I usually have two or three commentaries, essays, or a chapter for my book in progress at any given time and switch between them as my muse abets.

As I shifted gears from business mode to my alter-ego today, preparing to work on an existing project, a dear friend called with an enthralling idea for an article.

My dear friend Jeffrey Bennett called to propose a title fitting for this intriguing moment in America. As we discussed my current project, the appeal of his compelling recommendation took flight. Jeff piqued my interest with “Great Expectations,” and as the possibilities unfolded, the outline and theme materialized…

I frequently entertain the idea of adapting existing literary titles to my purposes, and this suggestion was to do just that.

Buckle up, buttercup…

I’m exercising my literary license before it’s revoked.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” ~ Charles Dickens’s – A Tale of Two Cities (1859)

“My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” ~ Charles Dickens’s – Great Expectations (1861)

Great Expectations follows the childhood and young adult years of Pip, a blacksmith’s apprentice in a country village. He suddenly comes into a large fortune (his great expectations) from a mysterious benefactor. He moves to London, where he enters high society.

This opening sentence reminds me of the exuberance and promise of a young, eager, fledgling republic 250 years ago; limitless possibilities, unbounded potential, and a burning desire for self-determination. The founders could fashion a representative republic based on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, where all men are created equal and no one is above the law.

They would craft a constitution to govern this republic, flexible in design and robust enough to weather the inevitable storms. It would provide for most of the eventualities they envisioned and even be amendable – adaptable as the needs changed. It established a government in three parts working in concert to prevent one from dominating the others.

The republic’s name at birth was the United States of America, but our amusing penchant for slang and patois (regional pronunciations or provincial usage) America becomes ‘Murka – coined by #43 with his Texas drawl. Another of my all-time favorites is Nukular, the patois for Nuclear.

Ya gotta love Texicans.

Our republic recently celebrated its 247th birthday as a republic, and I find myself contemplating the opening line of Dickens’s novel, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), as a parallel to our republic.

It truly is the best of times and the worst of times for our republic, as it says in the opening of Tale of Two Cities. I don’t think any sentence encapsulates the American aspirations and ambivalence better or more clearly.

We were the envy of the planet. We had everything going for us. Life was good, not perfect, but really good. Every republic has problems, and America is no different, but we were on a roll until a few years ago. We cooperated as a republic to resolve our differences and build bridges, not walls.

There are always a few elitists who believe they know better than everyone – but that’s what makes them elite! Because they are above everyone they know – they know that their way is the best and only way. Unfortunately, being elite requires steadfast narcissism as a significant personality trait. This unbridled self-assurance endows them with a planet-sized ego that can easily control anything, or so they think. It also blinds them to facts.

Interestingly, facts play no part in these lives. It’s all about feeding that gargantuan ego. Truths like – Socialism and Communism never work. Practitioners have tried myriad permutations, all failing to provide the pledged results.

These egotistical cult leaders often attract unsophisticated and gullible followers to their sect with pseudo-science and wild prophetic claims. The climate catastrophe is a salient example.

One such claim is that the polar ice caps will be gone by 2008, and the east coast will be inundated by 2012. The latest prophecy is that the earth will be uninhabitable by 2030.

This manufactured calamity is so compelling that the United Nations joined the cult. However, the impetus for this diversion from reality is not altruistic but authoritarian.

The recent Wuhan Pandemic illustrated the power of fear as a tool to usurp control. Flip-Flop Faucci and his devotees bamboozled the world with more pseudo-science and outright lies about this manufactured virus. We’re still unraveling the obfuscations years later. Since Big Brother has nearly unlimited power through weaponizing law enforcement and consolidating media control, I doubt the truth will emerge in our lifetime.

Big Brother’s comprehensive and unconditional restriction of information about JF Kennedy’s assassination is a testament to their reach and dominion. We know what they allow us to know regardless of the veracity. We are controlled.

This control promoted the rise of absolutism and authoritarianism in our republic, and this was when it all went to shit…

I have to be honest… I had Greater Expectations for our republic. Much like Pip, our opportunities were limitless, and our destiny was ours to define. And like Pip, we were side-tracked and distracted by people with a very different agenda. I find our republic’s present direction distressing and disillusioning.

We traded our liberty for security theater and the promise of a safer, more equitable republic, free from tyrannical rule and restrictive systems based on systemic and endemic white supremacy.

Many ‘Murkan’s’, including me, point an accusing finger; some even invent entities to blame for our deterioration and decline. Great Grandmother Hargis often reminded me that “pointing a finger results in several of your own pointing back at you.” Try it… notice that three fingers are pointing back. It means WE are more responsible for the situation than those we intend to blame. As Walt Kelley said in his 1971 comic strip – Pogo…

“…we have met the enemy, and he is us…”

Who can we indict for the lack of progress we call Congress other than ourselves? We hire these people to represent us to our republic; they work for us. If your performance were as abysmal as these people’s, you would be fired – and rightfully so. If your gardener, housekeeper, or mechanic did their jobs as poorly as Congress, you would not hesitate to reprimand them for their deficiencies and subsequently fire them. Yet, we continually accept shoddy performance, flimsy excuses, and deflections as justifications and alibis.

When you return these miscreants to office, you’re exacerbating the problem; you approve of their lies, unfulfilled promises, and poor performance. We sanction their graft and corruption.

Our children attend state-sponsored indoctrination centers – schools – for 12 years but can’t read, write, or perform simple math upon graduation… would you consider this a successful education? Why do we continue to sponsor the demoralization of our children? We’re not honoring our accountability to raise them as productive contributors to the republic. Why do we sanction this Marxist indoctrination?

Our children are taught that ‘Murka is systemically and endemically racist – Being white is their fault and that they are accountable for what was done to the black race. They learn that the resulting harm done decades in the past demands reparations. They’re told that the history of this country began in 1619, with the introduction of slaves, and ‘Murka was built on, and by slavery.

If sexual deviants and drag queens are part of the curriculum, and skin color is the determining factor in advancement, is this education or programming?

Our children learn that biology is a matter of choice, and they can choose not only their gender but sexual orientation at age 8. What does this say about the people running the Department of Education and Teachers’ Unions?

Is allowing biological men who identify as women to compete in female athletic competitions fair and equitable?

Is it moral to allow them to co-mingle in women’s locker rooms?

The most critical aspect of government centers on environmental equity, to the exclusion of all else. Big Brother insists it’s worth the investment of trillions of tax dollars. Does this represent funds wisely invested or pissed away?

Are the people promoting this pseudo-science following their own recommendations and requirements, or is this more “do as I say, not as I do” elitist rhetoric and hyperbole?

Our government believes – I mean it is convinced – that spending money we don’t have is acceptable and even advisable; is this fiscal responsibility?

Is this how you operate your home, business, or family?

60% of ‘Murkan’s are living paycheck-to-paycheck.

51% of Murkan’s earning over $100K per year live paycheck to paycheck.

Many are forced to decide between paying rent, insurance, food, and medical bills.

What happens… how do you react when the bill collectors or bank call about a bad check or a late payment?

Do you realize that our republic has $101 Trillion in unfunded debt? Can you even imagine a number this large?

Here are some numbers closer to a reality we can comprehend. Your portion of this debt as a taxpayer is $252,535, or as a citizen of the republic, $96,944.

Did you know that our interest payment on this debt is $213 Billion for this year? That’s only the interest – it doesn’t touch the principal amount.

Did you know that since Joe Biden took office in 2022, he’s increased this debt by $10 Trillion?

How can we condone this?

BUT… we send the same people to represent us.

We allowed and condoned the abandonment of our Constitution each time we let these Bolshevik fanatics control our republic.

Take a moment and look into the mirror…

The person looking back… is responsible!

Oh yes, as a citizen of this republic, it is our responsibility to ensure that it is appropriately managed… It’s called stewardship – the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving.

· The Christian bible contains over 2,300 verses about stewardship – it must be important.

Our personal expectations are incredibly high. We demand what we purchase, and if not delivered to our complete satisfaction, our tempers flare and our voices reach ear-splitting volumes. Yet our expectations for our elected representatives are basically nonexistent. We accept whatever they give, and modify, lower our expectations accordingly, or ignore the contract entirely.

The contract I reference is their oath of office.

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me, God.”

Partisan politics, a metastasizing tumor in the republic, emerged and captured it with sophistry and the support of a cabal of carefully placed provocateurs in crucial administrative positions.

Their “cult of personality” is a career politician named Joe Biden, a Bumbling-Stumbling-Doddering-Senile-Apparatchik-Demagogue with his finger poised on the button of nukular Armageddon. His campaign promises of Xanadu are pipedreams and rhetoric. He does the bidding of his bicoastal elite masters. There is no substance and, indeed, no pretense of realization; he never meant to follow through. Like all the apparatchik demagogues, the goal is to be elected and, once selected, to stay in office as long as possible.

Nuclear war is a specter we’ve tolerated and overlooked for over seventy-five years, and again, we’re staring down the Chinese and Russian ICBM silos of the threat. Then there’s the “B” team of Iraquistan and North Korea. All it takes is a spark to ignite a conflagration we cannot extinguish. We’ve given all of our adversaries the keys to our weapons locker and probably the launch codes as well, all to prove we’re sincere global partners.

If this isn’t enough, internal strife is created to foster a more Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable (DIE) order engineered to instigate and maintain an unbalanced society by dividing the republic. Every crisis facing ‘Murka is a fabrication, an invention specifically designed to foster division.

Remember the ancient tactic of divide and conquer? How do you think the left took over?

They instigated internal bickering, pitting us against each other, and while we were busy calling each other racists and arguing the semantics of equity versus equality, they hijacked our republic.

After listening to the mainstream media for the past few years, I’m amazed that we are not embroiled in a civil war. If the reported levels of hate and discontent are factual, ‘Murka should be scorched earth. Piles of dead and decaying bodies should be lining the street, and entire cities should be totally destroyed – uninhabitable… Yet, except for a few overblown natural disasters, ‘Merkan cities are unscathed.

There is obviously something wrong with this picture; no, adjusting the vertical and horizontal hold will not make the picture clearer or any better. OK, that was a retro-reference to old-style television sets that required manual adjustments and a funny appliance called a set-top antenna or aerial to receive the signals.

My point is that there is no way to change what you see unless you first redefine it, changing it from wrong to right – bad to good – disturbing to acceptable.

America is like the children in a nasty divorce.

Somewhere in our republic are a few families that have been spared the ignominy of a divorce. I’ve survived the pain and despair twice. The first time I lost my children, I was spared that anguish in the second. It was still torment, however.

I vividly recall the damage this did to both children. They were convinced that they were at fault and caused the split. This damage will never be undone. You cannot unspill a cup of coffee; you can only hope to clean it up. But… the damage is already done. There is a stain, the remnants of the spill. This partisan split in our republic will live in our history in infamy and perpetuity, along with the damage we’ve done to our intended ethnic balance and solidarity.

Once we unleash the racial epithets, there is no way to unsay them. It’s like spilled coffee; you never get it all back into the cup; our vision of a divided republic and the abandonment of our Constitution will never be undone or unseen. They will live in our memories and, unfortunately, depending on the victor, be recorded or misinterpreted for history; history belongs to the victorious…

My maternal Grandmother called all the assurances and pledges of unification pie-crust-promises – “easily made and easily broken;” this is my expectation from now on. I’m exhausted from the unrealized piecrust promises and assurances from Big Brother. All I ask is peaceful coexistence with my fellow citizens and a government that puts the good of the republic above everything else.

I had Greater Expectations for this republic, my America.

As I approach my twilight years, I expect the republic I swore to honor and defend to reciprocate, to keep its contract with me.

My expectations are not unusual or excessive. All I expect is what America promised all of us citizens.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, in a safe and secure republic.

Are my Expectations too Great?

July 19, 2023

~ The Author ~
Charles R. Dickens was born in 1951, is a veteran of the Vietnam war, for which he volunteered, and the great-great grandson of the noted author, whose name he shares.

He is a fiercely proud American, who still believes this is the greatest country on the planet, with which we’ve lost control and certainly our direction. He grew up in moderate financial surrounding; we’re not rich by any stretch, but didn’t go hungry – his incredibly hard working father saw to that. As most from that era, he learned about life from his father, whose story would take too long to tell, other than to say that, he is also a fiercely proud American; a WWII and Korean war, veteran Marine.

Charlie was educated in the parochial system which, demanded that you actually learn something, and have capability to retain it before you advance. He attended several universities in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree, and chased the goose further to a master’s, and has retained some very definite ideas about education in this country.

In addition, Charlie is a retired blues guitar and vocalist – a musician. This was his therapy career. Nothing brings him as much joy as playing music, and he wishes that he could make a living at it… but alas… life goes on!