Hewing out of the mountain of hope a stone of despair.

The days of unlimited immigration are past.

But those who do come will come because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung.

When the earliest settlers poured into a wild continent there was no one to ask them where they came from. The only question was: Were they sturdy enough to make the journey, were they strong enough to clear the land, were they enduring enough to make a home for freedom, and were they brave enough to die for liberty if it became necessary to do so?

And so it has been through all the great and testing moments of American history. Our history this year we see in Viet-Nam. Men there are dying--men named Fernandez and Zajac and Zelinko and Mariano and McCormick.

Neither the enemy who killed them nor the people whose independence they have fought to save ever asked them where they or their parents came from. They were all Americans. It was for free men and for America that they gave their all, they gave their lives and selves.

By eliminating that same question as a test for immigration the Congress proves ourselves worthy of those men and worthy of our own traditions as a Nation.

~Lyndon B. Johnson, 

I saw something this morning (part of which is snipped above, that made me so mad that my only possible response was to angrily shake my head and say "Fuck this, I'm going to go play with baby ferrets for an hour." I was getting out of my car in front of the pet store at the time, and decided to take a minute to check my Twitter messages. The flag page is on the actual fucking website of Art Jones, Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives for the Third District of Illinois.

I want to note, here, that I chose the pull-quote for a damn reason. Art Jones, this Nazi motherfucker, is, or at least claims to be, a Vietnam veteran, who says he served in combat. (He also claims to have been a Union member who did manual labor, and an insurance salesman...that last, I'll believe for sure.) Do you know who else served in combat in Vietnam in disproportionate numbers to their percentage of the population? African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans.

I have friends and older relatives who served in that war, some saw combat, some did not. Nearly all were changed or scarred in some fashion, but to narrow it down I'll just mention some people I used to work with. One guy at work, an old Native man named Dave who retired a few years ago, spoke of serving as an Infantryman in the battle of Ia Drang, the first U.S. ground engagement of the war. He was then and is now a member of the local Tribe's warrior society (veteran's group.) Another, an old conservative white dude named Dale who served as a truck driver...almost entirely away from the battlespace...when we were working together one night, he once told me about nearly dying of disease, spending weeks in the hospital. Then there was an old Latino guy named Jesse (who served long enough to retire from the Army in the early 1980's and often still wore his ragged BDU jacket when he came to work) told me about both becoming addicted to drugs and beating the addiction, both while 'over there.' That had to have been a hell of a tour of duty. We spoke often, and occasionally debated about religion and stuff...we disagreed about much, but understood each other in ways that only people who've struggled with addiction can.

I want to state also, that every last one of these three guys attributed their survival to faith and prayer. The first, to both following his Native traditions and to the Catholicism imparted by his own Latino relatives, the second guy was a Fundamentalist Baptist, and the third was an Assembly of God Pentecostal, who nonetheless got along famously with his co-worker, neighbor and regular ride to work, a Vietnamese immigrant named Cao who served as a member of the Republic of Vietnam Navy during the war...and who was himself a devout Buddhist.

The one election I compared notes with all these guys on, briefly, the morning of election day, was 2004.

All four of them, and I, voted for George W. Bush. Yep, that's right, we said we were going to vote Republican.

The only thing in particular that these men, whose cultures and ethnicity and religions were so different, had in common was...diversity.

So what the fuck happened?

You know what else each of these guys had? A great faith in America, in its ideals and in its system. It boggles my mind how most the people I know who were Republicans or war veterans or both...even my own sometimes drunk obnoxious uncle who always stated with the authority of one who was there (and who, having been a Lieutenant in command of a rifle platoon, felt responsible for the deaths of his men and so he drank and smoked himself to death as a result) that Vietnam was a mistake...turned out not to be assholes and Art Jones did.

...And this racist, outright Nazi motherfucker ran unopposed in a Republican primary for Federal office and won because nobody stopped him. There were more flags on his page, with antisemitic, anti-Chinese, homophobic and pro-Palestinian screeds attached to each.

His stated policies include multiple things that should be apostasy even in Trumpian conservatism.

It's a safe Democratic district, he will almost certainly lose but that's not the point.

Jones considers this the height of his "career" anyway. The man is a fucking Nazi with two dedicated pages of antisemitic bullshit on his campaign website. He shouldn't have a political career in the United States of America in the 21st Century.

Yet this is the height of his "career." He's attracted national notice, per my own Twitter feed, but the Republican Party didn't bother to contest his nomination.

Think about that, take as much time as you need. If this is the state of the Republican Party now, where will it be in two years, in ten years, in twenty?

I'm going to throw down a gauntlet here and say that I think not only have the Republicans as a party lost faith in diversity (which they had no problem with in 2004 when the numbers were on their side) but that they've lost faith in religion, and even in America itself.

What makes me say that?

Among other things, this guy right here, Vladimir Motherfucking Putin. I will never for the life of me understand the Conservative love-affair with a Communist, former KGB colonel, current Dictator and very open Kleptocrat, who between him and his friends has stolen so much money that Russia, literally the largest nation on the planet, with 220 million people, has an economy about the size of that of Portugal.

I have seen people who should know better go bug-fuck with Russophilia.

As for people who don't know better, against the advice and all-but-orders and despite ALL CAPS notes saying "DO NOT CONGRATULATE!" Trump called Putin to talk to him and congratulated him on his "Victory" that most astute observers regard as fake.

...And this is what Trump, the democratically-elected avatar of modern Movement Conservatism considers aspirational?

It's no wonder, at this point, that we have an Opioid Crisis and that it seems to affect rural conservative areas more than others. Hell, if I was still a Republican I think I'd be wheeling a keg around with me with the shit hooked up like a hospital I.V. But that's just me and I'm old enough to remember when this kind of crap was inconceivable. If my political party and its leaders were palling around with Putin and selling us out to the fucking Russians, with every day being a constant drumbeat of one dumb-shit scandal after another I'd be downing Vicodin by the handful and washing it down with shitty boxed wine, for sure.

But, functionally, who made this possible? Republican voters, that's who. Much has been made in recent years of the decline in health, income and life expectancy of non-college-educated, often older conservative white people, who have increasingly formed the core of the Republican coalition. But, who did this to them? Who created their declining fortunes and conditions? THEY did, with no small amount of help from the politicians and rich people they supported, who gutted their Unions, outsourced their jobs to other countries, offered them nothing but racism in return and then walked away with a fat roll of flash money, laughing all the way to the bank. You know, I'm just sayin' when a guy from that party is running on giving people jobs?

Color me suspicious, there's got to be a catch.

These people drink more alcohol, eat more bad food, make worse decisions on average, practice more unsafe sex, smoke more cigarettes, and use more pornography than the rest of us do, on average.

...And Trump wants to kill drug dealers, or possibly even users? I wonder if he realizes that a majority of the dealers driving this problem are White and so are most of their customers...and you can bet the doctors over-prescribing the stuff and the corporations that make it won't get in much trouble.

So where is there any hope in all this mess? What's in if for anybody who doesn't already make seven figures? If "Make America Great Again" is such a good thing and is working, then why are so many Americans still dying of drug overdoses and despair?

Trump inverts King's famous statement in his most famous speech, and hews out of the mountain of hope a stone of despair...

And that stone of despair drags his own people down...which he's fine with because it creates more desperate suckers ready to believe his crap.

And people, up to and including Congressional Republicans, keep buying it, not just from Trump but from Republicans...both the congressional and political activist types...as well.

Like I said, Trump is a mirror, but stop looking at him and look at yourselves.

Here's a hint, you can't blame this problem on People of Color.

But they were the ones who came up with a solution...50 years ago...

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exhalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims' pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that; let freedom ring from the Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" ~Martin Luther King Jr.

I'll take that over anything that Art Jones or Donald Trump has on offer.

Freedom, for anybody other than themselves, is the last damned thing they care about or want...and they wonder why drugs and despair claim their followers?

I can tell them why.