There is a blockbuster movie playing in the theaters now about soldiers trying to find their way home from a pointless ten year Mideast war foisted on them by the whims and selfish desires of their leaders. The seemingly endless war dragged on for ten years at great sacrifice to many soldiers where the only benefit of winning accrued to a king. Sound familiar?
Yes, we are currently engaged in a pointless war of choice in the Mideast (no, it is not an “excursion”) that has escalated over five months at such great cost. So many lives have been cut short, billions of dollars have been spent, energy and commodity prices have been greatly inflated, and the terror of destructive bombs has rained down on infrastructure throughout the Middle East that will have to be rebuilt at great expense. What a mess has been initiated by an ignorant leader and his illusion to have a quick Venezuelan win for his own political benefit and glory.
READ: Debunking the Myth of America’s Military Victory Culture: From Korea to the Strait of Hormuz
But as horrific as the war in Iran is, what is even more disturbing is the almost ten year attack waged by Donald Trump, MAGA, and complicit or silent GOP leaders (we are looking at you Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick) on the soul, spirit, and ideals of America.
This authoritarian movement has for ten years now (even during the Biden administration) attacked the fundamental character of our beloved home, America. We have seen our Constitution and rule of law constantly violated with arbitrary presidential edicts that went unchallenged by the president’s party leaders. Freedom of the press has been attacked, the Department of Justice has been weaponized to charge the president’s political enemies with absurd crimes, and history and the concept of truth itself have been whitewashed to conform with the movement’s racist and political agenda. Faith in our electoral system has been relentlessly attacked with lies of massive voter fraud that have even inspired an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power. Agencies, which had proudly worked towards expanding scientific knowledge, have been gutted, as well as agencies which so nobly provided food and medicine to those in need around the world. I could fill pages with the extensive attacks of this ten year war against the ideals of America.
But what is most horrid and cruel is this administration’s unjust and inhumane immigration policy where innocent people are rounded up by masked armed men and thrown into crowded detention centers that echo the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. People there are denied needed medical care and drugs, sanitary conditions and food are abysmal, and several have chosen suicide to escape from the prospect of an endless detention. Parents are separated from their children and people are deported to countries strange to them or to their home countries from which they have fled fearing torture or death. Are you happy your tax dollars are being spent to create this hellish horror scene? Are we great again?
READ: ICE Drops Plan to Convert 2 Pennsylvania Warehouses Into Detention Centers
Recently I went to a vigil in Doylestown where the names of all the innocent people, who were either killed by ICE on our streets or in the camps, were read followed by beautiful mournful songs of both despair and hope. Hearing the names of the fellow human beings who were so mercilessly mistreated that they died an early death made me weep for them and also weep for the emerging death (suicide?) of America. I realized as I drove home in the dark that these roads were no longer in my true home. I saw that the country I once loved was dying and I despaired that I would never find my way home again.
Then a song from the 1960s came on the radio, aptly sung by a band called Blind Faith (which is something we all need to believe we have so we can and will end this attack on America.) It was called “Can’t Find My Way Home,” a mournful plaintive song about the theme of being lost, yet so deeply wanting to return to what was once treasured:
“But I can’t find my way home
Still I can’t find my way home
And I ain’t done nothing wrong
You are the reason I’ve been waiting so long
Somebody holds the key
But I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time
And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home.”
In the Odyssey, it takes the hero Odysseus ten more long years of hardship and danger to find his way home. I hope that we do not have to wait ten long years to return to the America we love. I do not want to suffer through the land of lotus eaters where we forget the America we once loved by devouring the lies and rhetoric of fascism. I do not want to suffer through being in a strange land where men are turned into disgusting pigs with no justice done for their misogyny and gluttony. I do not want to suffer through a terrifying land where a huge monster with bad vision kills innocent sailors. As I drove home to Newtown, I knew I wanted to go home to the America I love as soon as possible without encountering any more such horror shows.
Hopefully, as the song of yearning to return home hints, you are the key. We have an election in November that we must win so we do not have to suffer another ten long years of wretched wandering after ten years of this horrible war on America. In three months the midterm elections can restrain these attacks on the America we love. Please do whatever you can to see that we return home to that real American dream. We must elect leaders who will work tirelessly to end foolish foreign wars and fight passionately to create an empathetic American democracy under the rule of law, with liberty, freedom, and justice for all, as soon as possible. Together, like Odysseus, we will find our way home.
