2001: A Grace Odyssey

The television in my house never gets turned on in the morning unless there's some earth-shattering event taking place. And if there weren't any Simpsons, it might never get turned on at all. This year had the power flowing early twice. The first was Inauguration Day.

Even though this family had voted independent we had rallied hard for the legitimate winner, George W. Bush, and hard rallying was what was needed. We are of the side that knows that the U.S. Supreme Court simply upheld the law, and not twisting with the belief that a coup was enabled by said body of Justice. Having lived through two attempted coup d'etat myself, I know the difference. That is what we might have seen had the real attempted theft of the Presidency been successful. It would not have been a coup by "rich oil men", either, but by We The People.

And so on January the 20th I woke up and immediately grabbed the remote to find the televised ceremony. Was it really going to happen? Might Clinton actually, really leave? I had to witness it to be sure. And witness it I did, surprised by my euphoria, but not by my sense of relief.

Since that day, Dubya has done much to win my heart, to the chagrin, I think, of some of my fellow travelers. I have gazed long and hard at just the things I want to see, some say, and have overlooked the Swiss in the cheese. Perhaps.

There is a little rift in the Right. Those who peer too long and hard at the holes are labeled "tin-foilers", a slur at the paranoia that might lead one to wrap themselves in aluminum head gear to fend off government mind control rays. The 'foilers call their detractors "sheeple", dull, mindless grazers of the pap of propaganda. I find myself meandering through the mush of the middle ground.

The second time our TV, and I, got the AM wake-up was on my spouse's birthday. It was six in the morning but I answered such an early telephone ringing as my father-in-law lives on the East coast. The call was expected. But the dialogue wasn't, nor was it celebratory. It was September the 11th. The television stayed on for three days straight. A cake was never baked.

And since then the accusations of perpetration have flown as fast and furious as a hijacked jet. The predictable canard that "the Jews did it", and the just as expected "the Feds were behind it". To both fingers pointing I say, "Would it matter?"

I saw the face of the perpetrator. The face in the cloud of smoking destruction. Pure Evil. Where's the Church Lady, now that I finally need "her", now that I find the fleshly pawns to be immaterial.

When wars are long over and the Truth, that notorious first casualty, has resurrected itself, then, on occasion, comes a different tale to be told. But when a war is going on, the story given is the script to be followed, or be swallowed up by the clutching at straws.

Besides, radical Islamists aren't such a tough bogeyman to swallow. Why shouldn't we, their great enemy, finally witness first hand the destruction they are demonstrating all over this war torn globe? Whether or not someone on the "inside" is helping them out or not, they're here, amongst us, aided by any that would like to see the demolition of Individual Liberty, be they purposeful and on the Federal payroll or casual and on some University's tenure. Or they just might be working on their own. I doubt they need the CIA or the FBI in the Philippines or Indonesia or Israel or a host of other terror-wracked territories.

Anyway, I have picked my battlefields, the Left-wing media and the gun grabbers, enemies with faces and places and email addresses and telephone numbers.

I'd also like to focus on those things that bring me joy, my family and my friends, the renewed sense of Patriotism in the land of the Free, more first-time gun purchases, "Let's roll!" as a refrain. Things that give me hope.

I fell to my knees the night of the VH-1 tribute to the firefighters of 9/11. The Internet may not provide the best visuals but I still clearly heard the boos drown out the drone of Hillary Clinton, and I thanked a mighty God for a new day truly dawning in America. However, editors are already at work to erase that joy, the hard copy of that honesty on the road to revision, which they'll fail to mark as The Sycophant Edition, with cheers now replacing the jeers. Little do they realize the skirmish they have started. That's the kind of fight I like.

And fight those things I'll continue to do, with zest and zeal. I'll leave the ethereal in the ether and the wraiths to their reserved and deserved wrath. There are too many real people that need a real response.

The unseen enemy wages war not only on skyscrapers but on the heart as well, and therein is the ultimate, eternal battle. Finding humility when the soul swells itself with pride, countering fear-led greed with the gift of generosity, appreciating rather than envying, having compassion rather than seething with anger, controlling the driving of lust, tempering the inner piggy, prodding the pace of the sloth.

And, anyway, Christmas dinner made for an abundance of leftovers, at least a pound of uneaten ham, half a rack of roast beef, a ton, it seemed, of turkey. I used all the Reynolds in the house to wrap it all up. If I seem to be having a baaaaaaad reaction to reality I can, at the very least, blame it on the vulnerability of my unprotected mind.

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