Can you find compassion, forgiveness, and restoration in those cold eyes and that hard-set jaw? We have looked into his eyes and we do see national disaster and trouble far beyond anything imaginable in our modern day.
McConnell’s spasms of negative "NO" speak and his deadpan determination to never compromise cannot save America, which is now in so much pain and trouble. McConnell was once described thus: Mitch has a "unblinking, vaguely android-like stare and gives the impression, even when speaking, of wanting to avoid being noticed."
Look deep into the eyes of Senator Mitch McConnell, do you see in his countenance even the slightest hint of the face of the Son of God?
The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.
Herbert Hoover, Inaugural Address, (March 4, 1928)
McConnell is so representative of the current flat-footed, fumbling, ideological Fundamentalism that previously hovered over Al Smith in the 1920’s and was so deeply enounced in the operational attitudes and bigotry of the Jim Crow era. Across the country, civically illiterate Teaparisans and armed militias of all sorts and capabilities, are waiting in the wings for what they negatively anticipate.
If the goal of McConnell is to find a way, any way, to take down President Barack Obama during the next two years, we, as a nation, will be gliding along on the precipice of partisan violence and unequaled civil unrest.
The message McConnell and ilk have delivered bears, in it’s purpose, a very inflammatory spirit, a honed angst, that can and may well plunge our nation into chaos and worse.
America has freely elected its first black president and now it is allowing a bitter and well-funded core of corporatist gigolos in Congress and state houses to attempt to use both who President Obama is, what he stands for, what he has accomplished (with the help of the present Congress), and his image as our president, commander-in-chief, and our representative on the world stage to become fodder and floatsome for untoward evil doing. The personal destruction of President Obama. All this wrapped in oily rags of arcane legislative procedure and massively monopolized propaganda. This they claim they will do in the name of the sacred tradition of historic America-Take America Back.
Let’s take it one step further backward. The Southern Baptists, now so far regressed into 1920’s Fundamentalism, have, with a band of others likewise deluded, have made their religiously biased and racially loaded move: "a band of right-wing religious leaders met in Dallas recently to plot a way to oust President Barack Obama in 2012," reported Baptist Center for Ethics in Nashville, Ethicsdaily.com. Peruse the list of reported participants:
- Convened by James Robison, Texas-based TV preacher prominent in conservative politics in the 1980s, more recently spiritual advisor to G.W. Bush
- Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
- Johnnie Moore, a vice president at Jerry Falwell Jr.'s Liberty University
- Doug Napier, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund
- Maggie Gallagher, a columnist and crusader against same-sex marriage
- Jim Garlow, chairman of Newt Gingrich's Renewing American Leadership
- Gene Mills, executive director of the Louisiana Family Forum
- Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council
- Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
How many of these "politicized spiritual snipers" would you picture as marching arm in arm with civil rights advocates and Dr. Martin Luther King at The Edmunds Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama?
Americans have striven to rise from the tar pit of the bitter past, only now to see the McConnell and incoming Republicans to suit up in a faux righteous and musty ideological white garments (or seersucker suits on Thursdays as Trent Lott encouraged in the Senate, as tribute to the Old South) trimmed in indignation of the kind that can create a violent civil war.
Impossible you think. Think again.
If the Founders were men such as McConnell, America would have no Constitution, no Bill of Rights, no federation of states to have become one nation under law and consensus. These "total againers" and "NO" speakers could not have crafted the historic accomplishments that the Founders were so adept at achieving though civil discourse, logic and compromise; goodwill and common purpose.
Around McConnell are men like Mark Williams, leader on the Tea Party Express tour III, who, speaking at a dinner for the whole team, stated:
Americans cannot afford to be intimated and therefore, shroud our lives with props that make us into someone we’re not. Whenever we shy back, it takes an eye-opening perspective to jolt us into a reality that is, many times, like a cold splash of water to our face.
America is in a wicked state of being right now. With a government that has concocted Lord knows what against our freedoms, liberties and wealth, we are existing on borrowed time, and most of us don’t have a clue. It is so absurd and devious what is unfolding right in front of our eyes, that if you spoke of the possibilities of a take over—the America that we have come to know—you would be assigned to the nut house. Then maybe I’m wrong. I hope I am.
America’s only hope is for those who are fearless to create a dialog that is sometimes rude and rogue. While I admit that it brings with it a tremendous amount of risk, I argue that the alternative makes the risk worth it. In fact, in this hour, anything less than revolutionary is pointless. Why? Because the era we are living in warrants radical intervention, lest we become lulled into a silent walk towards demise as a nation." (emphasis added)
Can you sense Miller’s angst and anger?
What will incoming Senate Minority Leader McConnell do with this kind of support bubbling over with fire and frustration? Will he rein it in? Or will he fuel its fire?
Perpetual paid agitator and frequent media talking head, Pat Buchanan, has joined in on an outrageous far right video presentation giving further fuel to the conflagration that is gathering:
"The United States has undergone a cultural, moral, and religious revolution. ... We are
two countries now. We are two countries morally, culturally, socially, and theologically.
Cultural wars do not lend themselves to peaceful co-existence. One side prevails, or the
other prevails. The truth is that, while we won the Cold War with political and economic
Communism, we lost the war with cultural Marxism, which now is dominant. Those of us who are traditionalists, we are the counterculture." (emphasis added)
Coming from the mouth of the very man who introduced "cultural war" to the nation during the 1992 Houston GOP National Convention, these fiery words of Pat Buchanan are dangerous assumptions which predispose disaster spelled across McConnell and crew’s present tone and game plan. It's "Get Reprisals" revisionism - about to go on a vengeful rampage.
Polarization
Polarization is the process by which the public opinion divides and goes to the extremes. It can also refer to when the extreme factions of a political party gain dominance in a party. In either case moderate voices often find that they have lost power. It may be one of the first steps to a civil war. (emphasis added) Worddig.com
The Souring Rhetoric of FDR Serves to Inspire Us
President Barack Obama’s struggle is mirrored in FDR’s remarks at Madison Square Garden, 10/31/1936:
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.
They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.
Snip
We have not come this far without a struggle and I assure you we cannot go further without a struggle.
For twelve years this Nation was afflicted with hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government. The Nation looked to Government but the Government looked away. Nine mocking years with the golden calf and three long years of the scourge! Nine crazy years at the ticker and three long years in the breadlines! Nine mad years of mirage and three long years of despair! Powerful influences strive today to restore that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent.
For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. -- Excerpt from FDR 1936 campaign speech in Madison Square Garden.
...
And so it was and so it is. McConnell is the old "hear-nothing, see-nothing, do-nothing Government," the maven of the "mocking years with the golden calf" and a government (as they hope to restore )that is "that kind of government with its doctrine that that Government is best which is most indifferent."
Surely we can do better, and we will.