Paul Elisha

With the sum of today’s techno-centric capability at unbelievable levels of accomplishment, in this nation, it’s hard to believe that America’s biggest problem is still race prejudice – specifically and sadly, prejudice of Whites against Blacks.  As the Nobel Prize recipient for literature, in 1992, Derek Walcott put it:  “There are no large issues in America, outside of race.”

If we were to compare our nation’s growth to periods, like those of individuals, one might call America’s present period an apt match for – “The Terrible Teens!”  There is a definite national attitude of adolescent willfulness displayed by too many individuals, who seem to be straining against the slightest semblance of restraint of any kind.  One might describe the prevailing temper as one of national antipathy for any form of control.

It’s time we stopped dancing around the obvious institutional source of the U.S. Constitution’s 2nd Amendment assertion of everyone’s right to own and utilize any kind of firearm and for any purpose.  The amendment’s explicit language has been twisted and stretched beyond any semblance of reason and sanity for the perverse purposes of profiteers, predators and promiscuous egocentrics.  For the safety and security of Americans of this and all future generations, it’s time to apply truth and principled logic to the cogent language of actionable law.

  Tom Brokaw, being widely recognized as having coined the title: “The Greatest Generation” and this commentator, a bona fide member since his enlistment in 1942, was glad to see him as a guest on a recent public affairs TV program; although the host did seem, somehow, to be more excited about the fact of this, than why its members were.  It would have been helpful for the current, younger TV audience, for Tom to have had an opportunity to explain the ‘why’ of the generation’s origin.

The ultra-Right Wing Rat-Pack, who masquerade as role models for an America, they say was founded by an elite corps of individualists, to glorify Christian ideals of morality and promote Capitalist ideas for profitable corporate conquest, has revived an old bugaboo to bamboozle the American electorate into acceptance of their unseemly and unjustified efforts to force it into eternal captivity.  They’ve re-raised the specter of ‘Socialism’!  In the face of truly dire threats like air and water pollution, climate change and global warming, plus mounting numbers of dead and wounded victims of the unchecked and irresponsible sale and use of guns and ammunition, these imperturbable profiteers have resurrected the baseless badge of ‘Socialist’ to pin on any who dare to bare their truly self-serving shenanigans.  From the outset of its pretentious inaugural, as the savior of a special way of life for a special class of societal scions, dedicated to preservation of social separation (the elitist upper-crust – from the ordinary ‘others’) corporate potentates have used every ruse to elaborate the pronounced difference between Capitalists as the creators and dispensers of earnings opportunity and eventual wealth… and those who serve them as the eventual receivers of residual benefits, thus justifying the levying of taxes on their receipt.  In defense of this Capitalist canard, corporate captains have employed legions of legal virtuosi, whose sole goal is to rationalize and define this assertion as fact.  Behind this licit disguise, they have devised and practiced the most flagrant forms of corporate welfare imaginable.  Anything else to the contrary, they have branded as “SOCIALIST!”

Having now selected their national leadership and the representatives of their national legislature, Americans face a more important decision; perhaps the most important in the history of their country.  They must make a choice between politics and preservation.  Not the lower case preservation of personal or political consequence but the towering CAPITALS that spell out the preservation of what may well be humanity’s last-best hope for truly representative government: of, for and by its people.  Of even more enduring consequence, is the physical preservation of a healthy, socially and eco

The great Ancient Greek philosopher/poet Dionysius has written:  “Let they speech be better than silence, or be silent.”  There is a new sort of silence now being ordained in this land, where speaking truth to power was once finally given voice --- it was thought, forever.  But those ordaining this silence believe theirs is a much more effective gag; tied more tightly and held in place by fear.  All the more compelling reason, to speak out against it.

This commentator has always believed that age was never a guarantor of complaint or bad manners nor was it an established signal for curmudgeonly behavior.  So it’s especially upsetting to find oneself setting a graphic example of what he has criticized.

If they haven’t discerned it before this, Americans must by now have realized, that the first freedom guaranteed by our Constitution is our most onerous and burdensome one: Religious freedom.  By now, Americans should have ascertained that every right is counter-balanced by a responsibility.  In this case, the right to religious belief and worship literally requires respect for others to enjoy a similar right, and if different, to refrain from any dissent, contrary persuasion or resistance.