With no end in sight, today’s world rushes towards us at a torrent pace that is upending our lives, expectations and dreams.  Covid-19, George Floyd, Trump, the election, Black Lives Matter, (BLM) rioting, looting, cop-hating, cities on fire; how do we synthesize this while living a normal life?  In our fitful dreams we struggle between the image of a made-for-TV apocalypse while hoping it is only a nightmare that will end.  The conscious divide between reality and fantasy tests the sanity of us all, hoping we awaken from nothing more than a bad dream yet awake we are.

The quiet Christmas and bountiful New Year enjoyed a few hundred days before seems like a past lifetime someone else experienced and for which we wistfully reminisce, forlorn observers peering through a snow-globe.

We all want our lives back.  We want normalcy re-established.  We demand law and order.  We need the peace and quiet-enjoyment that girds American society by ensuring her reason and sanity.  We can’t think straight without peacefulness in our lives.  We need this space to focus, to reason, to fathom our situations and make good choices for ourselves.  This can’t happen in the midst of mayhem.  The chaotic and unpredictable foster bad decisions made under pressure and in haste.  We see the results of this today and every day.

The first order of business at all levels of governance is the safety and security of its citizens.  In that primary obligation, government at all levels has failed us.  Without law and order, all else is lost.  If government cannot insure this, government is useless because in the absence of law and order, it all breaks down.  Seattle, Portland, Chicago, are bellwethers to a society that is losing its moral and constitutional moorings.  A government that can’t provide law and order, but imposes its will on those who voluntarily remain orderly and law-abiding quickly becomes an oppressive enemy of the people.  We see this when the police stand down during riots but arrest church-goers for worshipping.

A triad of circumstance brings us to this pivotal and unimaginable moment in American history.  The presidency of Donald J. Trump, the pandemic of Covid-19 and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis have provided the elements that are creating a maelstrom that might well drown us and destroy our society.

The Trump presidency represents the keystone to an arch of unthinkable events for those on the Left.  Bush and the Supreme Court stole the election from Al Gore in 2000.  The Electoral College undermined the popular vote.  Obama failed to deliver on the promise of the first African-American president and Hillary Clinton was denied coronation as the first female US President with the Electoral College undermining the populous once again. 

Enter Trump; bombastic, owing no allegiance to any party or funding source, hell-bent on “draining the swamp” as not only an outsider, but an undomesticated force that cannot be manipulated.  He out-maneuvers the media so badly that he quickly garners their hatred.  He uses social media to bypass the spin doctors and connects directly with the people.  The Swamp is panicked and clueless.  His followers finally find a fighter.  As the stock market soars, unemployment in essence disappears, prosperity is obvious, the military is strong, we’re not at war and things are getting done, the Left is enraged because they were so sure of his incompetency.  Hard to argue with facts, even when Biden says he’ll take “truth” instead.

Then with less than a year to a presidential election, Covid-19 paralyses the world, shuts down the entire economy, plunges the country into double-digit unemployment, the fear of death and the uncertainty of what to do.  As the country limps along, watching as freedom is traded for safety, people become bitter, cynical and even more un-trusting of a media and a government that gets so much wrong and tramples on the Constitution.

After months of self-quarantine, no work, government bailouts and the constant stream of media noise dumping information on a weary and steadily-growing-angrier public, it takes eight minutes and 46 seconds for a video of George Floyd dying at the hands of the police to bring life back to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and launches a nationwide movement that includes rioting, looting, arson, death and destruction that hasn’t yet ceased.

Floyd was a career felon, once held a gun to the stomach of a pregnant woman, spent years in prison and likely died of complications from a fentanyl over-dose.  He is today a folk-hero to some, facts be damned.

China is responsible for the spread of the virus, if not its creation, yet Trump is blamed out of an uncontrolled hatred that simply says it is so.

The three imaginary lines of Trump, Covid-19 and BLM don’t ever converge so the equation is not solvable.  There is no compromise only victory or defeat of one ideology over the other, Left or Right.  One ideology will prevail and one will be vanquished.  The time is now and the moment is upon us.  I wish the news was better, but truth is truth and happy-endings are for fairy tales.

God bless America as we witness our own destiny as it unfolds before us, remembering the words of Thomas Jefferson in 1787 but prophetic today.  

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

That moment is upon us.