I once thought that things in the US had reached an absolute low. That was back in the days of the Nixon administration and all the scandals connected to it. I had no idea how far downhill the Democratic Party could slide. My personal opinion was that Barak Obama was a poor president and his administration was marked by failures in both the foreign policy and domestic economic policy arenas. With what I see now, his presidency was angelic compared to what is going on the democratic party today. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has a very different view of what I thought American Democracy was all about. It was bad enough when she led the attempt to impeach President Trump. That effort was marked by innuendo and outright lies both by her and by Adam Schiff. It seems that nobody checks facts anymore before opening their mouth in public.
My vision of America was always of a place where everyone sought to achieve equal opportunity to improve their lives. Taking to the streets to loot nearby businesses might be construed as a crime of opportunity, but it is certainly a crime and has little to do with equal justice under the law. Similarly, the removal of pictures of individuals or statues of them because some group today does not agree with something those people did during their lifetime is something I cannot support. My own great grandfather, and his 4 brothers, all served in the Confederate Army. none of them were slave owners. It is very likely that freed slaves were an important part of the clientele at their father’s clothing store in Charleston, SC. The commanders of the armies they served in have been revered for their military abilities, not their views on slavery. For many Southerners of that era the war was about unjust interference in their lives, and not only about slavery.
Then there is the problem about politically correct police work. American police are banned from racial profiling in their work. But it is still a fact that there are communities in America where the incidence of crime is higher than in others, and that many of such communities are composed primarily of certain minority groups. George Floyd had an extensive criminal record, mostly for relatively minor offenses, and he did physically attempt to resist being placed in a police vehicle. That does not excuse the arresting officer for his use of excessive force that resulted in the death of his prisoner.
There was a time when most politicians at least seemed to try to maintain a modicum of sense and restraint. But at that time the news media also tried to keep a balanced and factually accurate aspect to their reporting. Too many of the leading news channels today appear to be influenced more by how big an audience can they get and try to achieve that by ignoring facts, or common sense, or both.
Mending the rifts in society requires much more empathy and understanding, and much less of the “go with the flow of ‘popular’ sentiments”. Abraham Lincoln hemmed and hawed and procrastinated before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. He was more concerned about bringing the Southern States back into the fold than in punishing them. We need to elect more people to serve in various governmental positions that have that kind of approach.
Wetherhorn 