The outside world
By Josh Resnek
During the tenure of nearly every American president from Washington to Lincoln, America was a slave-keeper democracy.
Black men and women were sold to cotton farmers and planters down south to work without freedom as beast of burden.
This means from the formation of our first government in 1776 until Lincoln emancipated the slaves in 1863, people were bought and sold like property.
Hard to grasp, really, considering what we are taught in school as part of our national history.
Washington was the largest slave-holder in the land when he died. Lincoln would rather have died than own a slave.
Until President John F. Kennedy came along in 1962, blacks couldn’t attend school at the University of Alabama.
The Justice Department of the United States did nothing to alter this situation. In other words, all those finely trained and highly educated legal minds dedicated to upholding the US Constitution, couldn’t find the legal excuse to endorse the idea that all men are created equal – that is – until JFK ordered his brother the US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to send the National Guard and US Marshalls down to Alabama to allow blacks to enter the university to change the world – and he did.
The Justice Department is not, and has not always been the last best hope of this country.
The Attorney General of the United States works for the president – even if the president is Donald Trump and you hate him.
At the time JFK appointed his brother the Attorney General, conspiracy theorists were claiming the Kennedy’s were taking over the government, that the government would fall and democracy would be at an end if blacks were allowed to enter the University of Alabama.
Bobby Kennedy didn’t let his brother down. He didn’t let down the black people of this nation.
Despite the entire Justice Department standing against him, Bobby Kennedy did his magic and paid the price – he was assassinated on national television while running for president in 1968.
Fast forward to this week in Washington DC.
To imagine even for a moment that American democracy is over because Attorney General Barr rejected the sentencing of the president’s friend Roger Stone is a stretch.
That the president pardoning Stone is an injustice is another stretch as such a pardon given by the president is not only allowed but guaranteed by the Constitution if the president so wishes.
To claim democracy is at the edge of collapsing because Stone’s sentencing has been questioned by the Attorney General is frankly ridiculous.
And then Barr criticizes his boss the president and tells him point blank he needs to stop tweeting about Justice Department business, the calls from the Democrats is for Barr to resign!
The Justice Department is not apolitical.
Many lawyers in the Justice Department have an axe to grind just the way it was when they didn’t raise a finger to help out black people in Alabama almost 60 years ago.
There are no heroes in the Justice Department or the Department of Stat where lawyers and ambassadors think they don’t work for the president.
The president sending Colonel Vinman back to the Pentagon is considered another grave injustice by the world of bureaucrats who believe they run the country – not the president.
Virtually no one recalls recent history.
When Harry Truman had a few run-ins with General Douglas MacArthur, he removed him from his leadership position during the Korean War.
Can you imagine, Truman removing MacArthur, one of the greatest warriors of the 20th Century for this nation when we were at war?
And why did he remove him?
Because Truman didn’t like MacArthur.
Truman didn’t just remove him. He fired him and humiliated him to show him he was the boss.
Everything seems upside down in today’s world.
There are no heroes. No leaders. No leadership.
The real heroes are all of us simply struggling through the realities of our lives in this nation during a time of plenty.
We are the real heroes just trying to take care of ourselves, our loved ones, our kids and our friends.
Every message is muddled these days.
The best ideas are all questioned and at times ridiculed.
We have been trained to trust no one and to believe nothing.
What a world.
Yet we should all thank God – all people of color and race, all religions, whites and blacks and Hispanics and Asians and Africans and Europeans and Central Americans and Mexicans, all of us here, that we are in the United States of America.
It doesn’t really get much better in this cold hard and relentless world than what America has to offer.