The times, they are a-changing
I read Ron Wood’s weekly screed and found two points with which I agree. The first is that America is at risk. The second is that Russia and China would like to see us become a third-world country.
My fears were first realized on November 9, 2016, when the wannabe Mafia don won the Electoral College. There is mounting evidence that POTUS 45 is in office because of a massive Russia-based disinformation strategy in which he was complicit. Even during the campaign, he was openly inviting Putin to interfere on his behalf. We now have a Russian asset in the White House, with the support of a party that has forgotten that they are Americans before they are Republicans. If the aim of Putin is to reduce us to third-world status, his “Muscovite Candidate” is doing a lot toward that end.
Now the backlash from Democratic voters has created a House that is far more representative of all of the United States: younger, more female and more diverse. I’m sure Mr. Wood saw the 2018 mid-term results with the same horror I felt two years before. The thought that the House is now in the hands of people he’s always considered to be inferior must be unsettling for him. When you’ve spent your life living in a world of white male privilege, seeing others attain the equality guaranteed by our Constitution probably feels like persecution. Worse yet, they’re LIBERALS! Mr. Wood likes to toss that word around as if it’s an epithet. The meaning of liberal is you have an open heart and an open mind; you know, like Jesus. Why would you want to be the opposite of that?
I was willing to let all this go unanswered, but a couple of things compelled me to respond. One is that there should be a check on a one-sided expression of political opinions. People who are never challenged on their fallacies tend to assume silence is assent. The other was the use of the words “manifest destiny”. Historically, manifest destiny has been the rationale for most of the cruelest events in human history. Every despotic empire was ruled
by someone who felt it was his “manifest destiny” to conquer the known world. In the U.S., it was used as a rationale to exterminate indigenous peoples and spread our own hegemony over poorer and weaker nations. The most obvious example I can use is the Spanish-American War. The yellow press manufactured an excuse to go to war with Spain and seize from them territories that spread from the Caribbean to the Philippines.
Luke 4: 5-8: “And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto Him, All the power will I give Thee, and the glory of them: for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all will be Thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan.”
Manifest destiny is at odds with everything Christian. As a minister, I would expect Mr. Wood to understand that.
Bill Hesse Bella Vista