Some of the People All of the Time

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

Speaking for the Continental Congress in 1776, our founding fathers actually believed this. They put it on paper and sent it to the king. What, if anything, our current congress believes is anyone’s guess.

But this self-evident truth is not widely accepted, even in this country. One political tendency, wrongly labeled “conservative” by the mass media, simply rejects the optimistic hopes of this nation’s founders, believing others’ social gains require their loss.

In fact, We The People endeavor to insure any such equality ceases at creation by installing vast differences in care, comfort, nutrition, education and opportunity by dint of perceived differences, including skin tone, national origins and religious preferences.

Edmund Burke, father of actual modern conservatism, was of the opinion that manners and morals (virtue) was more important to making an orderly society than any set of laws. It stands to reason that a president with no virtue will simply do whatever he pleases to promote his own wealth and power. The current occupant of the White House has no loyalty to law, common decency nor the Constitution.

Rather than reading the Declaration of Independence as a cautionary tale, our president reads Jefferson’s litany of complaints about the king as a DIY manual.

Back in the day, Baptists paid a lot of money supporting the legal issues of Jehovahs Witnesses and Christian Scientists. Before they perceived themselves a majority, Baptists realized what they could do to them, they could do to Baptists. The prospect of being forced to dance at an Inaugural Ball, or keeping track if two and a half pairs beats a four-flush was antithetical to those religionists.

It remains true that what they can do to Hispanics, Haitians and immigrants, they can, will and are doing to all Americans.

The new Republicans stole only the name. Nothing they believe is related to the traditional party’s ideals, which were lower taxes, smaller government, free trade, fiscal responsibility and the sanctity of the individual. The current head of that party is a nationalizing socialist, anti-trade, and advocate of both personal and national bankruptcy.

But Sierra County’s voters hang tough. Some are still country club Republicans and will vote for any moron with an R behind his name. They are happily free of any philosophy of governance and untroubled by thought. They will vote for the QAnon Shaman as long as he keeps that “R” after his name.

Others, maybe ranchers, stand to gain cheap real estate, as soy and other farmers go broke thanks to Trump’s trade war. Ranchers are their own market for alfalfa. At least self interest is understandable. A relative, then a bean farmer, explained “The only time we do really well is when some other part of the country has a disaster; flood, drought, freeze, whatever. It’s tough, but that’s how it is.”

But it remains: Trump is a jerk, or in the simplest American understanding, an asshole. His recent bizarre speech at the U.N. had world leaders wondering about his mental capacity. Without an action of congress, killing sailors in International waters off Venezuela opens him to charges of murder. This is the face we offer the world as well as ourselves. While I never bought into American Exceptionalism, I did always think we’d do better.

The new Republicans have proven themselves to be boorish, petty and mean, installing their own cancel culture while insisting that walking around sound asleep, insensible, is preferable to being awake.

19th-century New York Tammany Hall leader George Washington Plunkitt distinguished between “dishonest” and “honest” graft. Dishonest graft meant working solely for one’s own interests. Honest graft was to work for one’s own wealth, while simultaneously furthering the interests of one’s party and state. There is nothing honest in what we’re now seeing.

The late humorist P.J. O’Rourke, a pre-Trump Republican, wrote “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”

Given the reality of Republican rule versus the idle promises of the opposition party, I’m going for the lawn care.