Worth Fighting For

It was already hanging by a thread, stretched thin by the galling double-standard of past absurdities.  “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky,” Bill Clinton told the nation. Years later it was Hillary Clinton’s turn, feigning confusion when asked about wiping her email server (“Like with a cloth or something?”). And then came the infamous Hunter Biden laptop and emails about “the big guy.”

Of course, nothing came of these. Zero. Zip. No accountability. Just a lingering stench, and, for about half of the country, a shaken trust in the nation’s government and the belief that no one is above the law, that there is at least an attempt at equal justice in this country.

Today, for many Americans – Americans demeaned as “deplorables” by Hillary Clinton – that trust is broken.  Trump’s indictment – allegedly for paying hush money to a porn actress, reportedly to be cast as a campaign violation – shattered it.  “Even Donald Trump should be held accountable,” brayed the New York Times – the same “paper of record” that ignored the existence of the Hunter Biden laptop for months.  The hypocrisy, the double-standard, is staggering.

Let’s be clear – if Trump broke the law, hold him accountable. He’ll have his day in court. What’s so maddening is the holier-than-thou hypocrisy of those in power.  “Believe women” we were told when Christine Blasey Ford accused Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her. Yet where was the outrage, where were the protestors, when Tara Reade accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her? January 6^th "rioters" are in jail, yet those who rioted and murdered and destroyed property in the summer of 2020 – who were often referred to by the media as “peaceful protestors” versus “rioters” – skate free?

The craziness goes on. CNN runs a caption telling us a protest is “mostly peaceful” while its correspondent reports in front of a building being ravaged by flames.  White males are told in college classrooms they are racist just because of their skin color … even though racism is the belief that people possess certain qualities simply because of the color of their skin. Adam Schiff promotes the phony Trump-Russia Dossier to the moon, telling the world there is “ample evidence of collusion in plain sight,” yet Robert Mueller spends years and millions of dollars pursuing this, only to serve up a big fat nothing-burger.

It’s outrageous. It’s depressing. And in the face of such abominations, it’s easy to give up and say, “what’s the point.”  But that feeling should be an awakening, a clarion call to fight – not to riot, not to “peacefully protest” and burn down buildings and murder shop owners and destroy our communities – but to explain to the world what really matters, to seek out the truth, to seek out justice.  Each generation experiences hopelessness. Each generation has a choice of how to deal with it.  J.R.R. Tolkien put it best.  In his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, much of which was written during the rise of Nazism and World War II, Tolkien’s Samwise Gamgee spoke words we should – we must – now take to heart: “There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it’s worth fighting for.”