Hail to the Chief!

I revisited something I wrote in 2009 that now seems to me to have been somewhat prophetic, sadly. Here it is. I wonder, what's your take on where we stand in this regard today?

Hail to the Chief!

August 15, 2009 at 9:46am

Whatever your personal politics, however you voted in this or other elections, it is the attack upon the office of the President of the United States that ought to concern you most as you observe what is being fanned across this country today.

We ought to be ashamed of ourselves; those of us who say we hold this country dear. To look and listen, to hear and ignore what is taking place in an attempt, not to save us from some impending social monster that is encroaching upon our future well-being, but to paint a picture of fear, inferiority, and hatred, without calling it what it is and doing what we can personally to squash it. To ignore it is unforgivable.

I remember another time like this, a time when hatred and allegations flew, when they were falsely created and perpetrated across the airwaves by right-winged voices carefully designed and orchestrated to reach and trigger a certain element of the nation’s population into heinous action. I remember feeling as I do now, listening then as I am listening now, and seeing, sensing and, with deep trepidation fearing, what the outcome of such hate pandering would be. It was 1994 and 1995 and it cumulated with the domestic terror attack upon American citizens in the Oklahoma bombing.

The flagrant distortions of truth, the shameless manipulation of facts, and the recruitment of segments of the country known for their vulnerability to hate-baiting and racial prejudices in order to dumb-down the most revered office in our nation’s history and to suddenly lessen its worth because of its current occupant is an act of hubris that, were it once achieved, would be virtually irreversible on countless fronts. The world is watching us! They celebrated with us when the majority of the people elected the current president, and now they are shaking their heads in dismay and disgust as they see what is unfolding.

These efforts to “cheapen” the office of the Presidency now “cheapen” and will minimize the office of the President of the United States from now on, regardless of who is seated there in the future. It is a slippery slope that we cannot afford.

©Peggy Eldridge-Love 2009