Our own need to be rescued
In mulling over some recent events I have once again found a common thread, which in mind connect to the well-worn parable of the drowning man.
You know the story, which is told in many variables. My personal short version reads as follows: A flood surrounds a man at home. A rowboat arrives and the man refuses to get on board.
Later a power boat comes by and again the man refuses. Then the man, now on his roof, refuses to board a helicopter.
After he drowns, he arrives in heaven and asks why God didn’t rescue him. St. Peter replies than he offered rescue three times.
Perhaps we are once again that man. Today I offer three ongoing and familiar news stories that, if we look at them with broader eyes, might offer us “rescues” from our conundrums. The first is a domestic rescue. The second and third are geographically a bit further away.
My domestic rescue is from what most Americans appear to not want: a repeat of the Presidential contest between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Offering another metaphor, we don’t have to follow the Pied Piper into a future we really don’t want.
Recall that in the Pied Piper legend, after he wasn’t paid for removing rats the Pied Piper disappeared with the town’s children. In my estimation both leading candidates will wreak havoc with future generations either by authoritarian behavior or woke conformity.
My offered rescue is in the form of one viable and currently active Democratic candidate, Rep. Dean Phillips, and one also viable and active Republican candidate, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
While I have not met or studied their backgrounds in depth, I have listened to both of them in debates with others: Phillips with former candidate Marianne Williamson and Nikki Halley with numerous of her former Republican opponents, excluding Donald Trump.
Phillips is a three-term congressman from Minnesota who has been recognized as a bipartisan member of Congress. I have been impressed by his refusal of PAC money.
Hopefully his tenacity as the sole remaining active major Democrat candidate opposing Biden will be recognized should Biden withdraw. Haley has an impressive domestic resume as a former governor, and foreign policy credentials from serving as our UN ambassador. She has threaded the needle with the Republican base and is well positioned should Trump falter.
However, both need to develop bigger cajónes, or perhaps more PC, moxie. My next two nominations might be good examples from which they can learn some moxie.
We are all familiar with my next nomination — President Zelenskyy of Ukraine. His initial rallying cry calling for ammunition rather than being personally rescued set the tone for the Ukrainian battle for survival — and captured much of the world’s attention and admiration.
His recent invitation to Donald Trump to come and visit the front lines is exactly the challenge that should be made.
As noted in The Hill on February 12, Haley offered the best retort to Trump’s latest attack on military members, “He’s never been near a military uniform, he’s never had to lay on the ground… The closest he’s ever come to being in harm’s way is by a golf ball as he’s sitting in a golf cart.”
However, the best nomination for an inspiring example of someone whose life story can help rescue us from our crisis of a failure to stand up for what’s right, is the life and death of Russian dissident and chief opponent to their dictator Putin, Alexey Navalny.
Both Phillips’ and Haley’s comments begin to capture this moment. Phillips noted on X on February 17 that “Alexey Navalny was murdered by Vladimir Putin, and his memory must be for a blessing.
The courage to give one’s life on the mission of truth and freedom is a remarkable beacon to a world at risk.” The Hill on February 18 noted the words of Haley: “Putin knows exactly what he did with Navalny. You look at that situation, this is what he always does. He murders his political opponents. He arrests American journalists and holds them hostage, and he has made no bones about the fact that he wants to destroy America.”
Navalny’s immense courage to return from exile to certain imprisonment and reasonably anticipated death should be the clarion call to all of us to regain our courage.
In contrast to Tucker Carlson’s weak and pliant interview with Putin, Navalny’s courage should move all of us to reject those promoting isolationism and support freedom, beginning with Ukraine.
That is one way we might begin to recognize our own need to be rescued — no matter that it has taken, and will continue to take, multiple rescue attempts.