“We are in the fight for the Soul of our Nation”.

(“American Eagle”, by the author of this post)

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Joe Biden said: “We are in a fight for the soul of our nation”. I agree. Perhaps a year ago I wouldn’t but now? Definitely yes. The ‘man’ in the White House continues to shock me, and his wife, where we are supposed to feel sympathy for a woman married to such a boar, seems to be rather ‘dead’ in her soul. Reportedly she is only arm candy and is in over her head. Her favorite interests are Pilates and fashion books. But she struggles with the English language so perhaps she is not sure of anything except a marriage to a serial cheater. How in Hell did she get entrance to the USA on an “Einstein pass?” Power gets what it wants. And there is such irony in her attempts to lead a crusade against cyberbullying with a husband like him. Perhaps she is doing the best she can.

I was married to a man who was an abuser and ‘unfaithful’  and it is very hard to know which way to go.  Divorce was a blessing, though at the time I thought I would die.  I almost did, (I was crippled for two years having been hit by a car at work…he left me when I couldn’t bring home a paycheck anymore.  His parents facilitated his departure and comfort.) but the blessing is that we can survive almost anything and when removed from abuse and humiliation, we come to a better place.  If we survive, we grow and prosper.  This divorce was the third greatest blessing of my life.  More to come.

I’m reading “Battlefields and Blessings”, which are letters, diaries, etc. from well known “Fathers’ (and some Mothers…) of the Revolution. It’s inspirational and I see how far we have come from our original concepts of our country. It’s not only that our government has grown to such a size that it boggles belief, but that concept of ‘revolution’ against the corrupt seems to have been turned around. Trump came in declaring he was going to ‘drain the Swamp’. It seems to me he, and his family and cronies ARE the swamp. Apparently, IF he tries to fire Mueller, this might be grounds for impeachment. And that is the good news.

I am a product of immigration. My father’s family came here around the turn of the century from Hungary. They suffered the insults and the prejudice of people like my ex in-laws who called me a ‘mackerel snapper’. First they thought I was a Jew, then horrors of horrors , a Catholic. They were an uncomfortable past, but now I am free of their narrowness and religious hatred.  And I was raised Episcopalian. They never asked.

My mother’s family came from England in the 1680’s and settled in New Hampshire and Conn. Five Glines brothers (my mother’s family ) were Revolutionary War soldiers. I could have entered the DAR on three of them. But I chose not to do so. My son was adopted and they informed him and I that because of this, he couldn’t join the DAR. But his family were Confederates, and one of them a general. There is a big monument to him in the Oakland cemetery. He was young and cried when he was ‘rejected’ by these mean, old women, and I took him to Oakland here in Atlanta and we found this monument. It dried up his tears.

Today, think of the prejudice that immigrants face in our convoluted society. The housing market is tanking in Atlanta because the Hispanic construction workers either have fled or they have gone to states who pay better.  There are few Blacks in the construction trades in Atlanta and I have ideas about this, but who knows?  Perhaps they can pick up the slack.

I don’t necessary like Biden or any politician.  But I think he is right. Eight years of Trump and his family will kill our nation. . He picked people from positions of power…The Captains of Power….and he still can’t get along with them.  These are his folk and class.  And he is the Rot.

I read somewhere and I think this is true: That a president needs to have people around him that don’t agree…that bring new ideas and conflict to his set values. He needs to grow in opposition. Trump keeps firing anyone who opposes him. Many leave because they are too intelligent to stay. He has the makings of a dictator. The soul of our nation is not bound up or reflected by the stock market stats. It is something entirely other and Trump has no idea of this at all.

Yes, we are in the fight for the soul of our nation.

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018

 

Tags: Battles and Blessings, Biden, The Soul of our nation, The Swamp, Trump