It Was a Gift, What Are We Going To Do?

What Are We Going To Do?

There is an old saying, or maybe I’m dreaming and just making it up, but anyway, you get what you deserve.

And come November, that just may be what we get.

Let’s face it. The handwriting’s been on the wall. In ink, crayon and magic marker. If you haven’t seen it, go to Costco, get your eyes checked.

I can trace my family back many generations, to many wars and much blood that was spilled for the opportunity to sit here and write this. My family has the folded flags, the medals, and the war stories that my father, brother, uncles NEVER told. Because that’s what people who actually went out and fought for us do afterward,  they don’t talk about it. They just hand you the freedom they bled for and let you figure out what to do with it.

So here’s what we’ve done with it.

Money. The stock market is up, so something must be going right? Wrong. A thin slice at the top is getting rich off it, along with a handful of funds skimming their cut. Everybody else is taking it in the shorts, can’t afford the gas, can’t afford the groceries, can’t afford the rent, can’t afford a home. I won’t relitigate whether healthcare, food stamps, or welfare programs work the way they should. But when you cut them to hand billionaires a tax break, that’s not a policy disagreement. That’s a choice about who the country is for. My father didn’t come home to build a country that works better for people who already have everything.

Security. That’s a good one. Let’s start a vanity war nobody asked for except somebody in Israel, one we can’t get out of, one that’s already cost us lives and untold billions, led by generals and admirals and even a Secretary of the Army who quit or got pushed out, all under an unqualified former news anchor and his golf-handicap of a wingman. Some team.

The cost isn’t just dollars. We’ve become a joke, and now a depleted joke, our stockpiles at an all-time low, unable to supply the allies we promised, while the threats we invited watch over our shoulder wondering if we’re still serious people. My uncle didn’t hand down a war story he never told so his country could become a punchline with an empty armory.

And now the part that should scare you most. Midterms are coming, and this administration knows exactly what’s coming with them, so it’s trying everything to rig the outcome before it happens. That much is already on the record: manufactured voter-fraud cases, mail-in voting under attack even as the President mails his own ballot, what a hypocrite. What comes next is where I’ll admit I’m extrapolating, not reporting: whether that pressure escalates all the way to a national emergency used as an excuse to delay or disrupt the election itself. I hope I’m wrong about that part. But you don’t get to the edge of a cliff by accident, and we are closer to that edge than this country has been in my lifetime, and I’ve been voting since 1968. Yes, I joined the Military 4 years earlier, but it took the Vietnam war for Congress to decide that if we could die for our country, we could also vote.

That’s the thing about what got handed down to us. It wasn’t a slogan. It was a vote that counted, a ballot that got mailed and counted, a peaceful argument settled at the polls instead of settled by whoever’s willing to cheat hardest. That’s the specific, unglamorous thing in the folded flag. Not a feeling. A mechanism. And it’s the mechanism currently being tested.

So, once again, maybe we get what we deserve. Because I think we’re at the point where we either roll over and take it, or we don’t.

Maybe that should be: DO NOT TAKE IT.

The only question I have now is what we’re going to do with what we were handed.

What are we going to do?

Are we going to get what we deserve?

It’s up to you.

The Gift