Playing with fire about our national survival

Most of us from western cultures have idealistic instincts. Mostly these instincts are “golden rule” and “leadership by example”. Practically speaking, “talking to our enemy” and “diplomacy” are the present day renditions of a way to apply these ideas to a nation called the USA. Past performance is seldom considered, and probably not known. So Neville Chamberlain’s famous waving of a 1930’s written document and saying “we have peace in our time”; or American educated leaders in D.C. sending “messages” such as bombing halts that are interpreted by eastern leaders as signs of weakness that are not known about, thought about, or yet to be discovered by the naïve; make many us concerned about our national survival.

That the debate can be about the “ideas” misses the mark. The debate should be about the willingness or lack of willingness of so many Americans to be taken down by the naïve if they are wrong, or simply naïve. Some of us, many we think, will not go down like “lambs to slaughter”. It is a tough world out there, and we have much to brag about and defend about, and “good intentions” is not a national survival policy. Now this is also something we can vote about.

That the present crop of candidates from both national political parties still seem to focus on their party and not our national interests is a sign of the old times that has worked up until now, or the present status quo. Like the oath so many have taken, the pledge in the oath is to the Constitution and against all enemies, foreign and domestic. So when times get hard, as in domestically hard, how many voters perceive the current crop of candidates as a good solution to going forward to the future? Rather there are many other national leaders out there, men and women, local, state, and federal. And like in “swarming theory”, or just think about a “school of fish”, when the circumstances change in the USA, we voters will gravitate towards “leaders” who think about our national survival, explain all this to us, and then “lead” us.