By Jack Canfora
Well, to people of Color, he absolutely was. But I’m talking for the moment not about the actual man; I’m talking about the icon whom we’ve held up as a symbol of all things American. Most notably, “Freedom.”
Sorry, I’ve been away far too long, and this is supposed to be a website that serves as a respite from the wrack of this hard world, but sometimes, cruelty and murder must be called out.
Where do we think the Father of Country would stand on the vexing to Vax or not to Vax question? We don’t have to speculate. We know the answer.
George Washington mandated his troops get small pox inoculations (he opposed this at first, as he thought it would make the British think we were too weak, but quickly realized the pros outweighed the cons), at a time when its efficacy wasn’t exactly peer reviewed. He didn’t give both sides “equal time.” He didn’t engage in insipid debates with those who confuse the idea of freedom with utter self-absorption. We as country, and maybe a species, are at a tipping point. Is the massive meteor hurtling towards us to bring Armageddon our own blinkered “thinking”? Is it our seeming pathological need to make EVERYTHING political? Will it be simple willfulness? Because, if the last few years have shown us anything, nothing’s as stubborn as ignorance.
As Jonathan Swift wrote, “You can’t reason a man out of something he wasn’t reasoned into in the first place.”
Do anti-vaxxers refuse to stop at red lights because it robs them of their God-given right to determine to stop and start as they see fit?
Sorry, I’m angry. Thousands of people, some of them babies, are being killed. Not just dying, but being killed. By elected officials.
If you think Governors Greg Abbot and Ron DeSantis know more about core American values than George Washington, you shouldn’t be allowed outdoors unaccompanied. Nor indoors, come to think of it. History will unambiguously damn these politicians and their sociopathic, enabling hucksters who play on peoples’ ignorance and heartlessly sacrifice lives to keep their bloodstained clutches on the levers of power in order to compensate for the gaping holes in their humanity.
But shame on us for letting them.
Apologies for being absent for so long only to leave a rant. But sometimes rants are needed. I promise I’ll be nicer next time.
Allow me to close with the words of another president, as prescient now as ever:
“At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” ~ A. Lincoln
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I promise I’ll be funnier next time.
Here endeth the rant.