Covid and California: a Picture of our Future?

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/17/21

            A serious but comparatively brief struggle with Covid, thanks to a great doctor and a nurse, was for me just as mental as it was physical. The physical struggle wasn’t easy. Chills, nausea, constant twitching pain and perspiring throughout the night never are.

Even so, it wasn’t the physical side of the struggle that made me toss and turn at night. Medicine eventually assuaged that. Nor was it worry. It was the steady pondering of what Covid, or the handling thereof, is doing to us. The hectoring and condescension from medical experts has been bad enough but, more importantly, political leaders have injected us with fear, violated our constitutional freedoms, and weakened the rugged American spirit of which the typical 20-year-old knows so little. It wasn’t this way with polio.

My earliest knowledge of the children killer came from my parents, the radio, and daily newspapers. The Truman administration addressed polio though “shelter in place” was unheard of. Quarantining was urged and some shutdowns existed, but consult any studies of polio from 1949 to 1952 (its peak year) and you’ll find that the terrifying disease was managed primarily through a private system of health professionals and parental responsibility. Caution was advised by Truman himself, but especially by local medical leaders everywhere. Not everything was run from D.C. back then.

In 1950 when a younger brother of mine contracted diphtheria, my family was quarantined by the county health department. For neither diphtheria nor polio, however, were widespread lockdowns required. A cloud of concern hung over the nation, but the closing down of the economy, the destruction of livelihoods, and restraints on public worship were also unheard of.

With Covid, political leaders have essentially followed a society-wide plan of lockdowns.  During the 4-year polio epidemic individual liberty, free enterprise, and livelihoods survived. This cannot be said of our management of Covid. Dashed is still the word for many Americans’ lives. Our solution has been unabashed socialism. Before handing out stimulus checks, it would have been wise to consider the bad things that a stimulus can stimulate. By many accounts hospitals are having a banner year, thanks to the CARES Act.

 Covid has been tragic, but neither wellness nor renewed faith in government will ever flow from unilateral decrees, restriction of personal movement, or blatant attacks on freedom of worship. I fear a changed America and a new age of tyranny far more than I fear disease, death, or dying.

A changed America – one given to fear and acquiescence – is dawning primarily because we have listened only to celebrity medical experts (repeatedly) while ignoring the 50,000 medical doctors and researchers who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. Penned in October of 2020 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts this declaration advised strategy far less suppressive than that of the celebrity experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. It was co-authored by medical scientists and epidemiologists from Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard, not exactly conspiratorial fringe institutions. If you’ve never heard of the Declaration, it could be because CNN, MSNBC, and the liberal national newspapers cancelled it, only one example of suppressed news these days.

As with Covid and medicine, so with immigration and California. Both have been used as political tools. From the end of WWII to 1992 Californians voted for only one Democratic president. In 1980 California produced a very conservative president, Ronald Reagan. Despite his conservatism Reagan ignited, surely unwittingly, California’s movement from a conservative to a liberal state. By signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, Reagan afforded amnesty and a path to citizenship to 3 million illegals. Who’da thunk that RR himself just two years later would sign  another law requiring hospitals to give free care regardless of immigration status?

Of course illegals came and California changed just as, to the joy of Democrats, the nation is changing now. Idyllic California is no more. According to National Review magazine an exodus is occurring because “California is a mess economically, socially, educationally, and culturally.” Should we not ask why? The answer is governance and the evil aims and methods behind it. Just as the answer for Covid has been centralism and control, so has the governance of California, for two decades now.

My nights of troubled pondering centered not on our collective pain and suffering from Covid but on the acquiescence of American citizens to things most un-American: tyrannical governors, arbitrary rules and mandates, and the scary, increasing, mistaken belief that Big Brother knows best.

Sickness is far easier to overcome than tyranny, and tyranny is what we seem to be falling for. The good news is that within two years voters just might demand a great correction. Let us so pray. What we call America is at stake.

 

Roger Hines

4/15/21

 

 

 

                                                             Easter Revisited

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 4/3/21

No, the word Easter, though mentioned in the New Testament, is not really a Christian term. Like the Christmas tree, Easter eggs are of no Christian origin or significance. The ancient Druids of the British Isles worshiped trees, a practice that was a far cry from what the babe in the Bethlehem manger would eventually teach. Even so many Christians adorn trees at Christmas and marvel at their beauty.

 Tales of the origins of the word Easter are numerous though most lexicographers follow the account of the Anglo-Saxons whose deity, Eastre, was the goddess of spring and fertility. Whether our word Easter comes from the Anglo-Saxon “Eastre” or the Greek work “Pascha” (meaning Passover) is still debated. But no reason for despair. Although Christianity has chiefly been cradled and given to the world by Europe and North America, those two continents have also never contested the pagan names of the days of the week. For just a few examples, Sunday and Monday were named for the sun and the moon; Tuesday for the one-handed god Tiu; Wednesday for Woden; Thursday for the god of war Thor; and Friday for the pagan goddess Fria. Even Saturday has its origins in the mythological god Saturn and the licenscious festival, Saturnalia, that honored him. No respectable Christian, Jew, or Muslim would have been found at a Saturnalia festival. 

Suffice it to say that our words, customs, and even the names of celebrations we hold dear are often mixed with monotheistic, polytheistic, and pagan terms and narratives. Such is the nature of language. Life is stubborn, even the life of words. Life wants to continue, hence the life of pagan words that have spilled over into various religions, sometimes causing confusion or leading people to question their faith.

That confusion or questioning need not be fatal. When it comes to the Christian celebration of Easter, let us just say that Easter morphed its way into Christianity and does not constitute a grafting. Think of Santa Claus. Most Westerners love the old guy but many Christians do regret that because of the way we extol him, Santa has taken a great deal attention off of the One whose birth is being celebrated.

Easter is quite different from Christmas, though Biblically they both center on miracles. One miracle was that a virgin bore a child; the other miracle regarded what happened to this child and why.

The great faith that came from this child is today the world’s largest religion with over 2 billion adherents. Those 2 billion are divided into Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox which obviously leads to the conclusion that Christians do a lot of disagreeing with each other. Most of that disagreeing is not over essentials of the faith. Those essentials all regard the person of Christ. They are His virgin birth, sinless life, atoning death, and literal resurrection.

All of my life I’ve heard that whenever you get two Baptists together, you’ll have three opinions. How not, what with American Baptists, National Baptists, Southern Baptists, Regular Baptists, and several others? Consider United Methodists, Wesleyan Methodists, etc. Lutherans are divided into almost as many groups as Baptists. The same is true of Pentecostals.  Even the Orthodox have their divisions as well. Not so the Catholics who are immensely hierarchical.

What does unite Christians is the deeply consoling fact of Jesus’ resurrection. An Apostle and a converted journalist have best argued the truth of the resurrection event. The Apostle put it this way: “If Christ be not raised then is our preaching in vain and our faith is also vain and you are yet in your sins.”

The journalist put it this way, referring to the Apostle: “Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie. Apart from the resurrection there’s no good reason why skeptics such as Paul would have been converted and died for their faith.”

The Apostle Paul had been a terrorist who oversaw the persecution and murder of Christians. The journalist was the Yale-educated Chicago Tribune legal editor and atheist Lee Strobel. Strobel was sent to Kentucky to learn about those “hillbillies” who were arguing that creationism should be taught in their kids’ school. Instead of finding crazy, close-minded Christians, Strobel found kind Christian people who were even willing to hear him out when he ask for time to give his views. Both the “hillbillies” and the joyful spirit of his Christian wife led Strobel to study Scripture and denounce his atheism, believe in Christ, and write several books on Christian faith.

It was his deep study of the resurrection that brought him conclusively to Christian faith. Strobel says, “The resurrection truly changes everything.”

Easter, then, cries out that old Death is not the end. Give Paul or the many books of Strobel a reading.

 

Roger Hines

3/31/21

           

 

                    We Hold These Truths … to be Offensive

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3/20/21

            Seventeen centuries before Jefferson asserted in The Declaration that certain truths were self-evident, Cicero remarked, “If truth were self-evident, there would be no need for eloquence.”

            Nor for debate nor even for courts of law, one might add. But we understand what Jefferson meant. You won’t find me quibbling too much with either one of these intellectual giants, but truth often has to be searched out, hammered out, and explained. Despite my admiration for Jefferson, I’m with Cicero.

            Today in America truth is on the scaffold. It always is, but dear Lord, how many more biological and sociological truths are about to be denied by the political/cultural left? I started to use the word “discarded,” but it’s impossible to discard truth. It can be scoffed at or ignored, but not discarded, no matter how much we dislike it. Truth stands, though often alone.

            One of America’s greatest poets, James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), wrote. “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide / In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side.” But what can a dead, white poet offer us?  Although Lowell was addressing the evil of slavery when he penned those words, he is just too yesterday for today’s youth and for the publishers of their literature books. Lowell is essentially canceled.

            I rue that fact because every single day we learn that yet another truth is being canceled, replaced with such lies as: we are not just male or female; spanking injures a child’s psyche; capitalism is inherently racist; life doesn’t begin at conception; all whites are privileged.

            How intellectually vacuous and soft we have become. How tenderly we treat our children, thus retarding their movement into responsible adulthood. In high school, at age 17, I was a substitute school bus driver. Two other senior boys were full time school bus drivers. Not even in rural areas would that happen today. Why not? Because of the cultural softening of everything from parenting to schooling to policing. Because of the mystique we’ve built around teenagers.

In the words of feminist writer Christina Sommers, “Our helping culture is eroding self-confidence.” Yes, we lavish children with praise and go gentle with correction. We send grief brigades to our schools in the wake of the smallest tragedy. We’ve replaced “Know thyself” with “Esteem thyself.”   Sommers, parting company with her feminist sisters, rejects “the triumph of the therapeutic.”

            Oh, for a modern Martin Luther to nail truth to the cathedral door of our modern culture. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal is now requiring its reporters to refrain from using the words, “illegal immigrants,” words that Senator Schumer, President Obama, and Vice President Biden were using barely a decade ago.  But no more. Now eschewing truth, they have succumbed to a lie. Soon shoplifters will be called “non-buyers.” If truth offends it must be reworded.

Consider the term “white privilege” and the following name pairs, Whites on the left and Blacks on the right: Tom Brady/Lebron James; Taylor Swift/Beyonce; Peter Trottier/Ben Carson; William Faulkner/James Baldwin. We could go on and on in all fields of work, pairing successful Whites with successful Blacks. My good doctor, Peter Trottier, is not successful because he is White and Ben Carson is not successful because he is Black. Both men are successful because they dreamed, then hit the road, and achieved their dream. Neither viewed himself as a victim.

            The American dream puts the lie to white privilege. How privileged were Lincoln and Truman, or Obama and Clinton for that matter? All four of these originally non-rich Americans chased their dream and caught it. Sadly and ironically Obama and Clinton have since taken the side of those who cry white privilege, racism, and victimhood. Both of them know better.

            In the recent past “offensive” was a word employed for scatological humor, vulgarity, and profanity. Today it’s used to describe Dr. Seuss. Dear God. “Victim” in the recent past referred to the down and out. Today it’s used to describe Meghan and Harry. Some claim politics and politicians are the incubator of all such cry-babying. I say it’s parents and the university.

            C.S. Lewis wrote, “We make men without chests and expect from them virtue.” Lewis understood truth.

            And so did James Russell Lowell. He ended his beloved poem with, “Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the Truth alone is strong / Though her portion be the scaffold and upon the throne be wrong / Yet that scaffold sways the future and behind the dim unknown / Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.”

            For such we best pray, especially when cultural relativism is the prevailing belief.           

 

Roger Hines

March17, 2021

              

             

           

 

        Black History Month Matters and Should not be Sullied

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 3-9-21

            During the month of February this newspaper rightly celebrated Black History Month. In the words of the editor, “To recognize Black History Month, the MDJ asked 20 community leaders how they will celebrate and what BHM means to them.” The paper went on to draw testimony day by day from Black leaders in Marietta and Cobb County.

            Reading these testimonies was uplifting. Permit me to describe two growth experiences which caused me to revel in them.

            I was ten. I always beat my younger brother and older sisters to the graveled road to await the school bus. One particular morning appeared to be a normal school day. For instance, looking west toward Forest, Mississippi I observed once again the ten or so Black teenagers and small children walking the two miles from the edge of town to their school which was a shack just beyond our house. The shack, badly needing paint and repair, was a mysterious place. I peeped into its windows on many a Saturday to find it almost bare of furniture and supplies.

            But this spring morning wasn’t normal. Fronting the group of Black students was a new child who had never been with them. Walking far ahead of the group, he appeared to be my age. My siblings and I never spoke to these young people nor they to us. Instead they and we looked down as they passed by. But this morning when the new child reached our mailbox, with a bright smile on his face he chirped, “Ya’ll rich, ain’tcha! Ya’ll got cows!”

            “Nuh uh,” I replied. “Those are Mr. McMurphy’s.” Before we could continue talking, all of the others rushed forth and one of the teenage girls pushed the excited lad forward. Truth is they and we were not supposed to talk to each other. Believe me.

            Because of the joyful innocence on my potential friend’s face and its deep contrast to that of his friends, I began to wonder why I rode a bus to a good school in town while he walked to a shack out in the country.

            Twelve years later my career path and an internal convicting spirit had led me to George Washington Carver Jr. High School. A white man surrounded by all Black co-workers, the finest of teachers, I wallowed in their excellence and their dedication to improving the lives of their charges. Science teacher Ernestine Ross, Diana Ross’ first cousin, kept me up-to-date on the emerging Supremes during our common planning period. Little Emmett Jones, one of my seventh graders, looked exactly like the child who had stopped to talk to me twelve years before. At Carver my awareness of injustice grew.

            Recently Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Harold Melton, announced that he was retiring. This news catapulted my mind to Melton’s 10^th grade year when he was a student of mine at Wheeler High School. Intentionality was writ large on Melton’s face. One of only a very few Black students in the school at the time, Melton was characterized by teachers as “a prince of a guy.” A reunion with Melton a few years ago when he spoke at a Chattahoochee Tech graduation was a great thrill.

            A child my age whose name I never knew, a splendid collection of Black educators who exhibited personal and professional excellence and a former student showed me that Black citizens who comprise hardly 13% of the nation deserve to be recognized and celebrated, particularly those who have contributed so much.

            Sadly though, we sully race relations and halt progress when we fall for divisive expressions such as “systemic racism” and “the bigotry of Whiteness.” Sulliers like Al Sharpton have lots of explaining to do, given the success and good will modeled by Blacks like Clarence Thomas, Alveda King, Ben Carson, Herman Cain, Candace Owens, and Harold Melton.  Materially, Sharpton isn’t doing too badly himself.       

School systems, corporations (listening, Coca Cola?), and universities are requiring workshops and training on “overcoming whiteness,” and “how to be less white.” Such preachy wrongheadedness divides people. The cure for liberal guilt is for liberals to take action themselves, instead of foisting indoctrination workshops on those of us who have fought injustice all of our lives, but just happen to be conservative or white.

            One wonders how a CEO, a school system superintendent, or a university president got to where they are if they could fall for reverse bigotry. It’s past time to let go of shaming. Let’s all just determine to meet people of a different race and make friends. It’s always time to honor, in a dignified way as this newspaper has done, our Black fellow citizens. Finger pointing and guilt-laden videos we can do without. 

 

Roger Hines

3/3/21 

 

             

 

                          It Didn’t Have to Come to This

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 2/20/21

            Oh, the craziness that abounds. Conservatives just aren’t good at protesting and hollering about it. For one thing, they’re at work. They’re not college kids or liberals with time on their hands. Consequently the loudmouths are winning. Conservatives are learning to speak up, however. They’ve just about had enough.

            Readers might recall that many months ago I reported on a visit I made to a Target store. I’ll review just a few details.

            The visit was made to find out if I (a male) could use their ladies’ restroom.  I was naïve to think their answer would be no. I had read that Target was leading the way in the battle for open bathrooms but doubted it was true. No corporation particularly in the South would ever go that far with “equity” (the new word of choice), diversity, openness, transgenderism, gender-denial and all the other lofty goals that progressives wear on their sleeves and that deplorables like me are supposedly so ignorant of.

            Was I wrong! Entering the store I approached three ladies who looked authoritative standing in front of the cashier lines. I asked if I were allowed to use the ladies’ restroom. Turning to me, the youngest of the trio said, “Sir, you may use the restroom you identify with.”

            “What do you mean by identify with? “ I asked.

            “I mean that if you identify with a particular restroom you may enter it.” (In 10^th grade English that’s called being redundant.)

            But the bathroom issue is history, some argue. There are more serious issues. That’s true unless you have daughters and granddaughters and understand how sick and evil people can be.

             Let’s put the issue in a context that perhaps our new president and his supporters can buy into. While their holy trinity is still abortion, race, and socialism – or is it grievance, victimhood, and rage? – they also like to chant, “Follow the science,” so let’s follow along but ask some questions.

            Think hard. How many genders are there? Progressives (what a misnomer for those who think rebellion against nature is progress) are now saying there are three: males, females, and non-binary. Could there be four? How many does it take to produce a baby? Since when did “identifying with” anything change biology? Wherever he lies buried, Aristotle, the father of scientific reasoning, is either scoffing or shaking his head in disbelief. No, this issue is not dead.  If you think it is, look at the long list of President Biden’s executive orders. You’ll see that one of those orders does not follow science but literally rejects biological science. It attempts to re-set human sexuality.  It would deserve a loud hoot if its consequences were not so serious, namely confused children and teens.

            Let’s follow the science with pregnancy as well. Let’s look at the pictures of weeks-old unborn babies, long dismissed by radical feminists and now by a president, as “tissue” that’s “not viable.” Question: how “viable” is a happy, healthy, three-month-old baby that was allowed birth? Answer: He or she is no more “viable” and no less dependent than the baby that was aborted. If Americans had truly followed science and accepted what sonograms showed us, perhaps we would not have aborted over 62 million unborn babies since that fateful year, 1974.

            How did it come to this? How did we arrive at the sexual chaos that pervades the culture? However it happened, there’s hope.  As recently as 2019 Dr. Paul McHugh, psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University declared that sex changes are biologically impossible. In Cornwall, England Dr. Tammie Downs has an increasing following of other doctors who are boldly moving toward her pro-life position.

            There’s more hope. Of the 17 women elected to Congress in 2020, 16 of them are pro-life conservative Republicans who also reject transgender politics. The female governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, is strongly pro-life and anti-same sex marriage. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ run for Arkansas governor should also encourage conservatives.

            I had rather be canceled by a firing squad than to yield to the craziness of “de-programming,” “transformational re-set,” and all of the other anti-intellectualism of the left. Some things are more precious than life and one of them is freedom of speech and conscience.

            “Follow the science” is a bumper sticker chant totally unheeded by those who chant it. It leads to the shoddy science of Planned Parenthood and to the total anti-reality of the transgender movement.

After all, the word science (from Latin, scio, meaning “I know”) actually means knowledge. And the greatest of scientists, or knowers, have always disagreed with each other. Suffice it to say that “science” devoid of common sense and reality is suspect. We best not follow it.

 

Roger Hines

February 15, 2021

           

 

 

                           This is No Time for Unity

               Published in Marietta (GA) Marietta Daily                       Journal,2/6/21  

            The dumbing down of words is both misleading and dangerous. Consult any reputable dictionary (a watered down collegiate dictionary won’t do) and you’ll find that insurrection has a very serious definition. It is much more serious and far-reaching than a bunch of thugs dressed in stupid costumes, breaking into a government building and bashing everything in sight.

             The Oxford English Dictionary, still the principal historical dictionary of the English language, reads “an organized attempt to seize a government and take control of a nation; a violent, organized revolt against a sitting government.”

            Yeah, the January 6^th caper in Washington, D.C. was exquisitely organized and executed, wasn’t it. One could tell that like Oliver Cromwell and George Washington the rioters were people of high purpose, discipline, and reasoned intent. Did everybody see on television the well stationed brigades out away from the Capitol awaiting signals from their leader? Did anybody see anything other than bad boys and girls acting up stupidly and illegally? Neither did I.

            No, this was no Cromwellian seizure of the British throne, and no legitimately aroused colonists telling the British what they could do with their tea. This caper was goons who, as it turned out, supplied Democrats and their fawning media with a gleeful last jab at Donald Trump.

            Changing the definitions of words is a political art. Tolerance is a word that is changing also. How ironic that those who have typically preached tolerance have become absolutely intolerant calling for “de-programming,” suppression of free speech, and for silencing those who disagree. Since the January 6^th  “insurrection,” members of Congress and the media have called for the examining of emails of any National Guard members who might have engaged in “hate speech,” another un-American concoction. Peter, Paul, and Mary probably don’t recognize today’s political left, so different is today’s left from their long ago 1960s ancestors.

            Conservatives had better wake up. Liberals are not what they used to be. In decades past liberalism actually practiced liberality. Liberals broke the back of slavery. They brought attention to the plight of the poor. If their tactics were wrongheaded or bore error, their hearts were right. But that was then and this is now.

            The most recent egregious change in liberal thought and the most serious definition change in the liberal lexicon is that of the word unity. President Biden has called several times for unity, even as he takes snipes at his predecessor. Senators and other political and business leaders have called for unity. But unity centered on what?

            When progressives speak of unity they are actually thinking and in effect saying, “Think as I think.” Unity  in the eyes of the nation’s political left means you must accept their argument of systemic racism even if you can name hundreds of well known and not so well known Blacks who have succeeded and who reject the progressive argument that America is a racist nation.

            Unity no longer means “Come, let us reason together.” It means come and embrace my ideology or you are a cad. It means you must approve of open borders, of Big Tech’s censorship of conservative commentary, of abortion, and of undeclared wars that have drained our treasury for half a century. And if you won’t, you are not willing to come together to heal the nation’s wounds. And you’re probably from rural America and uneducated.

            The government, corporations, and public schools can help you, though, if you can’t accept their new definition of unity. To cure you of your bias there are videos you can (and in many cases must) watch, videos akin to the one by Magic Johnson which I refused to watch since I didn’t think he was exactly qualified to talk to teens about sexuality.   

            Unity means getting used to transgender talk with its new pronouns such as now required at several universities, all because not everybody likes their gender and should be respected if they view themselves as something other than what they are. It means opposing Donald Trump’s alleged enticement to riot at the Capitol on January 6^th while dismissing Chuck Schumer’s threats (search them out) to Judges Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the steps of the Supreme Court.

            You get the drift. But calling a cabbage a king doesn’t make it so. Instead of unity, our times now call for fighting for what we believe. The problem is Americans have always done our “fighting” in our deliberative halls with debate. That debate is what Democrats want to stop and that’s why they want new voters from Central America, two senators from D.C., popular elections for president, and a packed Supreme Court.

 That kind of unity will kill America and it must be opposed and stopped.

 

Roger Hines

2/4/21

 

             

 

                                                          Elitism’s Failures

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 1/16/21

             Today our national capital is armed to the gills. Cops and troops are rightly everywhere, some even sleeping on the floor of the Capitol building. Individual states are also shoring up security for next week’s inauguration.

            As Democrats and their media outlets would cast it, more peasants are headed toward the palace with their pitchforks. You know. The unwashed, uneducated, cultish conservative thugs, those who, according to the elitist CNN “contributor” Eugene Robinson, “need to be re-programmed.” Robinson wasn’t referring only to the thugs who stormed the Capitol, however. He made it clear he was referring to all of the supporters of Donald Trump.

            How sad, how despicable, that the lengths to which the federal government has gone to protect itself were not extended to the business owners, cops, and other non-elites in Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis. Why no rage when Black Lives Matter and Antifa filled the streets and battled with police for three solid months? The answer is obvious and two-fold.

             First, simply because the little people whose shops were burned down by the radicals during “the summer of love” were not elitists but just normal folks. Neither were their places of work hallowed, columned structures of marble. Second, because Democrat mayors and governors not only turned aside from the summer violence but also defended the destructive “protestors” as well.

            Said elitist Kamala Harris, “The protestors are not going to let up and they shouldn’t let up.” This, while cars were being smashed, police stations were being burned, and even government buildings were being destroyed. Elitist-in-Chief Nancy Pelosi, when asked about the rioters, appeared to be at a loss for words then muttered, “People will do what they do.” Ponder the double standard for violence. Ponder who incited the summer violence, excusing it with the phrase, “justifiable frustration.”

            Compare these comments to the words of President Trump just before the Capitol storming took place, words I have read and watched three times. I challenge any reader to quote me a single sentence from the president’s speech that incited anyone to riot. Shortly after the storming of the Capitol, another elitist, Senator Mitt Romney, used a word that has since been seized and repeated by anti-Trumpers.

            “Embarrassing,” moaned the Senator. What, then, is the word for the action perpetrated upon the little people of the cities named above? I doubt that the ordinary citizens whose livelihoods were lost, whose lives were endangered and put on hold ever thought about embarrassment. They were thinking about food, housing, mortgages, their immediate future, and kids, things rich man Romney has never had to worry about.

            As for the dumbing down of the word “insurrection,” a word Democrats need to look up, the taking over of a section of a city and claiming sovereignty over it is far more seditious than trashing the House Speaker’s office, engaging in antics, and making fun of her. True insurrectionists don’t waste time with foolishness. Ne’er-do-wells do. And every political party has its share of ne’er-do-wells.

            Yes, the Capitol, the seat of our government, is hallowed and sacrosanct. But so is the common man’s “castle” and workbench. Even the wealthy FDR made clear his sincere belief in “the sanctity of the commoner.” That’s why he was considered a traitor to his class. Regard for the common folks far away from our storied capital city was what distinguished us from Europe in the first place. It was the far away folks whom Donald Trump aroused, the huge middle class who had been ignored by elitist, globalist Democrats and Republicans alike. The goons of January 6^th don’t represent this vast portion of America’s citizens. To be precise, the beautiful Capitol they trashed is but a symbol of what is hallowed and sacrosanct, namely our freedom.

            For four years uppity elitists in both parties have sullied every word President Trump has uttered. With overwrought language they have attacked his family, questioned his sanity, belittled his intelligence, rejected his election and impeached him twice. It is they who incited the January 6^th goons.

            Anyone who thinks Trump’s base will fall apart hasn’t followed politics and doesn’t understand the power of numbers. 74,000,000 Trump supporters are not going to evaporate. The tepid Republicans who bolted will fade. If they are truly conservatives they will regret their lack of discernment within six months. It has escaped them that because of Trump the middle class is doing better, borders are now meaningful, Blacks are exiting the Democrat party, Arabs and Jews are talking, and “America First” is gloriously infectious.

            Trumpism is not dead because populism is very much alive. To maintain their power, Democrats and their elitist Republican sympathizers might need to look up populism since it’s coming toward them. The Biden agenda will strengthen it.

 

Roger Hines

1/14/21