Do we still imagine our spoken word or signatures as proof of and bond to character -- the very tie that binds all together -- instead of leaking pipelines, lead laden water and sweltering income gap?
Imagine our joy to the world and peace on earth season defined by a greedy Grinch person of the year, complaining it's not man of the year. Imagine a holiday season more depressed by an election than a great recession. Then imagine feeling forgotten, suicidal or apathetic -- meandering through a trumped America.
Imagine the hate camouflaged in calculations by extremists like Brigitte Gabriel, David Duke and Chris Jankowski, playing ring around the roses with our thinking for ourselves -- blinded to the true reality of their numbers game.
Yes, a nation so conceived as all-inclusive, founded on an exceptionally good idea, producing a promising population filled with the potential for being a Home of the Brave and Land of the Free melting pot, can be duped and diminished by a comparatively small number of its own citizens -- as happened in the 1930's: Great Purge in the Soviet Union and Germany's reaction to the Treaty of Versailles -- but in 21st century America?
Yes, if the silent majority respond to the fear and bigotry of the popular vote minority, with a huge sigh of, wait and see.
Arguably, with the advent of 24/7 news, The Fourth Estate surrendered its responsibility to protect the public trust with timely factual updates, when it traded in truth for gossip and David Brinkley, Chet Huntley and Walter Cronkite for Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck -- choosing instead, to cater to the whims of an audience self-hypnotizing in an echo chamber of, me first.
It's not We the People who forgot the Rust Belt, Coal Miners or manufacturing jobs. It's the towering billionaires who, having bled dry industries that were the core of middle American labor, have moved on to their next assault: controlling all three branches of government.
Spoiler Alert: We don't need a Russian puppet in the White House any more than we needed a Russian puppeteer to steal our presidential election. Since Tuesday November 5, 1968, our elections have been stolen, by candidates lying to get elected, voters lying to themselves by believing the false promises of political slogans like, bringing back the coal industry or, take the oil -- by politicized computer technology, paperless voting machines, Supreme Court and those divorced from our electoral process, by choice, Voter ID laws or Gerrymandering.
Fake News is a Hoax, lying in wait, to profit politically and financially from the vulnerable and gullible. Those who feed on fake are doomed to be under informed, and failing to logically think things through, become victims of doubling down on all we like sheep affirmations, absent seeking the truth that sets us free.
Without faith in ourselves, as a people, we invite treachery to prevail and erode our democratic republic: baring the promises of Lady Liberty to an ever-increasing clinched corporate fist.
Now, having elected the very Goliaths who abandoned them, imagine Americans, who imagining themselves forgotten, slowing realizing, they forgot to use their vote as David used his sling.
We either embrace Peace on Earth or Fake News; United We Stand or deny constitutional equality to women while mass incarcerating minorities.
The real persons of the year are the peaceful majority, the Hidden Figures, who stand united in civility and, like Katherine Johnson and John Glenn, bring a renewed thirst for knowledge , evolving ideas and refreshed individuality to the table of humanity -- inviting all to share in the feast of our diverse genius.
