Coming Together - the Right Way
If you’ve listened to the Right and Freedom podcast, you’ve undoubtedly heard Chef Don’s entreaty to unity and desire to bring people together. Why can’t we just look out for each other? I don’t see why it’s so hard. The answer to that is simple and unfortunate: right now in the United States of America, there’s a cultural battle going on. That battle isn’t about the future. That battle is about the past.
As we’ve discussed, we are a non-partisan organization. If it appears that we come down on one side or the other, that says more about the current state of our nation than the bias of the individual members of our team. Case in point, we support the right to vote for every single American, yet one party is consistently putting forward laws diminishing that right to vote.
Allowing Americans to vote shouldn’t be a controversial position — and yet the entire Bexar County (over 2 million people) in Republican-controlled Texas has a single drop-off location for voting ballots. Yes. One. That limitation isn’t funding. Bexar County is home to the city of San Antonio, one of the largest cities in Texas. The city budget for 2022 is $2.2 Billion (with a ‘b’). They can afford at least two drop boxes. Why does Bexar County have only one drop-box? Why did the governor extend that rule to Harris County (home of Houston, Texas) and Travis County (home of Austin, Texas)? Ostensibly because of security. Sure, limiting voting access is one approach to security. But so is opening more voting locations and properly staffing them.
It’s not just Texas. If you’ve listened to our podcast at all, you also know that we’re all extremely frustrated with the failure of the Federal Government to pass things like the Build Back Better act, which has a lot of good stuff in it. Yet try to get a Republican Senator to weigh in on its virtues. Not one. They are stonewalling the American people and preventing progress to the American people. What’s in it that we like? How about monthly payments to American families of $300 a month? How about a real commitment to a sustainable future instead of just lip service? Coupled with beefing up the EPA?
We’re former Marines, so we may not be that bright. But one thing that we do think is that when you’re facing the destruction of your home, you do something about it. And there’s only one team in the Senate at least whose willing to do anything about it — the Democrats.
Hey, if the Republicans come over to support things like that, instead of having a policy that is literally only to beat the Democrats, then we could get behind things they do. For example, UBI was a republican invention (Nixon). ACA was a republican invention (Romney). And yet, as a group, the Republicans fight against these types of ideas — for what? What would make someone do a complete 180 on helping the American people? We speculate on that quite a bit in our podcast (see our Podcast).
Then you have the big lie. We still abide by our USMC Core Values oath of Honor, Courage, and Commitment — and the big election lie is against that Honor part. Come to think of it, so is that whole insurrection thing that actually played out on national television and was absolutely not “legitimate political discourse”. What about Courage? Well, let’s see … Lindsey Graham? Ted Cruz? That guy in Florida?
So when we talk about uniting and coming together, the conversation always unfolds the same way. First Chef Don makes his lament (that idealist), then we all talk about it and get to the point where we once again realize that the Republican Party is pandering to the absolute worst of human behavior right now and completely lack the Courage to put it on the line and lose for the right reasons, or the Commitment to protect the constitution and our nation by decrying the attempted coup and insurrection in the United States Capitol.
Come together with that? No. Absolutely not.
There can be no compromise about whether or not there was an insurrection attempt in our capitol. Nor can there be a compromise on whether or not the “Green Bay Sweep” was an attempted coup. Honesty. Integrity. These are the things that you can build a nation on. Lies and deceit pave the way only to our assured destruction.
