Unlike Mr. Sting of The Police band, I have great faith in America. His song Spirits in the Material World paints a bleak picture of the future if you subscribe to its dire premise. Many progresssive-minded folks do. I don’t. If you want to see a country with a lot of problems, you don’t have to look far. Can you  imagine living in Afghanistan these days? As a woman or school aged girl? Or worse, a transsexual?  

While America has had a few rough spots, you’ll notice we’re still around using the original recipe for the Republic we founded. We’ve never been conquered or occupied by hostile forces on our own turf since the English burned down the Casa Blanca in 1812. The fact that we’re being invaded by illegal immigrants who seek a better life is disconcerting but I expect that is a temporary aberration that will resolve itself soon enough if the powers that be would quit squabbling.

I hear all too frequently that “democracy is at stake” in November. Do any of you actually believe some chucklehead like Trump seeks to get elected and then proclaim himself a dictator? For life? That’s like believing in chemtrails and a flat earth. It would require a conspiracy of untold magnitude and the collusion of nearly every branch of the military. I honestly believe we have a better chance of greeting aliens on the Mall near the Washington Monument soon.

 I tried that conspiracy gig up in a country back in the ’70s where Together We Never Served. You can’t clear them in hot with liquid sunshine (napalm) without getting busted. A conspiracy of one? Yes, but not a conspiracy of more than one. Too many people  have to know in order to accomplish it. That can’t happen in the brave new world of whistleblowers.

Let’s unpack this “doomed democracy” gig. Without taking sides, I’ll grant that a bunch of “inspired citizens” decided to hold a protest at the Capitol on January 6th back in ’21. Did they seek to change the election results? Did they seek to permanently revoke democracy as we know it? Political science isn’t my strong suit so I defer to others. What I saw is some unruly idiots on parade who wanted some facetime on NBC. If that was the best they had, they flunked the “Destroy Democracy” test. I was impressed with the guy who tried to abscond with the Speaker’s Podium. That took balls bigger than mine.

America is an amalgam of many things. I’d pull up short of saying extremists or insurrectionists. Most of the Americans I know are ex-military types who fervently love their country. They may comprise disparate groups who vote in two distinctly different directions. Some want more freedom and less government. Disturbingly, other groups actually want the opposite. Gun nuts. Gun control nuts. Men who yearn to be women and vice versa. Folks who prefer antisemitism over freedom of religion. It becomes comical when a large contingent of  LGBTQ-type advocates support Hamas. Do they realize they’d be executed on the spot in Gaza (or anywhere in the Muslim world) for waving a rainbow flag? As my daddy used to say, “You have the right to remain stupid.”

For all America’s perceived shortcomings, there’s no place like it. Very few countries on Earth allow you to possess guns. They don’t trust you with them.  In some countries, you are not free to move about the country.  Sure, you can own and operate an AK 47 or 74 in Afstan-but only if you’re on the right side of the ruling hierarchy. Can you imagine a sand rancher walking into a Piggly Wiggly store and cutting lose with a 47? He’d never survive long enough to go to trial. I fear that may become the case here some day if we don’t start to enforce the myriad rules already on the books instead of trying to take away our guns.

America is unique. When I hear some of you shout Make America Great Again, I can’t help but think you’re missing the point. When did we cease to become great? Or mediocre? Or downright unpleasant? Okay. Leave out New York, San Francisco or LA.

Every four years, we (opposing political parties) get the heebie-jeebies that somehow the “other side” is going to take over and wreck all the hard work we’ve accomplished. I get that. Paranoia strikes deep as the song goes. But think back over the last 248 years and tell me when some “existential threat to democracy as we know it” reared its ugly head and smote down our Republic. I disremember unless you want to drag in the War of Northern Aggression (viewed in the eyes of the South) or the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania. America didn’t perish. We gathered ourselves up and moved on.

Existential threats, to me, are weird-ass shit like fake pandemics. Sure. A lot of folks died from Covid but the more we investigate, we understand many of them were on their last legs medically speaking. Masks turned out to be useless. Our government lied to us and screwed up the country. We’re only now beginning to see the long range damage. In true numbers based on the size of our population, 1918’s Spanish Flu was just as bad- if not worse. We survived as a Nation. Ditto WWI and II. More dittos for Vietnam and the Iraqistan fiasco. Much like a cat, we always seem to land on our feet and proceed apace. Witness the elimination of segregation and slavery. Don’t try to convince me racism still runs rampant across the Fruited Plains. I used to live in the South and am old enough to remember colored water fountains only. It only exists now for political purposes to incite, anger and separate us. Wake up, America.

Freedom (American Style) is pretty much unique to our country alone. The very idea that  if former President Trump regains power, he’ll have unlimited power to order Seal Team 6 to take out Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer is ludicrous. Moreover, if anyone thinks the Army or the Marines would go along with the idea that he should be crowned King and rule forever- and even support his efforts to overthrow ‘democracy as we know it’, you need to see a shrink and be medicated. Heavily.

Japan was convinced they could never invade America and conquer us because we (as one aspiring politician once said) are a basket of deplorables who cling to their guns and religion. I really don’t have much truck with the ultra religious but if they’re peaceable,  I don’t see the problem. If they know gun safety and don’t sashay around at the local Mall toting six sixguns, who cares? I even will give them a bye when they show up on my front porch and try to shove an Awake! or Watchtower magazine into my hands.

What I fear most are folks who may want to outlaw purple hair or teach kids DEI in school. School is for readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmatic- not a brainwashing exercise to convince  Johnny that he might, in  the new reality of wokeness, be Jane and his parents are guilty  of suppressing his yearning to change. Let’s let Johnny or Jane make that choice after s/he reaches the age of majority- and not before. We don’t let them vote before 18 for a reason. They’re not ‘done’ yet.

America is sturdy. It’s durable. It will survive if everyone would cease getting their panties in a knot and predicting gloom and doom if one side or the other prevails. We’ve been doing this for a few hundred years and we’ve always had a peaceful transfer of power. One marvels at how Trump can be guilty of trying to ensure the 2020 election was above board. Do we ignore Al Gore’s hanging chads in Florida in 2000? Do we sweep Hillary Clinton’s conjecture of how she was robbed in ’16 under the carpet? Face it. Every election, by its very nature, is going to have a winner and, conversely, a loser. Unfortunately, some are sore losers. Sore losers never changed the outcome though.

I rarely opine on matters political but the frenzy meter is running in the red these days. AOC says she’s going to impeach the Supreme Court for the litany of evils they have spawned.  I never heard the conservative branch of Americans ever advocate to run them out on a rail when the Court was 6-3 and knee deep in progressive endeavors for years and years back in the 60s.

It’s time to sky down and analyze history. Roe vs. Wade hinged on the Government abrogating the power from the States to tell women what was permissible. Nowhere in the four corners of the Constitution does it say the Government has that power. Just because it happened doesn’t mean a wrong cannot be righted to balance true freedom of choice. Each and every state has the right to make that determination. I, for one, find abortion to be sanctioned murder but I would fight to the death for a woman’s right to make that choice herself. If the state you live in forbids, or severely curtails, that right, vote with your feet. If Illinois outlaws possession of AR 15s, vote with your feet. Move to Florida or Wyoming.  You live in America. You’re free to move about this glorious country-for the moment anyway.

I hear Alec Baldwin or Susan Sarandon moan and say if Trump is elected, they’ll depart America post haste. They said the same thing in ’00 and ’04 when faced with the choice of Bush ’43. And here we are twenty years later still going strong like the Energizer Bunny. That babe down in New Mexico would still be alive if Alec had left. No. I have ultimate faith in the way our forefathers constructed this poker game. It’s stood the test of time and a bunch of panicky naysayers won’t convince me to vote for anyone who advocates usurping our rights to protect us from ourselves.

Next year, I look forward to a closed, Southern border (or any border) that protects us from folks who would blow up the World Trade Centers, I look forward to schools that teach morals- not how to put a rubber on a banana. The old Virginia Slims commercial always resonates in my noggin. “You’ve come a long way, Baby.” We have. We now need to put that in perspective and practice what we preach. We cannot put our citizens in a virtual moral (or immoral) jail to protect them from themselves. We have to trust that those we elect will do the right thing and protect our unique way of life for those who come after us.

We don’t need to make America great again. We just need to admit we’ve strayed a little bit too far in the wrong direction. When we can’t afford to pay rent (let alone buy a house) and put food on the table for our kids, that means we’re doing it wrong. When good, solid immigrants of high moral character are waiting patiently in line to come here, how can it be that our Administration is not only allowing unvetted, unvacinated folks to stream across the border unfettered but flying them in from El Salvador?  If the guy running for President is convinced everything is hunky dory and no American servicemen have died on his watch, then we need a change. Two Americans are running. One is an alleged felon for cooking the books to pay off a hooker to quit lying. The other ‘s son is now an alleged felon who just got convicted of illegal possession of a handgun while high on crack for the last 10 years. Only in America, folks. Only in America. I don’t think it gets any greater than that.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Happy Birthday America. Gentlemen, start your barbecues.