We, presumably, in common with other sufficiently enlightened members of human society, subscribe to the epistemological theory that knowledge is singularly acquired by man’s experience (John Locke). The presenting theme is intended to reflect our personal reservations about the empirically grounded perception of American citizenship now prevalent among our younger citizens, in light of the unprecedented events during the Trump Administration.
Since childhood, we were ubiquitously imbued with the beneficial American principles of legal equality and liberty, of personal and institutional morality, of love of country, the commonality of its citizens, the moral precedence of honesty, and empathic regard for others, less fortunate than ourselves.
As young children, our learned love of country was patriotically demonstrated, among other things, by the dedication of play time to retrieve scrap metals and rubber for the war effort during the 1940’s; we did so as systematically conjoined American children who later. proudly and joyfully, participated in the public celebrations of the Nation’s existential military victory over fascism.
As schoolchildren, we felt part of the diverse neighborhood and school, played in the neighborhood streets, public park, and ball fields, mutually revered outstanding baseball players, and regularly engaged in daily interactive personal communication. Certain contextual subjects were universally sacrosanct: family loyalty, the critical importance of education, citizen loyalty, demonstrative morality (inclusive of respect for the elderly) and, when appropriate, empirical sacrifice.
We were fortunate to be served by dedicated and capable Presidents such as F.D.R. (humanistic programs, social security, unemployment insurance), J.FK and Lyndon Johnson (civil liberties, voting rights act), and Barack Obama (Health Insurance and the primacy of education). The constitutional tripartite architecture of government was scrupulously observed; not the least significant was the legal supervisory Supreme Court of the United States, which scrupulously and apolitically monitored the application of the Fifth Amendment, together with the temporal existence of a two-party political system assuring balance and equity in legislation. We were proud members of a Democratic Republic, which was ever advancing toward a more perfect (equal) union and was an avatar of rectitude and individual liberty.
Dynamically analogous to the tragic onset of metastasizing cancer, the toxic invasion of the body politic of the historically admirable American Nation, disasterously transmogrified into one of an unprecedented, autocratic, and dystopic nature; featuring as its populist progenitor, Donald J. Trump and his loyal menagerie of incapable, corrupt, albeit mandatorily loyal, Cabinet Ministers.
The younger population of the Nation, thus presented with a distorted travesty of American stewardship, has witnessed the illegal waging of war, the ubiquitous government abuse of civil rights, the Presidential denial of certified election results and the fomenting and support of an insurrection against the Capitol, and later, the arbitrarily pardoning the criminal participants, the employment and support of a miscreant horde of masked hoodlums with the franchise to arrest and even murder peaceful Hispanic Americans, the confusion and betrayal of the Nation’s historic allies, including NATO. the ignorant and unauthorized imposition of high tariffs on the Nation’s trading partners, the extinction of empathic programs of medical and food assistance, domestically and internationally; while simultaneously gilding the White House, and insanely demolishing its historical East Wing, illegally obtaining billions of dollars of bribes, inclusive of a jumbo jet, a Presidential attack on the Nation’s institutes of higher education as well as its cultural treasures such as the Smithsonian Institution, an irresponsible eliminatation of the utilitarian Federal Civil Service, most notably, its medical research facilities, the unprecedented and, unconstitutional employment of the military for perceived domestic needs support of White Christian Militias aggressive assertion of claims of ownership of sovereign Nations such as Greenland and Canada; and among the virtualkly rndless list Trump’s apparently brisk commerce with prostitutes and unsavoury personalities such as Jeffry Epstein.
The once-revered legal overseer, SCOTUS, has, under the dystopic Trump Administration, has dishearteningly become politically and morally corrupt, the Republican Congress has been entirely emasculated and catatonic, and the Justice Department and the FBI have been perversely dedicated to pleasing the corrupt and egocentric President.
The experiential context of American governance, at present, is unprecedentedly perverted and historically non-traditional, thus causing us to be concerned about its perception and the principled expectations of the maturing American as well as his willing participation.
We had no such analogous challenge.
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