Two Americas
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.
Abraham Lincoln.
As bedbugs infest Las Vegas hotels, maggots riot in our cities. Meanwhile, President Trump and patriots celebrated the U.S. Army’s 250 years of service to the country. How appropriate that June 14 was also Flag Day and the president’s birthday. Personally, I don’t care for parades, but this one was different, and the contrast between our best and brightest versus leftist Democrat street thugs was striking.
It is a challenge to be contemporaneous with a once-a-week newspaper column, but I felt in good company after the Father’s Day weekend when editor Miranda Devine of the New York Post expressed my feelings in her column. And as I started this essay, multiple sources were using the title I had chosen.
The focus of the Army parade was not military might as is often displayed in communist countries. Ours was a celebration of the army through the centuries using vintage uniforms, period vehicles and marching bands with patriotic music. And the magnificent operatic soprano voice of Staff Sgt. Jesse Nice singing our National Anthem stirred my heart with pride.
We will need patriots and our best and brightest as we try to prevent Iran from making a nuclear bomb. For years, presidents have averred that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon, but talk and appeasement have been useless. Lindsey Graham referred to the Iranian regime as religious Nazis and negotiating with fanatics has proven useless. Iran with a nuclear weapon would pose an existential threat to Israel first, then to the U.S., which Iran has called The Great Satan for forty years. The movie “The Sum of All Fears” depicted a nuclear bomb smuggled into Baltimore by a terrorist regime/group.
Watching the delusional rage of the so-called “mostly peaceful” protesters made me think of a recent article about forgiveness. James Kimmel Jr. JD is a lecturer in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and in his book “The Science of Revenge,” he maintains that revenge is an addiction, where the pain of anger becomes reinforced within the craving and reward neural brain chemistry, mediated through dopamine.
There are Biblical examples of rage (Cain’s murder) or secular (Trojan War) examples. More modern examples are the Hutu/Tutsi ethnic genocide and the generational Arab/Jew animus, where rage reinforces rage. Experts advise counseling, medication and forgiveness to break the cycle in an individual. Remember the movie “The Mask” where Jim Carey pleads, “Somebody stop me!” The same might be necessary for the Senate rants of Corey Booker, aka Spartacus.
In a recent sermon, our minister spoke about what we call an individual’s breaking point. I’ve had my share of tough times, but I could not recall a breaking point. Perhaps this is because I am blessed to have a good support system. Even during my cancer journey, Becky was there to support me, and I had the Lord. Anecdotally, I remember coming home from work one evening and the oh-so-kind Becky met me at the door to hand over our young daughters, exclaiming, “You need to take these two kids before I explode!” I understand how people can lose it if they don’t understand and embrace the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 4:12.
Rage and hatred are poisonous. I disagree with what the Democratic Party has become. I think their policies are wrong, but I bear no hatred for anyone. The Democrat leadership, like Chuck Schumer, has been proven dangerous. Remember when Schumer threatened SCOTUS judge Kavanaugh during the Roe v Wade hearings, saying Kavanaugh would “reap the whirlwind”? The media has also fomented hatred and contributed to the delusions of emotionally unstable people. Arguably, assassination attempts of President Trump and the murders of state representatives in Minnesota have been influenced by hate-filled rhetoric.
A friend related that she caught TV coverage of one of the No Kings marches and was immediately struck by the vile, hate-filled language of the so-called protesters. I observed the same, which caused me to recall crowd scenes in Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of Christ.” The movie depicted the androgynous, malevolent force of evil moving invisibly among the crowds, causing faces to become twisted and tormented with hatred. To this day, I carry that vision which I now see on the streets of America.
My job as a doctor was to prevent illness and to diagnose and treat problems. I’ve been blessed with a long and fruitful life. And I was given the insight to make medical diagnoses and to understand right and wrong. The sickness in America is complicated, but a manifestation of this malady is irrational hatred. President Trump is not a Nazi, a destroyer of democracy or a king. The leaders of the Democratic Party and the media know this, but are manipulating people and using them as shock troops to promote Democratic power. It is a twisted and perverse policy. We should all be terrified. Similarly, I was terrified by the personified evil in “The Exorcist.”
I began this essay with a quote from President Lincoln. He saw the evil of slavery, whose divisiveness was only abolished at great cost. President Trump sees the “clear and present danger” of religious fanaticism and generational hatred of the Iranian mullahs as an existential threat to Israel first, America next and then the Western world. Even German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recognized “the dirty work that Israel is doing for all of us” and acknowledged Israel’s courage. Thankfully, we have a courageous, functional and competent President Trump to lead us because we are “The Great Satan” to Iran’s mullahs. Sane Democrats, like Harold Ford Jr. and Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman acknowledge this.
We should be united as a nation against the Iranian mullahs and pray that our leaders will make the right decisions about the Fordow nuclear facility in Iran instead of marching and howling about “kings.” But then evil is the great liar, manipulator and destroyer of souls.
Our true enemy is not a Hatfield or a McCoy, Capulet or Montague, Sunni or Shia, Arab or Jew, Catholic or Protestant. It is evil. With God’s help, we must see the influence of evil and look beyond skin color or creed. We must “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).
