It is on the first day of the Winter Solstice, that Earth, our domiciliary planet, begins its slow, rotational turn, to the existential light of the Sun. Would that it was conceivably possible, to analogously observe Mankind’s assured regular inclination to enlightenment. Notwithstanding its laudable advancements, in science, digital technology and medicine, there has not been a commensurate heliocentricity, relative to Mankind’s advance to the attainment of enlightenment.
Any candid chronicle of events of the year 2021, would be hard pressed to do so, in a celebratory context; no psalms, carols, bells or whistles would suffice to dim: the anguished tragedy of the many thousands of preventable infections and deaths, attributable to the persistent Covid invasion, as exacerbated by the irresponsible ignorance of the Trump administration; nor, the emergence from the proverbial, woodwork of an anti-democratic horde of the Nation’s chronically ignorant underbelly, [catalyzed by their revered orange demagogue-deity, Donald J. Trump ] for the purpose of vociferously, and violently, demonstrating their psychotic hatred of representative democracy, in general, and American citizens, born with a noticeably heavier pigmentation of melanin, specifically.
In a Nation, such as ours, populated entirely by immigrants and their progeny, the ardent, populist opposition, to the admission of desperate fugitives, fleeing foreign corrupt and dangerous venues, seeking acceptable lives [like their predecessors], is inhumanly cruel and despicably selfish.
At the close of year 2021, we find ourselves, confessedly, populated by a plethora of atavistic and undemocratic bigots, successful enough to date, to cause forty-three, Republican controlled, State Legislatures, to enact anti-democratic Laws, limiting the votes of America’s minority communities. The Kafka-like, “Through the Looking Glass” rationale, bizarrely enunciated for the latter, amounts to the avoidance of election manipulation, by [themselves] “overtly manipulating elections. This travesty has its tangled, gnarly roots, in Trump’s monomaniacal claim, the “Big Lie”, viz., the completely unsupported, fabrication that the election was “stolen” from him. It was this delusional, ideation, that led to the criminal insurrection at Washington’s Capitol Building, January 6.
At this remarkably, bleak time, the scourge of the pandemic continues to be increasingly, concerning. Notwithstanding, the laudable development of effective vaccines, Trump’s public disparagement of their administration, and, as well, of medically recommended prophylactic measures, tragically added to the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of American citizens. In addition to the reported mortality figure of upwards of 800,000 deaths, the prolongation of the virility of the epidemic disease, by his wrongful denial of its true threat has, to date, enabled two virulent mutations. Hospitals are overwhelmed with cases involving Covid pathology, preempting surgery and other medical needs. There were loud, audible, boo’s the other day, when Trump and that avatar of arrogance and bigotry, Bill Reilly, publically admitted, to a television audience that they, inconsistent their ardently expressed, public disparagement of the process, had each taken both rounds of shots, plus the booster.
At the time of the occurrence of the present Winter Solstice, the most sacred and reverential part of the Founders’ architecture of our Separation of Powers, i.e., SCOTUS, scarcely resembles the institution, as properly and functionally constituted by our Founders. A mandatory prerequisite to the acceptance of any case by SCOTUS, has, since its inception, the “certiorari proceeding,” purposed, to legally demonstrate, that no political issue was involved, nor any political impact thereof, possible. This was, appropriately, to prevent a breach of the requirements of the Constitutional provision of, “Separation of Powers.” Since the 2000 case of Bush v. Gore, SCOTUS has, in a surprisingly inconsistent manner, become political, [and worse, partisan] as was irrefutably, demonstrated by the Citizen’s Union case. The latter case was indisputably, political, and, further, contrary to all legal precedent extant, since the English Statutes of Elizabeth, ruled that “corporate personhood” [merely, a practical business fiction], entitled Corporations [as “people”] to make unlimited political contributions; thus upsetting the long accepted, constitutional mandate, and more existentially, dangerous to our citizen representative democracy; perpetrated by the very institution, created to assure and guide the proper functioning of our democratic republic.
Most troubling and existentially perilous, to our Democratic Republic, [perhaps, immorally seen as a useful tool by the autocratic, Donald Trump] is the Nazi-like rise of militant, White Christian Nationalist Groups. Their recent brazen, anti-societal behavior has metastasized from local criminality to the level of a full-blown, bloody, public Insurrection at the Nation’s Capital. The bitter lesson of the 1930’s Weimar Republic and Adolph Hitler must not go, unheeded. The insidious enemy, no doubt counts upon the reliable indifference of the public.
A mature and candid recognition of the presenting challenges is an existential prerequisite to their effective amelioration. We remain hopeful that, perhaps, by the next Winter Solstice, an aware and enlightened American population will, in natural adherence to its historically dedicated orbit, effectively, fend off, such threats to our fixed aspirations for eternally universal democratic equality and natural human advancement.
-p.
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