25 January 2025
“You are trying to find a happy ending where there cannot be one.”
I heard those words in my mind this morning. I reckon they came from my conscience, but also from the voice of experience.
The problem, or challenge, that I am experiencing with official Presidential actions overturning previous official Presidential actions — from the White House — is that I wasn’t even aware of many of the previous actions to be rescinded.
The first instance is the 21 January 2025 Executive Order rescinding the 1965 Executive Order 11246 by President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) to mandate Affirmative Action for contractors in America. Granted, I was a wee child at the time, but I wonder how many U.S. Congress-people knew about this fiat — the first of many many more — that wouldn’t have been legislatively passed by Congress.
Because all during my adult lifetime, I’d believed that Affirmative Action was promulgated by an Act of Congress, signed into law.
The three branches of the federal government — Executive, Legislative, and the Judiciary — have undergone some horrific identity crises during the past century. Legislating from the bench; judicial actions from the Executive; and Executive Orders that squelch the other two branches, or, at the very minimum, severely hack at their Constitutional powers.
One need not be a Constitutional scholar to see the hellacious governmental stew that was once known as Checks and Balances.
The concept of First Principles of a Constitutional Republic had historically been a muscular exercise in democracy among the Regions of America. Each region jockeyed, not so much for dominance as for relevance, on the federal level. Competition among the regions built a strong, vibrant and bold America. Once those regions became weakened through the policies and actions of America Last, those First Principles got deep-sixed. They aren’t even known by most federally elected office-holders.
This vile phase in the USA began in the 1960s, and went into hyper-drive after the end of the Cold War. The End is Near — for the selling-out of this nation. Ergo, the greenhorns and dinosaurs of the two major political parties in the USA have careened into crisis-mode that completely leaves out the Citizenry.
“Get it while you can” is the hue-and-cry for politicians who parasitically feed off of money that’s not theirs.
We country bumpkins are out here, living our lives, determined to do more than merely stay alive, especially here in California.
The Uniparty — that feeding trough of tax dollars that’s supposed to be allocated for Emergencies, National Security, Foreign Aid, and Infrastructure (wherein nothing gets built or structured) — had a despicably long run for more than a quarter of century.
The worn has turned.
The Uniparty is now that humongous swath of citizens who are no longer disengaged from participating in their own governance. They no longer Vote for the D, be it a Dead Dog, Dumb Despot, Dingbat Toady, or Dirt Devil.
It’s always interesting, and intriguing, to witness history-in-the-making. We The People have been long overdue for a real revolution.
Thomas Jefferson would be proud of We the Patriots in the agrarian society he so revered. I’m much more a Hamiltonian American. It is tragically sad that the industrial might of the USA got chucked overboard, to the other side of the world, at the expense of those once-great cities.
Ironically, even though I’m a Hamiltonian American, and was born in the city that he founded, I’m not a city person. I nonetheless feel a sense of loss over the fates foisted on the citadins during the past sixty years.
Urban renewal of the 21st century will be a long, laborious, and plaintive process. That mission is underway, but if you’re a goal-oriented, bottom-line person like myself, the patience of a saint might not be enough.
“You are trying to find a happy ending where there cannot be one.”