This week we’re reading articles about debates and discussions taking place as the GOP wing of the elitist partisan sham prepares it’s national “platform.” Once upon a time, it made sense to assume that the word “platform” was a metaphor for the place where members of the GOP stood together in their commitment to issues that affected the common good of the nation. Members of the party, including of course its chosen candidates for office, pledged to support the platform. Its terms provided a basis for holding candidates accountable for the fidelity with which they represented the integrity of party faithful if and when they won election to office.
These days, anyone with the integrity to base their conclusions on actual experience must reject the assumption that the preparation of the GOP platform, and the document that results from it, are anything more than an exercise in manipulative propaganda. In the last several election cycles, events took place during the convention, and even in feature speeches from the podium, that irrefutably demonstrated this fact.
For example, at the GOP convention in 1996, which I attended as one of the candidates Bob Dole defeated for the GOP’s nomination for President, the GOP platform reiterated the party’s strong commitment to the defense of innocent life. Meanwhile, during the convention itself, Colin Powell proclaimed his support for the SCOTUS’s anti-Constitutional jurisprudence, extending legal protection to a so-called “right” to murder our nascent posterity in the womb. As Powell proclaimed his self-satisfied opposition to the party’s strongly pro-life platform stance, the image that was broadcast live to the public focused on a claque of people seated in a reserved section of the audience, who affirmed his words with their applause.
But in the vast auditorium, though few vocally expressed their disapproval, most of the delegates stirred restlessly, perhaps in shock or sullen dismay, I could not tell. But the impression of well-intentioned people, being ruthlessly manipulated for propaganda purposes, has never left my mind. It was one of the seeds of doubt which grew into the realization that our so-called two-party system has degenerated into a sly version of the sham partisan politics the Soviets allowed in some Eastern European countries before their Empire disintegrated.
Nowadays party loyalty is no longer a matter of being faithful to a platform adopted in view of the nation’s common good. Political battles are squabbles over power, among individuals who do and say whatever is likely to secure them the opportunity to occupy (or distribute) the seats of government power. Tragically, events over the past several decades have made it increasingly clear that neither politics nor the government itself are any longer governed by Constitutional allegiance or constraints. They are ruled instead by an all-consuming ambition for power.
Because ambition rules this government of, by and for the ambitious few, it does have a constitution of sorts. It is dictated by the expedient imperative of keeping the factional competition amongst themselves within bounds that allow them to enjoy its fruits while proliferating opportunities to pass it around amongst themselves. The aim of elitist faction government is not to unite the people, or perpetuate their opportunity for self-government. It is to divide the people, by means of mutual fear and intimidation, preoccupying them with threats that will eventually be used to justify imposing military discipline on the society as a whole.
Of course, people subject to military discipline are bound by a chain of command anchored in the decision-making authority of some commanding general’s will. In the quickly advancing ruin of America’s Constitutional republic, the Chief Executive becomes the locus of that formally singular will. Though still presented in the context of the separation of powers, the Presidency has actually become the key instrument of the only consolidated will still at work in the American political process- the will of the powers-that-be in control of the elitist faction’s money, media and corporate resources (both inside and outside of what we formally recognize to be the government).
Representation of the people as a whole was the principle of the Constitution ratified during America’s founding era. It was implemented by elected officials selected directly by the deliberate choice of the people, or else upon approval by their elected representatives. The principle of the elitist faction’s government is pre-selective demagoguery. It is embodied in personalities vetted for their proven and inveterate allegiance to the elitist faction’s self-perpetuating scheme of competitive ambition. They must also have demonstrated the pliable will and competence to represent themselves to the people at large in whatever disguise is most likely to foment and exploit their fears and resentments.
After divisively abusing illegal immigrants and Muslims as whipping boys to promote his patently false credentials as a champion of U.S. National sovereignty. Donald Trump excoriates the similarly false and divisive agenda of “Black Lives Matter,” decrying that elitist spawned organization as “divisive” because it memorialized the perpetrator of the murderous attack against Dallas’s officers of the law. Meanwhile, after being corruptly shielded from responsibility for the consequences of her own egregious and even fatal (in the case of the Benghazi debacle) breaches of national security Hillary Clinton purports to criticize Donald Trump as dangerous to the safety of the United States.
These incongruous displays epitomize the elitist faction’s demagogic ideal. No matter the facts, or the shameless inconsistency of words and deeds, the demagogic personality brazenly morphs into what guise the moment requires, in order to give the appearance of partisan conflict to a process that benefits the elitist faction no matter which Party demagogue wins this or that election.
However, the whole process is a lie, worthy of the Father of lies Christ speaks of in Scripture. These lying personalities are served up as the focal points for partisan allegiance, precisely because they offer no firm and principled commitment to issues pursuant to the common good. Stands once formulated in light of the premises of God endowed right and rights, including liberty, are now embraced or discarded exclusively in service to the will-to-power of the ambitious few.
The Democrat Party long ago openly surrendered to the power obsessed ideologies of the left. Their embrace of the specious, false “right” to murder our nascent posterity signified as much. But there was still a body of people in the United States that refused to abandon the self-evident truths, rooted in respect for the authority of God. This was the body of Christ.
For a time, its members were accepted in the GOP, on terms that allowed them to strive to represent Christ’s allegiance to God, and God alone. Their trust in God empowered them to advocate right action with fearless disregard for human might. Such faith proved time and again to be the bedrock foundation for the life and politics of the American people. This was the body of Christ. For a time, it was accepted in the GOP, and could strive to represent Christ’s allegiance to God and God alone.
But now many of them are embracing of Donald Trump. They are doing so despite much evidence from his past life, and his current words and actions that, more even than previous GOP nominees, he simply rejects America’s God-revering founding premises. GOP partisans who purport to represent the body of Christ have thus surrendered their first and singular allegiance to God and His justice. Yet Christ kept faith with it, though it meant losing a fateful worldly election, and apparently his life withal. However cleverly they phrase or justify their surrender, their labored and inadequate attempts to justify it, in terms of Christ’s logic, prove that they have let fall the standard of God in our politics.
But if citizens professing the name of Christ have let it fall, what hope is there for the nation’s survival, much less the restoration of its true greatness? I cannot help but hear the words of the hymn, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is shifting sand.” As America drifts ever more deeply into that sand, the only hope is for Christian citizens to return, against the odds, to their first love, their first reliance, their first and only hope, which is in God and Jesus Christ. For apart from God, the union, good conscience and true liberty of the American people are failing; And they will fail in fact irreparably, no matter what words some specious “platform” uses to deceive us as they pass away.