carry a big stick …

“There’s nothing we can do about it!”

I think that’s one of the most contemptible sentences in the English language. And nowadays, we here it from everybody, starting with the politicians in Washington, the governors in our state capitals, our mayors and city councils, all the way down to the local police (and lawyers). “We know this is a big problem and an injustice; we know you people are outraged and upset about it; and we agree with you. But there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Horse hockey! There’s always SOMETHING that can be done to remedy a bad situation — if the people with the power have the brains to figure it out, and the guts to do it! Or if they finally realize that if they DON’T do something about it, the people themselves may just step in and do it.

That flabby, flaccid saying is just one of the many things that are plaguing the once-great United States of America as we stagger toward the 2016 presidential election. And it’s a big reason why candidates like Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are leading the pack in the early Republican polling for president. None of them has a background in politics, Trump having been a hugely successful real estate magnate, Carson a world-renowned neurosurgeon, and Fiorina a highly-regarded CEO of a major company (although she did ultimately get fired. But that happens to CEOs every day). Americans in general — what Richard Nixon called “the Silent Majority” — are mad as hell about so many things that have happened, or were caused to happen, or HAVEN’T  happened, during the last six and one-half years, that it’s certainly no surprise that they have flocked to the rallies of those presidential candidates who wave the banner saying, “I’m not a politician, and I’m proud of it!”

OF COURSE THERE are some who don’t hesitate to “do something” instead of just throwing up their hands. Take Barack Obama (and how I wish someone would!) The trouble is, the president “does something” to change America to suit his ideological views, regardless of whether the GOP-controlled Congress agrees with him or not. And whether the majority of Americans agree with him or not. He just hauls off and issues an imperial decree. OK, so it’s actually an executive order, although Obama does tend to think of himself in imperial terms. And he often issues such directives about issues that, according to the Constitution, require the approval of Congress.

And the Republicans, who got control of both houses of Congress last year, moan and complain about Obama’s actions. Then they do absolutely nothing to assert the rights and prerogatives of their one-third of the federal government.

“There’s nothing we can do about it.” Ho-hum. Gotta go to a fundraiser now. Bye!

The most recent, and most blatant, instance of how Obama, and the Supreme Court which apparently now does his bidding, was when they simply brushed aside the majority wishes of the American people and ordered that gay marriage become, instantly, the “law of the land.” This followed a string of regional federal judges’ simply nullifying the results of many referenda, held in a number of the 50 states in the last 10 years, in which the voters clearly expressed their view that “marriage” should be between one man, and one woman. It was these arrogant judges’ way of saying, in effect, “You ignorant, homophobic yokels don’t know your own minds, and even if you did, you’re wrong, so your votes can be thrown out like yesterday’s trash.”

AND SO NOW a Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, has been placed in jail because she refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, because of her religious objections as a born-again Christian. She was released last Tuesday, but stay tuned; the same judge who clapped her behind bars (with no bond set, of all things) could put her right back in if her conduct as county clerk doesn’t fit his persnickety opinions about “the law.” And Davis has said she won’t violate her conscience about issuing marriage licenses to a he and he, or she and she, couple.

That is to say, she “did something about it,” instead of just knuckling under to the high priests of the high court.

And, as many of those who agree with Davis have pointed out, the argument that gay marriage is now “the law of the land,” is bogus. There has never been a law passed in this country that legalizes “gay marriage” nationwide. This was a Supreme Court decision, which is NOT a law. And Kim Davis has “done something about it,” with her refusal to compromise her principles.

And to those who want to equate Davis’s failure to issue marriage licenses to he-he or she-she couples, somehow, with “segregation” or “the civil rights struggle,” let me call your attention to a couple of Supreme Court decisions from the distant past. The Dred Scott decision of 1857 ruled that slaveowners could take their slaves with them into “free” states (on visits or business trips) without the status of those slaves changing. They were still slaves. Both before and after that ruling, hundreds of White Northerners helped slaves to escape the South via the Underground Railroad, thus violating the “decision.” In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled, in Plessy vs. Ferguson, that schools that were “separate but equal” could be used to keep black and White youngsters from learning in the same classrooms. As it would have been much more difficult to violate that ruling, segregated schools tended to last — until the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that outlawed the practice. Even then, states that had maintained the “separate but equal” doctrine, fought the ruling for years. Were they wrong to “do something about it”? Or should they have merely caved in to the high court’s decision, no matter how much they disagreed with it?

SO YOU SEE, protesting against, or even refusing to obey, “laws” or Supreme Court edicts, has a long and honored history in this country. Does anyone think that throwing a whole shipload of tea into the Boston Harbor was “legal”? You’ve heard of the Boston Tea Party, haven’t you? The American history that relates that event as colonists giving a middle-finger salute to King George III, inspired Americans of the 21st Century to start the Tea Party Movement in 2009. And by the way, have you noticed that the liberal media always writes it as “tea party,” refusing to show any respect for the movement by using upper-case letters? How silly and juvenile!

Of course, this is just the most recent issue which has enraged the American people. There is the huge media buzz which has followed the killing of “unarmed” black thugs by police, helping to stir the pot of “outraged” black mobs protesting and rioting, and Barack Obama’s weighing in, in ways that many interpret as favoring the rioters over the blue-clad forces who are trying to maintain order in this country. And then, by contrast, his apparent indifference to the murders of a number of those same police officers, mostly by black assassins. Many, many of us people in the street, of ALL races, are asking ourselves and our friends, “Is this the way the president of the United States should act?”

Then we have ObamaCare, foisted on a nation that didn’t want it, by a one-party, very slim majority in the Congress five years ago, and plagued with a multitude of problems due to poor planning and incompetent management, right from the git-go. The Republicans have made a number of stupid mistakes in Congress since Barack Obama and family moved into the White House, but at least the country can’t say that they share the blame for ObamaCare. And 39 House Democrats crossed over and joined the GOP to vote against their leader’s pet project. They did what they COULD do about it; it just wasn’t enough.

And of course there is the Iranian nuclear deal, which again was rammed down the American people’s throat by the Obama administration, and which the Republicans have dropped the ball on in their attempts to either vote it down, or override a presidential veto of such a “thumbs down,” in Congress. The president and the Democrats stole the GOP’s clothes while they were in swimming — again.

THEN THERE’S THE issue of illegal immigration — which Obama doesn’t WANT to do anything substantive about, because he views anything that makes America a shade or two darker, and helps push us “nasty old” White people closer to minority status, as good. And besides, he sees all those dark skins as potential Democrats. And Republicans who are big business magnates, want to keep the Mexicans flowing in, too, viewing them as “cheap” labor. So both parties are to blame for this demographic mess — this “There’s nothing we can do about it” lie.

The Confederate Battle Flag issue is lesser than the others. But it also reflects the feeling among so many Americans, that the liberals — or progessives; which word is “all the rage” now? — who now hold the White House, academia, and most of the media, want to ban and eradicate anything from our history or our present, which “offends” them. And the Confederate flag has been at or near the top of the list for years. The black “spokesmen” always scream that it represents “hate.” What it really represents is the fact that a segment of these United States, once disagreed with the federal government, and the rest of the states, so strongly that they were willing to go to war over it. And while I haven’t heard a lot of talking about the flag issue since the government of South Carolina caved in and took down the flag outside their statehouse, I will say this: I’ve seen more Confederate flags flying from the beds of pickup trucks, painted on the sides of vehicles, and fluttering from flagpoles beside the front doors of private homes, than I ever had before. Hey, progressives: The people have spoken, with their actions. Try to ban THAT!

So there you have it, folks. I could have gone on for a while longer; there’s certainly no shortage of issues which the American people are “madder than hell” about.

Some people — the pessimists for whom the glass is always half empty — will say, “Oh, us White people are successful and fat and complacent; we’ll bitch and complain about all this, but in the end result we’ll give in — again. We’ll be paying reparations to the blacks. We’ll see the feds seize control of all our local police agencies. And they’ll find a way to take the money right out of our bank accounts — legally. It’s coming, boys!”

WELL, I SUPPOSE if you no longer have any faith in the descendants of the people who built this country, you could believe that. If you think that, despite all the e-mail server issues with Hillary Clinton, and the majority of the American people no longer trusting her word (if they ever did), she’ll still just waltz right into the White House on Jan. 20, 1917, you could believe that. If you think the Black Caucus in Congress soon will hold all the chairmanships in the House, and will make everyone dance to their tune, you could believe that. If you’ve totally lost faith in America, then you probably DO believe that.

But I have more faith in my fellow Americans than that. Sure, we’ve been slow to anger over the last six and one-half years, with “our first black president” often behaving as if he’d like nothing better than to “take the U.S. down a notch or two.” I think we’ve had a hard time believing it, for one thing. We’re also much too worried about someone calling us “racist,”as if no other American president ever outraged us, or received the condemnation of the American people, coming down on his head. “Racist”? Nonsense.

“Slow to anger” doesn’t necessarily mean, “There’s nothing we can do about it.” It means, “We won’t go off half-cocked.” As I said earlier, the fact that many millions of Americans — mostly White, but with some seasoning of black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American — are fed up, are supporting Trump, Carson and Fiorina. And on the Democratic side, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is a self-proclaimed socialist, but who in the latest polls is moving up hot and heavy on Hillary Clinton, who so many wanted us to believe had the White House locked up. Now, it looks like, if this e-mail investigation reveals actually lawbreaking by her, and her people, SHE may be the one who is “locked up.”

So, it’s my parting shot that SOMETHING is going to happen between now and the November 2016 presidential election. Something unexpected — or maybe not so much. I don’t know exactly what, and I’m not going to speculate. But we Americans have had a bellyful of these Washingtonians, of both parties.

It’s coming, boys!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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