I get a lot of “windshield time” in my job, which means I usually drive 1-2 hours between calls. It is during this time I think. For most of my articles here, their first draft is in a speech-to-text app on my phone.
One of the thoughts I mulled over in one of my many 100+ mile trips, was, “What would I do to straighten everything out in this country,” kind of like the 4th book Executive of the Piers Anthony series “Bio of a Space Tyrant.”
I got pretty deep into it, like the abolishment of the 17th Amendment, elimination of most of the bureaucracy, permanently banning all current members of the House and Senate from serving in public office, Freezing the federal budget, etc.
And then I stopped cold.
I have repeatedly said, “The only way to end mass shootings is to change the heart of people doing them.” Well, it hit me, cutting the cancer out of a patient only buys time if you don’t get the whole thing. It will regrow and present the same threat, or even worse.
The problem you see is US, you and I. We did it. We let things slide, content in our lives. The cultural turn was imperceptible at first, very slight. Because no one of any importance raised the alarm, the course change became greater, and the rate we were turning increased. Which leads us to where we are today.
As V in the Movie V for Vendetta said,
“…And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?
Cruelty and injustice, intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who's to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.”
No one man, even with the total and enthusiastic power of our federal government, can change the hearts or the minds of the half of this country who have surrendered most of their cognitive abilities to the group. To inexorably tie their ego and identity to ideals that sound good at first glance, but evaporate like the morning dew under any examination, let alone intense scrutiny. And because these people have incorporated these ideals so deeply into their psyche, to deny what they have been told is the truth is like denying their own existence. Not gonna happen.
This is why Trump failed. This is why anybody in that position would fail. He held that mirror up to their faces and the shame and realization was so great they couldn’t gaze into their own eyes and admit it. So anyone who couldn't face themselves, attacked the one trying to help them.
No governmental power can change a person’s mind or heart. No government should have that kind of power in the first place. And even if they did, it would take just as long to get things right as it took to get here. Pray whoever has the helm then doesn’t oversteer and we go off the deep end in the other direction.
I know I don’t have all of the answers. Hell, I don’t even have most of the questions. I do know this: each of us must at least try to wake (not “woke”) these people up, one at a time.
If we fail, we don’t lose just the United States. We will lose America, which is the ideal that all men are free by default.