It has been some time since I wrote, but recent events have been so horrific that I cannot let them pass me by without comment, so to do so would put me in the same light as some of our fearful leaders who dare not do so themselves in any substantial way.
Here in America we think we are used to being abused; our schools ban religious groups or self led prayer or any exercise of our constitutional right to the freedom to practice religion. In their cowardice, government officials in some cases even ban the age-old patriotic phrase “God Bless America.”
When we see this we ask ourselves or our neighbors: “What is the world coming to when you can’t even say “God Bless America?” We argue the merits and count ourselves oppressed and offended and look for some quiet way to respond, perhaps by sending an email to our congressman or calling in to some local talking head on the radio… In our own way we think ourselves brave in stepping out of our comfort zone to say a word or two and become another voice in a growing chorus and we feel that we have done everything that we can conceivably do about the problem.
And we relax, and get back into our sofa chair; watch a college ballgame, or catch a glimpse of the NBA to remind us why we haven’t watched it in ages…
While we don’t feel satisfied with our piece of the world, we begin to let the shame of the prisoner exchange, Obamacare, Bengazi and numerous other stains upon America’s integrity fade into memory a bit. The sting fades, and the problems seem a bit further away… Speaker Boehner even seems a little less incompetent and almost palatable lately; so we can sit back and let the haze of ignorance wash over us and allow ourselves to ease into a soft malaise… Life; if not actually good, can be seen as being not so bad with a few beers and a little squinting, or we have convinced ourselves at that point.
But then we turn on the news. Innocent enough, we’ve sunk into the haze deep enough that the news of the day shouldn’t move us much in either direction, so we listen to the traffic reports and the society drivel about whose going to rehab or jail this week…
And we fade a bit further down…
And then, as we watch with half-interest at the daily news; it hits us: A long line of orange-clad jumpsuits… The haze drops away immediately and we suddenly wake up; a sickening feeling growing at the pit of the stomach. We wait for the channel to switch to something else but they don’t… The line grows and you subconsciously begin to count 5-10-15… Holy crap! The channel freezes the shot as they begin telling the tale you already know: Death is coming for those people. A death so ignominious and cruel in its certainty.
We turn to the web, where we know we will get more information than a few talking heads, but then it stares us in the face again: The full video… Do we watch? Should we watch? The gorge rises slightly as stomach tightens in anticipation of the dread and horror of it. The sheer evil presence of the thought of it. We know that down that road lies the bare truth of the most heinously evil deeds a man can contrive against another.
As I struggle with that thought; I think of two men whom I grew to trust and admire: One of them my uncle Bill who, having lived through both Korea and Vietnam once told me never to seek to look into the face of death. He told me that he had witnessed many men treat death as a game, to be taunted and joked about, but he remarked also that those he knew who had done so had more often than not suffered the worst trauma after the wars ended.
“Respect death at all times, and honor the dead as you would your own.” My uncle once said. I served with another man, (not during any conflict mind you) who I’ll leave nameless; who had served in the Gulf, and on quiet thoughtful nights he would turn to thoughts of the things he had seen there and I could see in his eyes on those nights either in the field or at the barracks that it burned inside him and ate at his soul. He had seen death, dealt death, still counted the names of his fallen; the caustic nature of it always on his mind. He did not flinch from it, but bore the scars on his mind; scars that took decades to scar over and heal. He would tell me that all of us should look into the face of evil and know our enemy for what it truly was; for to “Know the true depths of the depravity of our enemy is to know how unwavering our fight to kill him must also be.”
To this day I struggle between those two approaches… In my mind’s eye I know what this death looks like, I’ve seen one before, so the depth of it’s evil is not lost on me, but how many truly know what evil is? How many will never know the horror and by not knowing it, become complacent and treat evil as a nuisance instead of the dire peril it truly is?
I struggled with this, and that seemed to be enough to deal with at the time, but then I saw it…
The cage of children in orange jump suits…
Many years ago a stomach surgery left me unable to throw up; it often caused my illnesses to last a bit longer than normal, but for 20 years nothing could keep me from holding everything down, but the sight of children waiting in a cage to be burnt alive… I’m not ashamed to say that bile blew through like a locomotive on first seeing that image. THAT is the face of our enemy. Evil beyond measure so vile that even children are toys in their game of death and torture.
Gone is the haze: Comfort and malaise forgotten; we struggle with the decision: To turn our heads means to ignore the vile truths of our world today. To face it, or not to face it: That is the true question of our day. Dare you look into the eyes of evil and see how dark is their depravity? Is it indeed nobler in the mind to look away from the worst depravity of our age, or do we look on into the sea of evil and brave the endless waves of disgust and cruelty to glare at the true face of evil and know in our hearts what task is truly ahead of us? Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? So much easier simply to sleep it off and ignore it; perchance to dream… But that would be death’s quiet sleep, because while we dream it away as if it never happened and go about our day as if it didn’t matter; it will come for us and turn that dream to dust and death. Who will wake you then?
The horrific nature of our enemy goes beyond our memory, but this is not new for everyone… The Jews know this terror all too well. Though it wears a darker face and has changed SS emblems for black cloth flags, it looks familiar enough to them.
We didn’t listen to them then until it was too late for millions of innocent people… And we sit on our hands again ignoring it as if this is some new thing that must be mulled over and examined…
We begin to look for an answer, any answer. We must be doing something, right? But our President continues to mouth the same usual platitudes and cannot even bring himself to acknowledge that the victims are Christians, or the despicable filth committing these atrocities are Muslim terrorists. Where is Obama’s outrage?
His weak-kneed, mild version of outrage driveling from his lips as he puts on the masque of feigned indignation he doesn’t truly feel. It’s just those Christians after all, right? He couldn’t possibly show true outrage right after whitewashing the horrendous acts of ISIS by comparing them to the past misdeeds of the Crusaders of… How many hundreds of years ago was it? And correct me if I’m wrong, but even back then it wasn’t until untold thousands of innocents were butchered by Muslims did the Crusades even begin to grow as an idea. But hey, Let’s just rewrite history because our schools can’t even teach it that well, so who’ll notice, right Mr. President?
Stunned. We look further and find Jordan responding with armed force, brave and fierce in their determination. The French have even renewed attacks; Hell even EGYPT is attacking ISIS now? When even Egypt stands against ISIS, yet we do not?
EGYPT!? Why it is that America is nowhere to be seen except for a few token drones? Where is our President? I mean; he can spare the time to insult more than half of the entire population of the world who consider themselves Christian, but does he dare even take the mildest token symbol of outrage and call a Muslim terrorist a Muslim terrorist?
Naw! That would offend too many people!
The shame: The incredulous shame burns beyond our faces into our very hearts as we watch our country’s leadership move on down into the abyss; leaving our great Nation honor-less and leaderless as President Obama seems to look plaintively around for wherever his balls have run off to…
President Obama, our leader-emasculate; feigning interest and dismissing the world’s greatest evil as if it were the mere ghost of indigestion. Hitler would be proud.
Our President: Such a tragic clown of a fool as Shakespeare himself would be eager to write about…
And yet he’s taking us down with him; unless we do something about it. Unless we get off our collective asses and SAY something about it! Don’t just call your congressman; harass him until they move. Don’t just email your senators; Ring their phones off the hooks; stuff their mailboxes with letters of outrage; Overload their email boxes with messages of outrage and indignation!
This President has abandoned this nation as no other before him has ever done. Carter? Obama blew past Carter’s idiocy years ago.
This President will be known throughout history as the bloodiest president ever known, who by sitting on his hands created the evil that is now ISIS. Whose incompetence drives ISIS on to new heights of evil and encourages villainy of all sorts throughout the world.
Through our President’s leadership, and enabled by our own complacency: America saw the evil being perpetrated upon the world…
and sat down to watch it burn…
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