I’m dragging my rusty old sword back into the arena of the politically incorrect…I do a lot of pushups…so lifting it over my head by myself won’t be a problem. I don’t look for an army anymore…outrage and defiance don’t muster the reaction and support like it used to. Not getting involved is the great disconnect and the energy of the moment. Me…well, I’ve never quite gotten the hang of keeping my mouth shut.
Still, you can’t swing a sword and make any noise if you’re sitting on a bench. We’ve become a country full of spectators.
And we come by it honestly…because there is no longer any difference between fiction and non-fiction. It is “1984”…and George Orwell is Nostradamus.
Big Brother is alive and well…and we all know too much.
It’s all Newspeak…our lives, like reality t.v., scripted and edited to make it more “real”…thumbs up…thumbs down…in bored indifference, we sit with our hands under our chins waiting for the ones who climb the highest to take the biggest fall.
We’ve been had. Life….live streaming…a school of Proles washed away in a current of alcohol and drugs, pornography disguised as fashion and entertainment and a national lottery dangled out there like the Golden Ticket.
There is no going back…we want everything NOW…questions answered, problems solved, enemies alleviated…and we’re open 24/7…over-night express…just to get it done.
Our Founding Fathers drafted in our Constitution, a Bill of Rights, that doggedly weathered the growing pains of our super nova nation. Those pioneers had foresight to allow for change, but I don’t think any of them envisioned how big it would all get…and how easily the Constitution and the Bill of Rights could be used as a shield…and as a weapon.
There are wrinkles now on the face of America…we’ve begun to show our age.
The First Amendment in our Constitution is the one that gets held to scrutiny the most…Freedom of Speech…the right to be heard…and with freedom of speech comes freedom of expression and with freedom of expression comes freedom of interpretation…and then there’s the matter of opinion, regardless of the responsibility for its consequences.
The Constitution was a work in progress for those boys in Philadelphia…almost eleven years before it was drafted, they sent out a little warning of what was to come…it was called The Declaration of Independence…and it started like this:
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Clever boys…because in its ambiguity they allowed for ALL beliefs…
It very clearly says: NATURE’S GOD…and THEIR Creator.
Nowhere is it specific to one religion because that is the right they fought for…that is the truth they believed in. IT IS THAT SIMPLE.
I AM…AND SO ARE YOU.
If God is your creator, then it is your privilege and right as a human being to believe that and live that…even before your right as an American.
I don’t respect the thought process of religious superiority. It is manmade and it is a controlling defense mechanism. I don’t recognize it and as a result it has no hold on me and no mystery.
The political climate in our country and across the globe is caustic. Though other countries would criticize our nation, they all desire the freedom of speech which we are guaranteed and seem to take for granted…they are clamoring to be heard. Religion is being used for political gain both as a shield and a sword…a door and a wall.
Politics and religion…oil and water…if you shake it up enough, it mixes together…but eventually it settles, and the oil is what rises to the top.
Does a candidate’s religion define him…or outline him? In truth, he should not hold his God higher than any other God…and if his calling is such, then he cannot represent the people equally, which he is bound by our Constitution to do. His personal calling cannot usurp the rights of the people he is pledging to represent.
In Orwell’s 1984…the Ministries of Peace, Truth, Love and Plenty had the ability to destroy words…Ampleforth erased “God” out of a Kipling poem.
It was fiction…
Here in Tennessee religious conservatives are pushing a bill called “Don’t Say Gay”.
The agenda isn’t even thinly veiled…judgment, though they know they will “be judged.”
God is not a henchman.
In “1984” you were sent to Room 101 to be tortured….when you walked through the door you were faced with the worst thing you could ever imagine.
Imagine that thing was being told….
…You don’t exist.
The Constitution might as well have been written with an Etch a Sketch.
I leave you with words from our own Declaration of Independence…they are ringing louder than ever.
“…A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
Day three hundred and three…Where are our champions?
Cynthia Neilson