As the old dude sits looking out at leaves falling from the River Tree as autumn segues toward winter, he’s gotta take a breath.
Getting old. There’s a mess to think about, for all of us. But, hey, we’ve just carried out one of our responsibilities as citizens.
For better or worse, despite what a certain party would have us swallow, we do still live in a democracy.
The question’s not whether every citizen should be able to vote, or whether each vote matters, but whether we have enough facts to cast functional votes and whether those saying they’re representing us actually do and whether it’s done in an ethical, moral manner.
Or whether they just represent the wealthy few directly funding their campaigns or who exert overwhelming pressure and influence on them via donations, bribes, humongously compensated influencers, social media, talking heads, etc. to enrich themselves and do a whole mess to harm their fellow human beings.
We talk about sin. That’s a nasty whopper against us as citizens and a soul destroyer against humanity as a whole.
As of today, the old galoot can’t say how it came out. But he can tell you, whatever the outcome, it ain’t going to be perfectly good, or perfectly bad.
We’re weak, fallible, frail creatures of flesh and blood. But hopefully in Missouri and nationally, we’ve taken a step toward returning our state and nation to some degree of moral, ethical sanity.
If we’ve acted as a functioning voting majority, it’s up to us now to first come together to ensure our votes are not illegally and corruptly erased, and then to ensure our representatives in the coming months act quickly, courageously and decisively to bring to justice those who’ve either collaborated in the malfeasance and corruption we’ve allowed to pervade our government and business sector or willfully condoned it by their actions or inactions.
If we fail to act, God have mercy on us.
But, if we’ve stepped up, justice demands courage. It takes courage to demand what the constitution provides for crimes conducted directly against this nation, its institutions, its people and its values.
That recourse is impeachment and removal from whatever office we’ve placed them in, whether senator, cabinet officer, justice or the elected president and vice president of these United States.
None of them, however they preen, primp or strut, hold any moral or legal right to an office or position in this republic if they’ve committed crimes against it and us as its citizens.
For our representatives and senators, demanding that ultimate recourse can never be a matter of looking around and counting heads.
It’s got to be a matter of looking within their own hearts and souls and deciding what’s right, then doing it, because it’s right.
Doing it because they were placed there by their constituents and pledged an oath before God to do it.
Doing it because their fellow citizens, their spouses, their children and grandchildren and countless others both within this nation and beyond, demand justice be done to those who’d defile, corrupt and destroy our sacred institutions and do harm to uncounted numbers of their fellow human beings.
But we’re all frail, fallible human beings. To be honest, whatever their pledges, not enough of these folks are going to do it totally because it’s right, unless we keep an eye on them, hey, they’re human and there’s a whole heap of money out there!
Some folks of varied moral fiber instructed us to put on blinders in accounting sins this fall, but as citizens and Christians, we’ve gotta recognize that the sin that really counts is willfully or heedlessly doing or allowing harm to come to our fellow human beings. It’s now time to step up, work up some gumption and join as a faith-filled polity to first ensure justice and then begin the hard work of solving the huge problems before us.
