By Irene F. Starkehaus -
For the record, I did reread Revelation just to clarify our current position, and it would seem there are zero references to Trump Tower and personal email servers in the Holy text. Obviously, I am being facetious in calling Trump v Clinton the path to Armageddon, although it's as interesting considering the possibility as it is sad that I have to point out that I'm being facetious.
While I'm not in charge of the official decisions, there's a good chance it's not the end of the world that the two most ethically ambivalent characters available in this space and time are now leading contenders in the presidential election of 2016. Don't be counting on Doomsday to bail you out of this mess. Nothing is that easy.
This may come as a shock, but it's also probably not the end of America. Frankly, I can think of worse and more likely scenarios than that one. In four years, America will still be here. In twenty years, she will still be here. In a hundred years, she will still be here just as Rome and Athens are and will still be here. The real concern for our next century is whether America will still be the home of the free and the brave, or if it will be America, an exoskeleton that masks our festering decay. Triumphant or diminished – either way, America will remain.
With the general election just around the corner, there are a lot of theories flying around about what's wrong with our country and how we got into this mess. If you're coming at the problem from the Left, America's crisis is one of privilege versus poverty. If you're coming at it from the Right, the problem is one of encroachment and entitlement. If you're in the center, the problem comes from the Left and Right…but mostly the Right. If you're an anarchist or libertarian, the problem is structure. If you're a totalitarian, the problem is liberty.
While all sides can look to any number of data points in order to buttress their arguments, it just so happens that most examinations of our problems are flawed because all seek to place government at the center of the universe and on the path to our salvation.
America isn't and has never been about a government, so Clinton or Trump as solutions are irrelevant. Either/or could be the president of a lucid and responsible people, and this would have no consequence on our long term prospects even if the stars aligned, and they were both having good comb over days. Through an unfiltered lens, we can see that the Trump-Clinton confluence isn't even improvable. It only reflects our standing as a people and our standing right now is one of unfettered madness.
Speaking in terms of culture, for America to work, we need a society that will not wait to be saved. Ours was a land of pioneers and free men. Even many who were enslaved were willing to endanger their lives by reaching for positions of emancipation so that they could live freely, yet now we're a people looking to the horizon for a knight in shining armor. Would Paul Revere have waited for England's permission to complain about tyranny? Can you imagine the fierce-hearted Harriet Tubman seeking a government bail out?
Side note – And God bless Harriet Tubman who exemplifies our culture's shared longing for freedom as she finds her place on our most widely distributed tender. How and why the first man to nearly collapsed our political and economic systems ever found his way onto the $20 bill, I could not say, and how the Left was ultimately convinced to remove that man when he paved the way for future executive overreach is beyond me. Symbolically, this is a giant leap for the efficacy of our currency.
But I digress. We have been culturally neutralized, homogenized and programmed to seek out a Superman in the form of Big Government. Over and again, we pass up opportunities to break free of our current Superman's iron grip simply because we are too focused on the prospect of a new Superman to swoop in and solve our problems.
I am a God-fearing woman who believes in miracles, intercessions and the physical reality of the Holy Trinity. I am no stranger to hope as a legitimate and balancing virtue to faith and charity by their authentic definitions. (Faith being the virtue of believing in that which we assume is impossible. Charity being the virtue of defending what is indefensible. Hope being the virtue of remaining steadfastly glad in times of desperation.)
We are truly living through times when virtue-imbued optimism is a plus, so I understand the desire to throw off the shackles of responsibility and wait for a new and powerful leader to save us from the old powerful leader, but I can honestly say without hesitation that Superman isn't coming to fix this. More importantly, neither Trump nor Clinton even remotely resemble Superman. I remain hopeful that we will come to our senses and save ourselves.
Regardless, let's imagine that there actually was a Superman who could save us from ourselves. What if every single one of the greatest American presidents could magically reincarnate tomorrow afternoon for the sole purpose of righting our country's rudderless ship? How would they fix it?
They couldn't. They would not know where to begin to help because We the People are so suffused in or confused by depravity, we wouldn't recognize a liberator if he smacked us in the forehead.
That we are actually having arguments over whether Bruce Springsteen should be allowed to pee with 10-year-old girls is quite the issue. So Springsteen won't play a concert in North Carolina because the state passed a law reaffirming the standards that were in place the last time he played a concert in North Carolina. Boom. Now what?
Holy guacamole and chips, Batman. Do you have any idea what our Founders would have done with Bruce Springsteen's PC tyranny against women? They would have marched down to Belhaven Beach with every LP, CD, eight track and cassette that they could have gotten their hands on, and they would have dumped them right into the harbor while biting their thumbs at the EPA for the predictable scolding over impending environmental disasters.
Then? Every time they might have yearned to hear some gravelly shout-singing from a blowhard bully, they would have embraced their renunciation of instant gratification and reveled in their strike against despotism. In this way, they would have grown in the knowledge that the last thing Bruce Springsteen or any other Marxist crooner wants you to grasp is that there are plenty of conservatives that can sing. Conservatives can write lyrics; conservatives can create record labels; conservatives can make music videos just like the Marxist crooners do.
Boom. See that? That's Alphonzo Rachel from PJTV banging on a drum all day. He's a conservative. Believe it or not, authoritarian rock stars need conservative consumers more than conservative consumers need despotic rock stars. Still, Springsteen's announcement gave everybody a moment of concern, right? Left winger rock bands are going to boycott us if we don't behave? Oh, dear heavens! What are we gonna do if we can't see the Boss in concert? How on earth will we survive.
Dude. Seriously. We're so steeped in gangrene that a growing majority can no longer discern right from wrong or imperative from take your concert and shove it.
Look. The Left lost its collective mind long ago. They are sociopaths. They are intoxicated by their freedom from conscience and a reemerging awareness that a forceful message can supplant the truth. I honestly don't know what can be done about their mental health other than to reiterate this in simple, understandable terms that even they can understand:
If you give a feminist a condom, she'll want a sexual revolution to go with it. If you give her a sexual revolution, she'll probably get pregnant, so she'll want to kill her baby. She'll ask you for a legal abortion. She'll wonder why she has to pay for it. Once you've paid for her abortion, she'll want to sell her unborn child's organs and tissue. When you object, she'll call you a Nazi and seek a safe space.
Her friends in the LGBT community will notice the sexual revolution and they'll want one too. They will want a gay pride parade. After they've walked down the street in thongs, they'll probably demand a same sex marriage. You'll have to bake a wedding cake. The wedding cake will remind them that they don't like gender specific pronouns. They'll want to hear a fairytale and they'll ask you to rewrite the Wizard of Oz into a lesbian sex fantasy.
Once they've watched Dorothy Gale kiss a girl, they'll wonder why boys and girls can't urinate together. They'll invent the new constitutional right of transgender Americans to drop trou in front of toddlers. They'll call you a fascist for objecting.
Their environmentalist friends will…sigh. Never mind. I could go on, but you get the point. Don't give a pig a pancake and you'll be just fine because – do you know why? Because in the children's story, the pig just wants to be your friend. In real life, the pig wants to be your government.
