(A good friend noted my typo “succeed” rather than “secede.” I am sending this correction only to say it was NOT a Freudian slip!)
Day 10. and the polls show the American public is blaming Republicans for the shutdown. But polls and interviews also show that people still do not understand the gravity of what is going on. They want our leaders to “do their job,” by which they mean, “compromise and get things done.”
That sounds reasonable when you consider the fact Democrats and Republicans alike cater to special interests more than paying attention to the people they represent. But that is not the crisis we are witnessing. In the words of the immanently wise Bill Moyers, what Republicans are doing is “succession by other means.” That is it exactly. This is not about Obamacare, deficit reduction, or anything else. This is about rejecting the legitimate rule of laws enacted by the government. That is what many Americans either don’t see or unthinkingly dismiss.
We’ve been here before. Not with past shutdowns, but when the forbearers of my beloved south also decided to secede from the nation’s union. They could not get their way on the issue of slavery so they rebelled. Their rebellion was at first greeted with cheers and rebel yells. Four years later their foolishness had been laid bare. Six hundred thousand Americans lay dead, thousands of others wounded, and the south virtually destroyed. The responsibility lay squarely on the shoulders of a few misguided and stubborn southern leaders and a gullible public that supported them.
What we are seeing today is déjà vu all over again.
This week someone who wanted to be deleted from my Blog list (something, by the way, only the subscriber can do) wrote and said, “You really are wrapped up in this….honestly I can’t believe how personally you have taken all this.”
Honestly, I can’t believe how utterly complicit she is in this effort to undermine our form of government. Of course I am wrapped up in it. Of course I am taking it personally. This is about the country’s soul. This is about the country’s heart. This is about the country’s future.
One day, a day that cannot come soon enough, one day when this is done and when we are trying to pick up the pieces of what used to be our government, we will look back on this time and ask exactly the same question we now ask about those who advocated and led the succession of 1861 that resulted in the Civil War: “What in the world were they thinking?”
