Not what Guard’s for

Sometimes it seems as if we are living in a topsy-turvy world far stranger than anything that Dr. Seuss ever imagined.

The National Guard, our “well-regulated militia” of Second Amendment fame, did not do an ace job of defending the “security of a free state” on Jan. 6. Instead, it let a mob of a few hundred people appropriate the power “of the people” for themselves — themselves alone — and who followed the siren’s song and hateful messages of the messiah who “tells me so.”

Instead, now we have the National Guard being called up, not to help, in floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, wars, and myriad other disasters, but to prop up our overtaxed medical system, overtaxed by the unvaccinated, that is. And why? It seems that we are tired of wearing masks, tired of avoiding friends, families, and crowds, and concerts, tired of missing celebrations, tired of washing our hands and tired of trying to protect our neighbors with vaccinations.

We definitely don’t sound like the same people as those camped at Valley Forge; they had things to really complain about: too much cold, too little food, too long an uphill struggle — yet they stayed the course.

Who knows what we will use the National Guard for next?

Traffic control, as Congress simmers and Trump fiddles with his TV control once again?

Armed military parades before an all-powerful commander-in-chief?

Billeted paying guests at hotels owned by the president? Surely we can do better than this.

DANNY HANCOCK

Lonoke