"ROTTEN CORE"

 Interesting and extremely telling are the words of politicians. Evidently, they do not heed the advice of Barbra Streisand and Donna Summers - "enough is enough!" On and on they babble, they threaten and on and on they are presiding over the dismantling of the firmament of this country. What is rotten and who is rotten? Read, think, think, evaluate, think again and its truth will be apparent.

This country was founded with an important principle - the right to vote, to have representation. True, it was flawed. Not unusual nor unexpected, particularly if we understand that its human writers wrote in the context of the times and were revolutionary at that. But we progressed, through war and peace, and the right to vote was  expanded until all were recipients of this most basic and essential right.

Unfortunately, there remained a rotten core indeed, who were blind to the correctness of that right and its inclusion of all. Jim Crow laws for decades x'ed out the Black voting right throughout much of the South. The leaders of this movement remained benighted and stubborn, "rotten to the core". 

However, with difficulty and much rancor, the country progressed. Not perfect, far from it, but progress nevertheless. Suddenly though, we ran into roadblocks, so thick and heavy along the highways and byways of this nation, that the infrastructure foundered under the weight. The country became endangered to a point which had never been reached before. Continued existence as America, as united states, was in serious peril.

Never before had we a president who would buddy up with our enemies and confound our allies. Never before had an entire body forgotten their duties owed to the entire electorate, ceded their morals and souls, their minds, independence and votes to a quite visibly damaged man. They cowered before him as a bunny rabbit before a hungry bear. And the rottenness at and of the core grew ever more malodorous.

Our country was in trouble. It remains so as the results of a clear victory were ignored, defamed, and grew more stinking than ever. That which the citizens of this country must trust if we are to remain as "we, the people", was attacked with mistrust and destruction as the goal. The peril from within grew, so obvious, yet so denied by its very perpetrators and even from a class of voters who simply cannot seem to envision and understand that they, too, are in line to drown under this putrid flood of denial of right to vote.

Now, here we are. Our country is at war, literally and figuratively. We had an attempted insurrection, strengthened by and with the suspected collusion of some governmental figures. A rebellion! How could this be? And yet it was. At last, the opposition realized the state of war, the extensive flood of decay, hitched up their proverbial pants and put forth a bill, the For the People Act, meant to dismantle those roadblocks, repair the infrastructure of voting, and dam up the nasty flood that has imperiled our nation.

Will we be successful? Will we rescue our country? JFK pulled a man to safety using his teeth and the strength of his weary arms. He inspired the remnants of his crew to live. Do we have any remaining echoes through time that will inspire us to grip, with teeth, arms, bodies and souls, to grip the sinking ropes of our nation and perform a beautiful rescue? I hope so. I pray so. Yet the doubt is there, gnawing away, as we deal with a McConnell who states that the Act has a "rotten core" and yet another 'leader' of the GOP states it is a "piece of legislation that needs to die, and die quickly."

Where do we go from here, folks? Are we going to go down for the count, go under for the third time? Suffocate under our own negligence, apathy, ignorance, greed, quest for power? Choose your own cause, but the results are clear. Want to keep this country a democracy, flawed yet the best government around? Well, then we all know what must be done. Let us make haste and get to it.