The Ship of State

The foundering of the ship of state on the shoals of tyranny

I am impressed this Sunday Morning - which feels strangely like a Monday - by how little energy I have for continued debate and argument. I like to count patience among my scarce virtues but it has severe limitations.  I realize in a sudden flash that something which occurred on my 30th Birthday has  turned out to be an urgent message.

On this day I went out to our then rural mailbox early that morning. The mailbox was about a half a mile down a dirt road in the mountains. Our nearest neighbor amidst the Sierra Nevada forest was at least a mile. I opened the mailbox after noticing that there was a fresh rifle shot clean through it. Inside was a package - also with a rifle shot through and through. It was a Birthday gift from my mother. It was a copy of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock with same bullet hole piercing every millimeter.

Although perhaps I should have I didn’t at the time regard this as an omen. However it does impress me as precisely that today.

I wrote patiently over the past few days in comments and posts but these may well have been errors. One of the obvious issues here is the quality of our internet forums. While I praise SubStack for their ongoing support of free speech there are areas in which the structure could be improved to carry forward the intent and content each writer offers, especially when we become immersed within long involved commentary sections.

There is a reason that Thomas Paine is one of my all time favorite authors. Paine, a British Immigrant to the American British Colonies in Revolutionary times, began to lose his patience. There can be a certain inspiration that arrives in the midst of impatience and if we must accept impatience let it always be like Paine’s.

Paine recognized to his eternal credit and America’s fortune that Americans were busy, distracted, and also impatient. Americans at the time faced all kinds of problems. These were not dissimilar to those we encounter today.  But to Paine’s eternal credit he never lost patience with the fact that we the people may be credited with enormous common sense. Common Sense became the title of his famous work which perhaps more than many others set the tone for the American Revolution. It was only a pamphlet but it helped change the course of history

In 2022 the problems we face are more a matter of degree and scope. The big problems are larger, more comprehensive and more threatening to our futures than those of 1776. They are threatening to the entire planet not simply the United States. However as an American I focus here on the United States. As Thomas Paine reflected so clearly, the cause of America concerns the universal and applies to all mankind:

“The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances have, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all lovers of mankind are affected, and in the event of which their affections are interested. The laying a country desolate with fire and sword, declaring war against the natural rights of all mankind, and extirpating the defenders thereof from the face of the earth, is the concern of every man to whom nature hath given the power of feeling; of which class, regardless of party censure, is”

This will be brief and directed from whatever common sense I still possess. The metaphor I prefer today is one involving the ship of state. Whereas Paine was reflecting on a revolution of British Colonies we face the fact that instead of facing tyranny from another nation we face it at home. There’s likely a great case to be made for us facing tyranny from without but the very thing the Founding ancestors most feared was that it would indeed rise within our own ranks. I’m not aware that they ever imagined such a morass of tyranny from so many causes as we face in 2022.

So, to be brief and focus on the major issue. As I flounder like everyone else it is clear it is a shipwreck.  Unlike the illustration above there are not any people on the land to rescue us from ourselves. It’s up to us onboard the ship.

First task is to recognize the problem. We’re aboard a sinking ship and yet we are easily distracted from the danger of the rocks on which we founder. It seems we are more likely to argue about the presence of the splintering wood beneath our feet than to know what to do. This is called the fog of war and undoubtably contributes to the situation.

The situation presented to us involving the Supreme Court leak is the perhaps the most recent distraction. These distractions offered by various lightening rods such as

• the controversies related to  former President Donald Trump and the 2020 US Elections,

• unrestrained immigration,

• the Covid 19 virus,

• the forcing of mask wearing and vaccines on those who would defend bodily integrity and liberty,

• the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the subsequent involvement of the US and allied nations in the Ukraine,

• and this most recent Supreme Court leak

All these serve as convenient distractions from the shipwreck. They are meant to affect us personally and are intentional.

These hot button issues are warnings that we are on the rocks and face tyranny at every hand. We will drown if we don’t use common sense to face the reality of the wreck.

In order to stay faithful to the original intent and to remain brief I’m going to leave it here, Although I may write further about these red flag issues I’m not going to engage in them now. I refer those who would expose further to my previous posts.