Adios to Political Parties

Constitutional Debauchery

Dark Age of Reasoning

Adios to Political Parties

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            I am on a mission.

            We have had a bad week with our 80 year old perimeter fencing. The monsoon is trying its best to offer us some welcome relief, but rains have once again been spotty. Where it has rained there have been repeated rains and where it has not rained it is not just dry it is muy seco. The result is that our cow herd is “chasing green” and fences are being tested.

            Yesterday morning, we put some cows back through our gate from a neighbor’s only to find we had missed another three dry cows. We discovered them when Oscar had given me a ride back to my truck where I had jumped Bailey out. So, there we were in the rocks with a four wheeler and a pickup and trailer. We got them started even cutting them out of the neighbor’s cattle. It went well until I had to leave my wing position and get the gate open where we had crossed the first cows and where I had tied my horse. I got horseback and we got the three to the gate. We put the lead cow through and began to count the reasons we were such good cowboys.

            We didn’t count very far.

            Fifteen yards from an open gate, the lead cow acted just like her mother before and set sail with her head high like a strobe light. The other cow bailed like she had been raised by a quail hen. Needless to say, in the rocks and with a tired horse and a four wheeler, we finally decided we were doing nobody any good and would come back with fresh horses and some patience.

            I am going to pen that cow, though, and I am going to ship her.

            Dark Age of Reasoning

            The ability to deal with congressional partisans, however, is not as easy to fix.

            We are symbolically wined and dined through the election process only to be disappointed with the glaring dismissal of truth and intent. Myth exceeds reality in Washington by at least a margin of one. In the ‘70s, the democrats told us the human population increase would reach such a feverish pitch “hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death”. At least 65 million of those would be Americans dying of starvation between 1980 and 1989. Did any of us save a single news paper headline documenting such a doomsday result?

            Today, these chronic professional alarmists remain intent on serving up fear and mass hysteria over the extinction of species, particularly those losses predicated on anthropogenic global warming. If that is the case, name the demise of a single species that has been tied inexorably to global warming in the modern era.

            Their current shock warning is coming from their learned think tanks predicting the deaths of millions of Americans because of the oppositions bungling of the Affordable Care Act or its scores of alternatives. Will it happen? Most certainly people will die, but they will die whether there is an affordable health plan or the one we have now, the unaffordable health plan. Why is anybody still listening to these chumps?

            Although the republicans are not predicting extinction of any species (albeit they should be worrying about their own fall from existence), they are performing in no less splendor. When Senator Cornyn of Texas revealed that nobody is really intent on reducing the federal budget, he was probably as truthful as he had ever been to his constituents. For heavens sake, tell it like it is. Most of us would much rather hear something we didn’t like knowing it was truthful than telling us something and having no intention of performing.

            The Westerner’s discovery on Friday that the republican controlled Appropriations Committee bill for U. S. environmental public lands programs is roughly $4.3 billion more than President Trump’s budget request tells the real story. It displays not just a fundamental absence of courage, it demonstrates that getting reelected trumps (no pun intended) promises any and every day.

            That party is in the throws of glaring ineptitude. They are demonstrating many worst case nightmares and that starts with remembering it is much easier to talk than it is to commit to a course of action and defend it to their political deaths.

            Constitutional Debauchery

            Both sides stand in the shadows of the Constitution without regard to its purpose. They believe in it when they need to make a point. It gives credibility to their message regardless of intent. Three examples have been used out of context on the basis of such constitutional protections.

            The first is the promise of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Even O’Reilly used the point in a “constitutional” rebuttal before his own fall from grace. The problem is it doesn’t appear in the Constitution, but, rather, it comes from The Declaration of Independence. It isn’t law. It is a statement of passion.

            The second example is Of the People, By the People, For the People. There is no connection with this phrase and the Constitution at all. This was crafted by Lincoln in his three minute address at Gettysburg.

            The final example is  political parties. Americans have come to believe that political parties are part of the system as much as the Legislative Branch, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial Branch. They dominate the news outlets and expand the polarization of this country. The dems adhere to party marching orders as if they are automatons of the underworld. The repubs try to make sense of the Grand Old Party, but keep tripping themselves up by play acting in uniformity, a condition that is contradictory to their being.

            Both views of the absurdity of rule by mob is about to bring us to our knees. The Constitution was predicated on the sovereignty of the individual although it took until the Bill of Rights to be ratified before that little promise was remembered.

            It is time to throw off this yoke of polarization and special interest hatred that two party mob rule has brought to our Union. We need to outlaw political parties on the basis that no such mention or intention was set forth in the Constitution. Let’s see how the individual acts when he is guided solely by his conscience and abilities. If he can’t perform, limit his ineptitude to the idiots who elected him and … leave the rest of us alone!

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.