The Civil War: The Gettysburg Address

9 AM London, South West 8, Vauxhall I am listening to BBC Radio Four. It is an interview of Barak Obama with broadcaster David Olusoga. This is followed by a 1987 interview of Joe Biden recorded with David Frost. I would urge everyone to tune into Radio Four on line and listen to those interviews, which I’m sure will be available to listen again. The aspirations and thoughts of these men are at least worth a hearing. It certainly demonstrates why they were elected and gives some hope to future generations.

 

What is more to the point, today is the 19^th November 2020. On this same day in 1863, 157 years ago, the then President, Abraham Lincoln, made a speech at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His spoke just 271 words in about 2 minutes.

How prophetic Lincoln’s words now seem, with over a quarter of a million dead to a pandemic ravaging the country and the world, which a self-obsessed leader refused to acknowledge or try seriously to do anything about. “It’ll all go away” He cries, and in his wake, supremacists and fantasists roam the streets shouting lies and obscenities, with assault rifles slung on their backs. A petulant school yard bully, with his acolytes, who’s had his candy taken away from him. MAGA – Meet America’s Greatest Ass-hole.

 

What I see increasingly on newscasts in the United Kingdom are the loud and ugly demonstrations of people refusing to accept the results of the election, promoted by a captious President who persistently refuses to accept reality. He would rather cause more division and violence and burn the house down, than behave in the manner befitting and expected of his office. He is the root cause of a dangerous and current civil war of mostly words at the moment but can so easily get out of hand. The spark to enflame is worryingly ever-present in the United States.

 

 

At some point, surely, American Citizen’s must realise “The Whole World is Watching”. It is an unseemly and embarrassing spectacle of prodigious proportions. The fact that these images are so terrible, is amplified by the lack of images of leading citizens decrying these demonstrations. I accept that showing solitary figures excoriating these repugnant displays, is not as cinematic as the howl of the mob, but there must be some way for the true majority of American citizens to make their feelings felt and heard, without resorting to the same tactics, and not by just waiting it out, hoping it will come to an end on the 21^st January 2021. There must be some way to make the media show the other side, again without resorting to counter demonstrations and confrontations. Perhaps I am being naïve. There was a bit of election celebration in front of the White house on the day, but not much since then.

 

We now get the likes of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on our screens.  The fact is that it appears the populace of Georgia have selected Mr Biden as president, and Georgia’s 14 congressional district has elected Mrs Greene. It is something one has to accept. It must also show that, if there had been fraud, she most assuredly would not have been elected. How anyone with a modicum of thought could have voted for her is baffling, but clearly not to Georgia’s 14^th Congressional District. I am sorry if I demean the folk of Catoosa and Chattooga County (amongst 10 other Counties, including Pickens and Polk) but honestly ??

But this is a day of remembrance and celebration of the creation of a New Nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

In seven days time we're supposed to give thanks to that proposition.