Joy of ignoring Washington politics

January 20, 2021. Remember the chant from the left four years ago, "Not my president!"? The four accompanying images, captured from a Facebook page, convey some of the foolishness of the incoming administration and their supporters.

It is good to remember that America is not only a wonderful concept, it is also an ongoing set of fifty experiments, with innovation, opportunity and justice accruing primarily at the state level, and not out of Washington. Only leftist mayors and governors, looking to DC for bailouts, handouts, and rescue, could think otherwise.

And the United States is not a single economy, just as it is not a single entity that serves as the appropriate scorecard for Covid deaths. The USA has disparate economic, geographic and political regions. For instance, were you to look at a map of the hundreds of counties in the United States, each one colored red or blue, depending on its political orientation, you get something like the ninety percent red map below.

The coastal and media arrogance assume a wholly undeserved status position of intellectual superiority, dismissive of vast portions of the country. Hate words, like 'deplorable,' come easily from their mouths, along with admonitions to the great unwashed as to how we should go green, as those same egotists climb into their private jets and energy-gobbling mansions. And they call for tearing down walls, defunding the police and imposing strict gun controls, while building walls around their own homes, hiring their own private police forces and arming their numerous personal bodyguards. The elite abhor protests against their own sacred cows but encourage violent protests against those cancelled. The elite embrace nebulous, ethereal concepts like "white privilege" and "institutional racism as indisputable givens, yet they close their eyes and ears to facts about election fraud, failed climate change predictions, and the murder -- even execution -- of unarmed protestors on the right.

Some of this parallels what comes from Rome for we Catholics. Local priests seem to be more in touch with the traditional families, the blue collared, the middle class and the working poor, while bishops in the unmanageable, chaotic, progressive cities pay homage to pro-abortion politicians, climate change scientologists, and violent protestors on the left. These same bishops congratulated the nominal Catholic upon his election; no mention as to his Catholic faith or behavior. Rome ignored and denied sexual abuse claims for so long that the charges eventually bankrupted dioceses and led to serious erosion of the church's capacity to help the poor and to serve as a moral authority.

President Biden apparently wants to give billions in relief to restaurants, contingent upon them doubling the minimum wage to, in effect, pass through the entire relief to employees and the entire cost customers who will have to pay higher prices to support this ongoing wages. One Wall opinion piece claimed this was Biden's way of "destroying the village so he can save it," when it seems for like "rebuilding the restaurants so he can destroy them."

Don't expect to see Catholic president Biden sitting as a customer in any restaurant for some time, or attending Mass, or risking going to communion (in a church where the priest may deny him the sacrament), or sitting down with a pro-life group to listen. I recall a study of those attending the 1992 presidential conventions. When asked for their religious behavior -- not just beliefs or nominal or by birth affiliation, which were not that dissimilar across Republicans and Democrats -- over 90% of those attending the Republican convention were active 'church goers,' while on the Democrat side, about ten percent were regular attendees at religious services. You may not like what Trump said, or how he said it, but you haver to admit the country prospered under his leadership, while all the time he had to fight a Democrat party and a progressive left media who rejected his presidency before he was even inaugurated, and as Trump had to deal with the divisions created by Obama.

To be reflective and fair, at least Trump was able to stem the tide for four years, doing herculean work attempting to drain the swamp. And Trump was the symptom of our national division, as the left pulled further to the left and exacerbated the racial divide with divisive policies and hate speech directed towards traditionalists and conservatives, while all the time practicing virtue signaling and identity politics. The Dems and much of the Catholic Church hierarchy abandoned traditional values and families, the middle class and the recently elevated to the upper middle class, stay at home moms, and faithful, long-time Catholics, groups that once were the heart and soul of the Democrat party.

Turn off your evening network news. Cancel your subscriptions to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (oh how the mighty have fallen, or at least leaned to the left!), tune out the political commentary focused on political differences between the two parties, and spend more time with your family, in your faith, and with your friends.

Amen.