The unnecessary murder of 37-year-old nurse Alex Jeffrey Pretti is the tragic “same song, second verse.”
What is that song?
Unnecessary violence at the hands of untrained immigration enforcement officers who have no business with guns. In fact, ICE has become thugs with guns.
The thug bosses are three: Kristi Noem, Donald Trump and Stephen Miller.
Michael Chancellor
This “trinity” of evil is the scourge of the United States, sending us into a constitutional free fall as Republicans are frozen, not by the deep freeze, but by fear. Their cowardliness and compromise is laid bare for the world to see. The bankruptcy is on display as Allies marvel over how a historically stellar political party can become so powerless, neutered and insignificant after compromising all its values, the safety of this nation, the democracy of this land for money, influence and fealty.
History will not be kind to this party as its inaction brings the United States to the brink of financial ruin and collapse.
A nation born in the pursuit of freedom is now marching toward authoritarianism and a dictatorship of absolutely the most moronic individual who has ever graced the stages of history.
The United States has a history of distrusting really genius folks who run for our highest office, but we have thrived with smart people, some really well educated and some with law degrees. Woodrow Wilson was the only Ph.D. president with a doctorate in political science from Johns Hopkins. There have been 27 presidents who were lawyers, stretching all the way back to the beginning with John Adams.
Most of our presidents had credibility and earlier success before they became president. And then there’s Donald Trump.
We face this apocalyptic moment where cowards who brought him to head the party abandoned their responsibilities and others decided to “see nothing, hear nothing and say nothing.”
“Standing up to tyranny does not wait for the fear to disappear.”
Eugene Sledge’s book With the Old Guard could not have come at a better time for me. My dad died 43 years ago, but his legacy lives on in my heart. He was in the first Marine Division 3rd battalion which joined other Marines in the assault on Peleliu in World War II. Sledge’s book is a soldier’s retelling of that assault in which my father’s division had only 20 survivors including him. Over his short time in the Marines, he was awarded two purple hearts.
Last night as I was reading, a passage stood out for me. Sledge’s CO slid into the small foxhole with him and simply shared this enduring gem of insight and wisdom: “Courage means overcoming fear and doing one’s duty in the presence of danger, not being unafraid.”
Tool many in our time are allowing fear to keep them from doing their duty. And so, duty gives way to fear and what is right and just remains undone.
Standing up to tyranny does not wait for the fear to disappear, it stands up even when we are fearful. Over and over again, our soldiers have given that quiet lesson and because they have, we have believed they were not afraid. The fact is many or most were afraid but they still did their duty.
This is our time to do our duty.
Michael Chancellor served 33 years as pastor of four Baptist churches in Texas, six years as a mental health manager in a maximum-security Texas prison before becoming a therapist in private practice in Round Rock, Texas. He now lives in Taylor, Texas.