Osama bin Laden once said that the reason his jihad against Americans would succeed was that we were afraid to die and his people weren’t.
That might have been overly simplistic. Osama isn’t around anymore, but our battle against Islamic terrorism is far from won.
But the real war — the one with ourselves — is nearly lost. More than 81 million voters cast their ballots for Joe Biden — that is almost beyond dispute — but more than 70 percent of folks calling themselves Republicans claim the Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
For a long time, I had difficulty understanding why someone with a fighting chance at a three-digit IQ would support Trump, but recently I realized it all comes down to one simple eight-word statement.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
There are simply too many people in this country who hate what our country has become.
Too many people who can’t find a road to success in spite of how many different routes they take. A country where it’s always someone else getting the luck break … or the promotion at work … or even a job.
Seventy percent of Americans are doing no better than just getting by. Nearly that many couldn’t deal with an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing the money or putting it on a credit card.
And this is the middle class.
Whether it’s true or not, too many people look at the world and feel like the system is rigged to benefit people who aren’t like them, Illegal immigrants aren’t really collecting welfare or getting free medical care, but folks with political agendas say they are and too many people believe it.
In fact, they have lost all faith in the system and all many of them want is someone who makes their political opponents as unhappy and angry as they are.
Enter Trump.
He is without question one of the worst human beings ever to occupy the White House, and he accomplished little or nothing positive in four years. Yes, he appointed three right-wing Supreme Court justices and cut taxes on the rich, but his complete failure on the pandemic would seem to balance that out.
Is it possible to have a government in a free society when folks on one side refuse to play by any rules? When their sole goal is to thwart the majority by preventing them from voting?
It really isn’t a rhetorical question.
We’re not going. to survive as what we want to be with our system as currently constituted. Two problems we have are due to things our founders never imagined in the late 18th century. First was political parties and second was a country in which one state might be 40 times larger than another.
But because of that, we have a system where fewer than a million people in Wyoming can cancel the votes of 40 million in California in the U.S. Senate.
There’s really no way to fix it either.
Should Wyoming or Alaska or the other lightly populated states be expected to agree to be less significant politically?
I can’t imagine why they would.
Sadly, the real question would seems to be what happens when we split up. How do we become two or more different countries that still provide a good like for our citizens.
Think I’m wrong?
I’m certainly open to suggestions here.