If you care anything about your country, you have to be concerned about what has transpired since the 2016 Presidential election, and indeed what happened even before it took place.
In the past, American politics has frequently been a rough and tumble process. The only time that the two primary political parties have come together is when the country was in peril, as was the case on December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001. However, what has occurred since Donald Trump was declared the Republican nominee for President in the summer of 2016 is almost unique in our countries history.
Our Constitutional Republic requires that there is an orderly transition of power after elections. When Abraham Lincoln (R) became our 16th President in 1860, succeeding James Buchanan (D), the country was in great turmoil. Many politicians, particularly Southern Democrats, felt that Lincoln, the first President from the newly formed Republican Party, was illegitimate.
The inflammatory rhetoric which occurred after the election, and prior to Lincoln’s inauguration in January of 1861, boiled over into the secession of the southern states, the forming of the Confederacy, and the disastrous American Civil War, which killed and maimed more Americans than all other wars before or since. That conflict culminated in the assassination of Lincoln by a southern sympathizer only weeks after the wars end.
Through all of the “Reconstruction” period, the “Jim Crow” era, when Democrats regained control of the governments in the southern states, and right up to the “Civil Rights” movement led by people like Dr. Martin Luther King, there still was an orderly transition as control of the Executive Branch of our government passed back and forth between the Democrats and the Republicans. This was true even when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives for the forty year period from 1954 through 1994. Sadly, that is no longer the case. Continue reading A House Divided….
I have previously written several posts on this site concerning the dangers posed by an, “EMP” (Electro Magnetic Pulse) attack on the United States by a foreign country. Two things are required to accomplish this act. First, the ability to launch a satellite into a near earth orbit. Second, a low yield nuclear weapon. Many countries around the globe currently have that capability. Others could purchase the means from rogue nations who have it and are willing to sell it for the right price.
Every Presidential election cycle, like clockwork, the Democrats place ads on television warning senior citizens that the heartless Republicans want to take away their Social Security and Medicare benefits. Remember the famous ad during the 2012 cycle which shows a Paul Ryan lookalike pushing a bathrobe wearing, wheelchair bound, silver haired woman off a cliff? That, or something like it, will be showing up in the fall.
You may be familiar with the phrase: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. The quote is attributed to 20th century writer and philosopher George Santayana, and in its original form it read, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Either way you say it, it is absolutely correct, and we are seeing evidence of that simple fact today.
Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian Major General in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and since 1998 commander of its Quds Force, a division primarily responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations is dead. He was killed, along with seven others, in a targeted drone strike outside the Baghdad Airport. I highlight that because the location is very important.