Chronicles in Ordinary Time

…No, I’m not. I’m sorry for your ignorance.

Cover Image: The Declaration of Independence by Melinda Lilly

You grew up thinking that your life was about you. I did the same thing. This is the way our country works—teaching us that what’s important is us. When we think that the important part of this country is our self, those who actually run this country—the 1%—never have to worry about entering the 2%.

Your life was never about you.

Your life is about your relationships with others. Your lack of understanding of this truth is what causes all of your problems.

Some of those reading these words have a serious problem with those who are marching; they believe that somehow these protests demean the country.

If one reads the Declaration of Independence, one can striking parallels between the Declaration and the Executive Orders of Donald Trump in his first week in office. Our Founding Fathers, whether or not they considered women and people of color as “men” this meaning has been interpreted by the Supreme Court. Our Founding Fathers found that the harsh circumstances in which they lived under King George were cause to dissolve their union with Great Britain:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness…
… The history of the present [one-week history of the President] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
…
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has [“will”, because on March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. Defying their Constitutional authority, the Senate refused to hold a hearing or vote on this nomination made during the last year of Obama’s presidency, insisting that the newly elected president should fill the vacancy, nearly a year later] made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
…
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent [the Mexican Wall and the proposed 25% sales tax on Mexican imports:

 And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

And then they went to War, instead of staging protest marches.

So far, the protesters, following the Worldwide Women’s March on Washington—one week ago—stand in lines, or march, chanting and holding signs. Today they are in airports; protesting Trump’s ban on arrivals from the Middle East. In Dan Rather’s words:
“For generations, we have been an imperfect but vital beacon of freedom to a world too often wandering and failing in moral confusion. But that ultimate strength has dimmed considerably in light of the recent actions on immigration from the new President Donald Trump. We are turning around desperate refugees. We are singling out men, women, and children on the basis of their faith – and we are doing all of this with a randomness and capriciousness that defies reason.
“A colleague of mine used the term “heartless” to describe so much of the President’s executive actions. Sadly, I found it an apt and dispiriting diagnosis—especially when faced with the results of his executive order on immigration. For over the years, I have seen that our greatest American leaders extol empathy rather than condemnation. They have known that in a complicated world, it is best to make policy choices with a scalpel – not a hacksaw. Sometimes, when our national security is threatened at the level of World War II, all-out conflict is the only recourse. But those instances are by far the exception.”

Thankfully a Federal Judge has just ruled that Trump’s Ban on Muslims is unconstitutional [http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/muslim-ban-federal-court].

I’m sorry if your Facebook feed isn’t full of pleasant thoughts and images that make you feel warm and comforted.

It’s a harsh world now, and our President and his ‘Cabinet of the 1%’ have no investment in solving the problem; their investments, literally, are in making the problems worse. A dependence on coal and fossil fuels and a denial of research in alternative means of energy production. Ties to foreign governments. The Conflicts of Interest among Trump and his proposed Cabinet defy imagination.

I am an Immigrant Son—First Generation American on my Mother’s side of my family heritage. My Grandparents and family came here from Norway, when the 20^th Century was young.
My paternal grandmother and her siblings were First Generation Americans from Swedish immigrants. My paternal grandfather and his family crossed America by land, their ancestors having come from England and Wales.

By no choice of my own, I come from Northern European stock. So when my grandfather and my father joined the US Army in World War II, the women they left behind weren’t sent to “Internment Centers” [aka Concentration Camps] because they weren’t Japanese. They did not have to give up their homes and belongings because of the color of the skin, and the Creator-given design of their eyes.

There were no German Concentration Camps on American soil. Hard to tell a German by sight.

However, it’s less hard to spot a Native American; their Concentration Camps are called “Reservation”. American treaties with First Peoples were broken as soon as the ink was dry on the impressive parchment. There was a 1% then, too. They were intent on stealing land from the people who had lived on that land for Centuries.

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