Having been a combatant in more family and political squabbles than I dare count, I am finally beginning to understand Patrick Henry’s powerful lament about the trickery of “hope” itself.
At the outset, here, make no mistake: I believe Christian “hope” is a good thing — because the hope there is based on solid ground. But false “hope” is a bit like a temptress, a sexy lie — the buxom girl at the bar who is rebounding from her 7th husband, inviting you to a temporary solace that will be more expensive than it’s worth.
False hope is a cheap trick, a siren. It turns you into a beast. On March 23, 1775, at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Henry threw cold water on sunny hope itself. It was no longer safe to hope in England’s good intentions. It was time to begin taking a solid account of England’s actions. It was time to crucify our own sunny estimate of the enemy. Henry warned his fellow Americans..
“We are apt to listen to the song of that siren, [Hope], until she transforms us into beasts..”
There is a point in any family fight, or any political struggle, when a fair-minded person begins to think, hopefully, things like..
- Surely, once my [aunt, brother, sister-in-law] understands I was only trying to enforce an objective standard on who gets to use the mountain cabin for holidays, they will soften up and come around..
- Surely, once we reason with them, the British ministry will admit they are violating basic English rights when they attempt to tax us without our consent? Right?
- Certainly, when the public understands Hillary Clinton thought she could conduct official state business on a private email server, then fair-minded people would hold her to account. Right?
- Of course, even machine Democrats wouldn’t excuse Ted Kennedy dumping a female staffer in a river, to drown, and then not reporting it until morning? No one could be that evil, right?
- Surely, when a federal judge is made to understand a J6 prosecutor was privy to attorney-client communications, the judge will entertain motions for dismissal or mistrial. Right?
All of you could come up with far better examples. We live in a season ripe with a double-standard bumper crop.
But guess what? Your enemy doesn’t care about your justice claims. Your enemy stopped entertaining contrarian opinions long ago. They would be happy with you in jail, or dead, or bankrupt. They don’t care about nuance. They see the little old grandma standing on the outskirts of the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington as roughly on par with the over-zealous window breaker or a dude taking a swing at a capitol cop. We are all the same to them — “insurrectionists” even if the vast majority of us–by the millions–came just to register our worries about unfair elections. (By the way, it doesn’t matter if real MAGA activists were restraining the window-breakers; we were are ALL guilty because we were merely in the crowd, backing the wrong candidate.)
If you are like me, your mind wanders back to the summer of 2020, when President Trump had to take sanctuary in the White House bunker and rioters burned an historic church. There doesn’t seem to be any special justice department task force assigned to that one. Surely, you are tempted to think, hopefully, our “justice for all” court officers will treat all this political excitement equally, right?
Wrong.
Shortly after returning from the stop the steal rally in Washington, DC, I thought to myself. “When wiser heads look at the actual facts, they will limit their prosecution to people who vandalized the capitol and picked a fight with cops, right?”
I could not have been more naïve. Let’s be honest with ourselves. A DC/New York judge and jury will never give a fair shake to a J6 defendant or a former Republican president. The same jury that concluded Hillary attorney, Michael Sussman, had lied to the FBI but didn’t deserve punishment? How do you think YOU would fair against people sucking various forms of the dole from the state? You attacked their “sacred” piggy-bank — the one you filled with your tax dollars. They won’t lose any sleep if you die in prison.
In our personal lives, sometimes we have the ability to merely shun the toxic people in our lives. Sometimes we can achieve the peace that comes from leaving implacable enemies in God’s hands. We stop putting false hope in a reasonable discussion and we shut the door and change the locks. We wait until the hardened hearts soften.
But when a politicized justice system threatens jail time for anyone who disagrees, mere shunning won’t help. We need to remember, at the outset, we are at war. We must find our battle stations. People of good conscience can differ as to how we stage that battle, but, at the very least, if you keep entertaining the notion that the progressive politician, prosecutor, or judge can hear the appeal of reason, you are a fool. An effective fight BEGINS by knowing your enemy and understanding, fully and finally, that he IS your enemy.
He who has eyes to see, let him see. He who has ears to ear, let him hear.
