And then it dawned on them, the Epiphany would be sullied by the one year anniversary of the racist riot that occurred in Washington on January the 6th in 2021. Like the poo flinging monkeys that breached the nation’s capital on that day, defecating on the floor and smearing feces on the walls in Statuary Hall, members of the Sedition Caucus would continue to soil themselves in a high profile way. Theirs is not a profile in courage, far from it. History will correctly characterize them as vacillating jellyfish. Today, they are simply seen as Benedict Donald’s bootlickers.
They have desecrated the memory of all who courageously sacrificed, some dying face down in the mud, to preserve our constitutionally grounded democratic republic. Many of the country’s major corporations that took a stand, pledging to withhold campaign donations in the aftermath of the failed coup, have since demonstrated their own contempt for government of, by, and for the people. Their early declarations about not supporting seditionist politicians proved insincere. As the New York Times would opine: “The donations also reflect the fact that, over time, lawmakers are a more influential constituency for companies than consumers.”
What the old corporate guard has failed to comprehend is that workers and consumers have become more intentional as they decide who they’re willing to work for, and as they vote with scarce dollars. Unlike the featherbedded corporate CEOs, that enjoyed pay raises of over 940% over a period of 40 years, compensation for the average worker had increased by only 12%, not even keeping pace with inflation. Even so, due to the generosity of taxpayers, members of the United States House of Representatives and the Senate were also benefitting from generous vacation schedules and automatic pay raises. And yet, the minimum wage in the United States had increased by only two dollars and ten cents, from $5.15 in 1997 to $7.25 at the close of 2021.
As the nation struggled to recover from the COVID pandemic, price gouging was used to create inflationary political pressures. At the same time, the Hosea 4:12 contingent became even more boisterous. Though considered a minor prophet, Hosea had described this type of excessively prominent evangels of mammon perfectly, In about 750 BC, he wrote: “. . . for the spirit of whoredoms has caused them to err, and they have gone a-whoring from under their God.”
Ever since Plato wrote his philosophical dialogue, dealing with the composition and structure of the ideal state, a republic has been defined as a body of persons that comprise a commonwealth. It was not a nation in which the government is ruled by a hereditary head of state or monarch. It’s a state in which the supreme power is exercised by representatives chosen directly or indirectly by the body of citizens entitled to vote.
And there’s the rub. “The body of citizens entitled to vote” was an acceptable concept as long as the body was white. And, to guarantee it remained that way, the three-fifths compromise was used to insure a black man or woman would never amount to more that three-fifths of a person. When the Civil Rights Act of 1960 authorized court-appointed referees to help African Americans register and vote, those Democrats that were sympathetic to Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, and other white supremacist groups were enraged, and they changed parties.
The Republican Party of today is decidedly unrepresentative of all but the tiniest – whiniest of minorities. They purge voter rolls, gerrymander, intimidate voters, suppress votes, and subvert elections to sustain the last gasp of the three-fifths compromise. The only way they can win elections with their abhorrent set of values is to lie, cheat, and steal while, in the Goebbelian tradition, accusing others of that which they are guilty. There are many who would argue that the Insurrection of January 6th in 2021 was just the beginning. But, the fact is, racist riots are nothing new. The “Final Solution” in Nazi Germany was nothing new. The Tulsa Race Massacre was nothing new. The Trail of Tears in North America was nothing new just as the Armenian Genocide was nothing new.
For a significant number of citizens in the United States, democracy is ok, as long as it’s the white-bread variety. A representative republic is ok, as long as it too is representing the interests of whites only. Bigots are terrified by the notion of a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and multi-racial democracy. They are running from it, without looking to where they are running. And they are working, feverishly, to convert the United States Senate, and the House of Representatives, into Vladimir Putin’s brothels, where all the members are goin’ a-whoring.
When those religiously agnostic look at the unmitigated selfishness of Ted Cruz, they think to themselves; “If that’s the face of Christianity, I want no part of it!” In addition to diminishing the value of a Harvard education, Cruz has consistently been an embarrassment to the Christian faith. Although, trading one’s witness for a masquerade seems to be very much in vogue for so-called Christian politicians.