The long winter of our discontent!
This has been an especially long winter, as winters go. In the United States, in 2012, the temperatures barely got below freezing and the farmers were planting crops by the early part of March. Then we were burdened by one of the most debilitating droughts this nation has ever seen.
Last fall, we reelected the first black president in this nations history against the backdrop of one of the worst storms ever to hit the New York and New Jersey areas. Most remember that New Jersey governor Chris Christie thanked president Obama for his efforts in the state’s behalf and earned the ire of the neoconservatives for his courtesies. Then came New Town, Connecticut and our world was shaken by the brutal deaths of twenty of the sweetest children that one could conceivably imagine. In our rage and sorrow we, as a nation, thought that we might finally get something done to curb the rising tide of weapons of war and destruction in the hands of so many that we knew so little about. Throughout this long winter, we have seen how a brutal organization with a heart of stone operates--The National Rifle Association. Their actions have made this winter season seem especially long to so many who had hopes for so much and now see those hopes reduced, it seems, by the day. Not to be satisfied with that, the NRA has been making robocalls to the citizens of New Town, enlisting their support in fighting what most of the town’s citizens would simply like to forget, but know that they cannot. People like Diane Feinstein, the senior senator from California, who once saw success in curbing assault weapons, see their efforts dead before they even arrive for a vote on the senate floor. In addition to that, the senate’s new pair of filibusterer’s, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz have decided to filibuster the gun legislation when it comes to the floor after the Easter recess ends.
In the wake of the fall elections which saw Hispanics play a key role in the reelection of the president, there was great hope that we might finally get some comprehensive immigration reform. In this winter of our discontent that has spread into a false spring, roadblocks seem to be springing up everywhere as the neoconservatives debate among themselves whether we should have self deportation or really do something for these people who have lived here in the shadows for so long. The fear that whatever they do might continue the migration from the south, leaves them prone to probably doing nothing of any significance at all.
Conservatives seem happy with the idea that they control thirty governorships and can continue their unabated destruction of the federal government that has guaranteed so much for so many through the years.
Today, the Supreme Court has heard arguments about proposition eight in California which prohibits gay marriage. Most things left in the hands of a conservative leaning supreme court will not turn out well for those seeking advancements to their various causes. Tomorrow, the court hears arguments about the constitutionality of The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a law signed into being by president Clinton back in the 1990’s which today denies rights to those who are not married in the traditional way for federal benefits.
It is interesting to note that we heard one of the most heartwarming explanations of marriage in general when someone said that this nation should be promoting marriage in any reasonable form just so that children could be brought up in the most loving and stable environments around.
And so this nation searches for a spring which seems to elude it as it grapples with problems that might have been settled long ago. That fact that they still elude and trouble us is want for one to think that this nation is in trouble of a kind that may not bode well for its continuing vitality. The future struggles against a past that we can never return to without great harm to so many innocent souls because that past excluded so many from the fruits and benefits of the labors, long ago now, of those who simply wanted freedom for as many as they could possibly acquire it for. They left their labors incomplete and those labors go on as we write this piece in the hopes that a real spring will come to accompany the one that will end this winter of our discontent.
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.
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