I rarely blog about politics as any such discussion is a losing proposition. That said, I simply could not let this pass without a comment:
America has always had a good foundation in ignorance.
The number of truly ignorant people has been large but it has never really affected much because they were rarely in positions to influence anyone.
Mostly they sat on rockers around the coal stove and muttered about the evils of the world. Later this progressed to those who would gather around the water cooler and parrot the ignorance.
Most of their more intelligent compadres knew better than to try and bring some sense into soil where it had yet to sprout.
Doing such has always been known to be a classic waste of time (even the ancient Greeks understood this) and very few people desired beating their head against walls attempting to bring such people into the current century.
Even this was never much of a problem.
Ignorant bigots were everywhere but we just never got to hear much from that portion of the population except in small news articles about violence being visited on the isolated unlucky who found themselves outnumbered by such brave proponents of whichever ideology they latched onto this week.
And then we had the internet…
Suddenly, the ignorant were tag-teaming web-pages, blogs, and Facebook streams with wild abandon, showing their toothless minds and their lack of learning or mental agility in posts of vacant vocal invective exposing their complete ignorance of the language and the subject on which they would presently expound.
But even that was not much of a bother. We could simply chuckle at such infantile ravings, turn the other mental cheek and move onward.
Now, however, crass stupidity has been institutionalized.
The Republican Party – long known as the party of the underdogs, the disenfranchised, the shunned – has now turned their back on their heritage and embraced bigotry, small-mindedness, vindictive striking out at those who cannot strike back… yes, the same group of bullies closing the circle on an isolated prey, whether male or female, of whichever “other” ethnicity they have chosen to hate this month.
It matters not if they are Black, or Hispanic, or Gay, or Muslim, or Female, or Poor… just anything that is as intolerable as being something other than THEM.
Yes, a crime of the worst possible sort.
And the institutionalization of this buffoonery: Donald Trump running for President.
It is a poor joke – a laughable happenstance certainly – a rather tasteless attempt at some form of new Reality Television about an apprentice politician but the ratings on this travesty run far too high to be dismissed lightly.
What has been pretty much a personal problem, a rather private shame until now, of the ignorant masses yearning to beat others senseless for not being or thinking like they do, is now being displayed for all the world to see what America really stands for.
Land of the freaks and home of the broken… We seem to have forgotten what has brought us all together and made that accumulation great. It is the diversity that is now disdained, the variety that strains to be homogenized, the vision that is now being blinded, that has brought us to such a marvelous place that many seem to be willing – nay, adamant! – to set aside and guide this country to a modern dark age.
As a nation we seem to have lost our focus.
Rather than keeping our eyes to the future and to the best of what the collective us can offer, the conscious decision is being made to enlarge the minutiae and overlook the gifts offered.
Many claim that this is the promised land, the country that the Divine has set aside for His favored few.
Many in this country tend to put Country even before God and Family, compelled to the truth of Manifest Destiny… saying that since God has chosen this country for greatness, serving the nation’s interests first IS serving God’s plan.
This is the first election I have ever seen where the leader in the polls is the most un-Presidential person on the block.
The man is a laughingstock, certainly, but the message his soaring popularity is sending to the rest of the world is giving us a black eye which we will be quite some time recovering from.
Around the world, people will be able to point to their televisions and newspapers and say, quite convincingly, “See? I told you the Americans were a bunch of idiots!”
Now all we require is Trump naming Bozo the Clown as his running mate.
Then the joke will be complete.