Walking Away From The Shining City (Reason For The Season, Seven.)

It was right here, in the waters around us, where the American experiment began. As the earliest settlers arrived on the shores of Boston and Salem and Plymouth, they dreamed of building a City upon a Hill. And the world watched, waiting to see if this improbable idea called America would succeed. More than half of you represent the very first member of your family to ever attend college. In the most diverse university in all of New England, I look out at a sea of faces that are African-American and Hispanic-American and Asian-American and Arab-American. I see students that have come here from over 100 different countries, believing like those first settlers that they too could find a home in this City on a Hill—that they too could find success in this unlikeliest of places. ~Barack Obama

Yesterday, Brittney Griner was released from captivity as a Russian hostage, traded in the UAE for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout. By the time I saw this, she was wheels-up from UAE and on her way home. She'll be home and life somewhat back to normal by Christmas. Good for her. 

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas, Brittney.

There simply is no other appropriate response.

In the military I was taught the ethic that we Leave No One Behind. It's as simple as that. We're all Americans, period. You either believe that, or you don't. You believe in freedom, or you don't. There can be no half measures. In the Battlespace, civilian friendlies aren't exempt from this, either. 

And I've known enough old men whose minds and souls never left the Bocage country of northern France, or the bright and sunny South Pacific, or the jungles of Vietnam, to know that war is a hard enough thing to deal with when those ethics are observed. My Grandpa never quite got over that he was the last man picked for the carrier air group of his first ship, the USS Natoma Bay. The next cadre up went to the USS St. Lo, which was sunk by a Japanese Kamikaze during the battle of Leyte Gulf. I heard the same stories over and over, about the Battle off Samar, the interminable CAS (Close Air Support) runs covering the Marines retreating from the Chosin Reservoir during Korea, and even a few stories about the very early parts of the Vietnam war as a senior officer aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard.

But we should not forget that adversity comes in all different kinds, too.

Why should an athlete, a civilian, unjustly imprisoned to serve as a hostage to be ransomed to the West for concessions because of a genocidal war be treated any differently? She didn't volunteer to be put in that kind of position!

We're either all Americans or we're not.

You don't have to care about or like Brittney Griner, but no one deserves to be left to die in a Russian Gulag. I don't give a damn who they are or what you think they did or didn't do.

And it's a safe bet the Russians, on the other hand, don't give a damn about Viktor Bout.

Since they didn't release Paul Whelan, it's likely they're holding out in case some other high profile Russian asset gets popped for espionage, or whatever. We'll get him back, as we must, it'll just take more time. It's worth noting that Whelan's family signed off on the Griner deal.

But it's absolutely a core value of the modern Right that some of us aren't "real" Americans. Some people should be left behind so that the fortunate can feel more fortunate. That, hell, entire nations and peoples simply are not fit to exist for no better reason than some "Great Leader" decided that they should not.

I've still not gotten an answer from any "Conservatives" on what happens when Vladimir Putin decides that America should not exist.

The hatred for Brittney Griner that I've seen is purely because she's a gay Black woman. The hatred for Ukrainians that's so in vogue among "Conservatives" now is only because Vladimir Putin...who they admire...has decided that Ukraine should be erased and its people exterminated. These fucking people look at Russia...which is still losing the war and is reverting to Communism in all but name...and the American "Conservatives" see Goodness and Strength in that?

And they see their own fellow Americans, particularly their fellow citizens of Color, or who are LGBT, or who have different politics, as enemies to be destroyed. How fucked up is that?!?!

Reagan Wept.

If you want a better country, you have to be a better citizen.

Together we rise, or none of us do. 

We're either that Shining City On A Hill, or we're not. There can be no half measures. 

It's the fucking Christmas season, can't you fuckers stop being dicks for one damn day??

Слава Україна!

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it, and see it still. ~Ronald Reagan

Six

Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is his name:

That strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress.

They hate him that rebuketh in the gate, and they abhor him that speaketh uprightly.

For as much therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.

For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.

Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.

Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate: it may be that the Lord God of hosts will be gracious unto the remnant of Joseph.

~Amos 5:8-15