Two hundred and forty years ago, a group of gentlemen pledged their, “Lives and fortunes” to a cause that seemed insurmountable and an idea they knew, in their time, to be unobtainable. The cause was won, but the idea has had slow progress. Currently, it has reached a point that would be unimaginable to that group of founding gentlemen. Nevertheless, despite innumerable setbacks, and albeit molasses-slow, one step up always led to another in the same direction. With the election of the latest executive officer in that system so precariously founded, there are indications that that upper progression of steps could be in jeopardy.
The Founders were aware that that flowery poetry contained in the preamble to the down-and-dirty document they used to prosecute King George merely was a sop to the world in order to justify the righteousness of their perfidy. Nevertheless, it was a commitment (if they happened to survive) that was well beyond social reality for them to keep. That reality was deep and complicated.
If it were not for the crass hypocrisy contained in the beauty and promise of that idealized preamble, one might consider a certain innocence on the part of the signers, however, these were educated and enlightened men in an age denominated, as “Enlightenment.” Consciously, and at the exclusion of most of that humanity with which they would appear to have been concerned in that flowery preamble, they knew that the active principals for whom they were advocating were, simply, they, themselves.
Omitted from the political and social protections in question were all of those on the distaff side; most men of European extraction who were bereft of property; those peoples they found in the new continent who survived extinction; and those creatures of the damned extracted from another continent, to be imprisoned for a lifetime of brutal, inhumane, unpaid, personal servitude. Apparently, that little band of the enlightened was overcome by the collective mass of this uncounted and discounted humanity.
Here we are at the dawn of Century Twenty-one. After barely surviving the conflict that almost rent asunder the original compact devised by that small group dreamers, the nation has reached the pinnacle of world power. After continental and Pacific wars of imperialist expansion and two world wars, the original idea of equality and justice for all humanity had been submerged. During the past half century, notable efforts were made to rectify that wrong. That progress, although retarded, has taken a tremendous leap forward. The latest presidential election, however, has released an ominous sense of discomfiture throughout the land. While speaking and acting quite to the contrary thereof, the incoming president vows to, “Make America Great Again.” Many hear that, “Great” as “Hate.”
As an effective watchdog to any attempt to drag the nation back into that dark, rejected past, the outgoing president will remain in Washington with the national and international bully pulpit at the disposal of his ever ready rhetoric.
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