The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Since last I wrote, my Mother, having been gradually diminished due to stroke and over-all struggle with her pain and increasing physical disability, entered the Nearer Presence.
Her passing was a great blow to me, of course. I had cared for her needs for over five years, and since the stroke, she was utterly dependent upon me. I quit my job and determined to nurse Mother back to health. While that was not to be, I kept her as comfortable and loved as was in my power.
Mark visited whenever he was able, though his travel commitments often collided with his greater desire to be here to help with Momma. George was...well, George was George. God will judge. All I will say is that he is too much like his father. To be fair, though, George is an infinitely better father and husband than John was.
Still, this is five months since Momma went home and not one call, not one letter, not even an email saying how he and the family are doing. I feel I called him quite often enough when Momma would want to talk to him and I pleaded with him to call her once a week, toward the end. As I say, God will judge. I cannot answer for George's poor judgment.
Meantime, the political scene has only grown more and more frustrating.
Does Congress think they are in their jobs in perpetuity? Do they imagine we, the thinking electorate, will NOT hold them accountable for having let Bush/Cheney run this nation to rack-and-ruin? Who do they suppose ought to do the job they were sent to DC to do? If I had the opportunity to stand in front of the joint Houses of Congress, they would get such an earful.
Many counsel me to adopt peaceful and loving ways. I think they forget Jesus, too, grew impatient and finally took a cord and knotted it to whip the money-changers, HE over-turned their tables. He spoke VERY harshly, abusively even, to the priests, Sadducees and Pharisees in the Temple. Heaven only knows what HE really thought of the Roman occupiers of HIS land. The Prophets, too, my precursors, spoke in uncompromising manner to the corrupt, malevolent, brutal "masters" of their respective times.
We forget these things. One need not take a cudgel to abusive power-mongers, but I see no reason why one ought to sit still for their abuse. I understand that Jesus was loving, but HE was also firm and wry, even, on many occasions.
Clearly, being polite to Bush and Cheney only earn their contempt and derision. These two men, and their coterie of admirers, have no use for Congress or the People for which it stands. They are compelled to face them periodically, but only to point out that Congress has fallen short of doing the bidding of the fuhrer and his Pitt bull, Cheney. It needs to be said that not only are the President and Vice-President, with Rove and Gonzales, in open rebellion against the Constitution of these United States, but those in Congress who permit such behavior to stand unchallenged, are equally complicit in that treason. They have befouled the body politic and only a thorough emetic, called impeachment and trial for treason, will serve to clear the disease from this once noble nation. Otherwise, we allow to stand what can only be seen as a fascist despotism.
And that is not something I am prepared to do.
Many are made uncomfortable by my referring to fascism...I suppose the smart ones in Germany, at the end of the Weimar Republic, were also made uncomfortable, but they wisely packed their belongings, sold their houses, bought tickets aboard any boat sailing anywhere else, and got the blazes out of what was growing into a nightmare. Once Hitler won his bid for Chancellor, it did not take long for hell to be loosed upon this Earth.
IF we "compare and contrast" the history of those times with what is going on here, now, today, we cannot BUT admit that things are collapsing in upon themselves once again. The "black hole" of fascism is growing and Congress seems unwilling or unwitting to stop the trend.
The press often uses a term, and it is echoed by members of the Congress, the term neo-conservative. Do they REALLY understand what a neo-con is? What a neo-con believes? How close the philosphical framework of the neo-cons approaches that of, say, the Nazis, the Taliban or Jihadists? Any despot! "A rose by any other name..."
Sadly, too few members of the press seem willing to follow this thread and connect up the dots. We, the People, are sunk if our elected officials are as oblivious as they seem to be. So, someone needs to take up the cudgel. More than one person has, but these noble souls are pushed out into left-field, and derided as prophets of doom, ignorant or otherwise deceived. They may even be lambasted as unpatriotic. The same things were adjudged of those who tried to warn their fellow Germans and wider Europe. Nevermind Hitler had put it all into his book, Mein Kampff. How could one believe such madness? Look what ignorance of the wickedness and evil in man's soul has bequeathed us. Six million Jews and an almost equal number of non-Jews (let us NEVER forget them as well) were tortured and slaughtered in the camps. Their earthly goods stolen to enrich the fuhrer and is friends.
Does anyone in the Congress or the press actually read between the lines of the Mission Statements (or manifestos) of the American Enterprise Institute, Focus on the Family, the Project for the New American Century? Does anyone actually put credence in the ramblings of men like Richard Perle, who spews forth such garbage as Goebbles did? Evidently, people DO!
Well, we NEED to heed the warnings of these madmen. If we do not pay attention to what they stand for and what they say and how the two often do not mesh, we will be sold into the same bondage as caught the Jews and non-Jews alike, just 70 years ago.
Millions died in the camps, hundreds of thousands died on the battlefields in this great clash of ideologies. In our time, the deaths have already begun, the camps are up and running, the lies flash forth and the clash of cultures and ideologies is in full-tilt. God help us.