Something Brother David mentioned in his response to my last piece tickled “my little grey cells‘.”

I was mulling over several possible titles that adequately express my view in this essay. I remembered something in a previous commentary. I used Plato’s coined phrase “Ship of State;” from his book Republic.

I believe my reference was our Sinking Ship of State.

Here’s something to ponder, does the captain of the Ship of State follow the maritime tradition of going down with the ship? I emphatically hope so; in our case, I would insist that he takes along his first mate… and the ship’s executive staff (cabinet members).

My comment is hyperbole, of course. I don’t wish anyone harm; I only want the crew of this American Flying Dutchman to vacate their offices before the ship sinks and takes America with it, or is it already too late…

Naturally, I hope that destroying our republic is not the end goal. Unfortunately, the only conclusion events of the past 50 years kindle are that this is the intentional ruin of America. Could anyone be that rapacious?

In the case of a replacement crew, our history is less than optimal. Our track record abrogates my hopes for improvement. The subsequent club is often worse, capsizing any aspiration of progress since parties select their successors, replacing progress with its opposite, congress.

In 1789 the Articles of Confederation made us a nation launching our ship of state. The Constitution – the document, not the warship – was ratified in 1788; it’s been our compass ever since, at least until we discarded the needle and blacked out the magnifier lens.

We declared our nation to be abiding, buoyant, and unsinkable; however, our ship of state began taking on water early on as political syndicates fought for control of the fledgling republic.

In 1911 The White Star Line launched RMS – Royal Mail Ship – Titanic. It was also declared unsinkable; tragically, it sank on April 15th, 1912, claiming 68% of the crew and passengers. Her ill-fated captain struck an iceberg resulting from a fundamental steering error, ending the Titanic’s brief life and the lives of over 1,500 Souls on Board – (SoB).

America’s modern-day American iceberg encounter is no accident. The resolve is to sink this country – our ship of state – follows a predetermined course set by an elite fascist cadre.

Emerging political parties adulterated American politics, and in 1840 partisan politics metastasized. Shortly after that emergence, they began prying the magnetic needle from our constitutional compass.

Here’s the parallel:

Both of the seemingly resilient – unsinkable testaments to man’s ingenuity proved far more fragile than ever imagined. Now the grandeur of these edifices endures as a few meager earthly remnants but are mostly misremembered, and even those are in jeopardy.

The Titanic decomposes in 13,000 feet of water and was discovered and photographed on September 1st, 1985. On the other hand, America’s charter is moldering right before our eyes, in plain sight, and its memory is being intentionally erased.

As I write this commentary, the American Constitution is being politically expunged, one article, one amendment at a time. What remains will be a nearly blank 250-year-old sheet of parchment with the title – The Constitution of the United States. Will there be an American Constitution 2.0, or will we become another totalitarian state?

RMS Titanic is an example of our engineering prowess and a reminder that nothing is indestructible – nothing is perfect, and even though we take every precaution, we’re not perfect either.

Our constitution, a magnificent theory for governance, is enshrined in a plexiglass box as a painful reminder of what was, what could have been, but will never be again. Is it any wonder they want this fundamental manuscript of America irradicated?

Let the book burning begin…

They are already in progress figuratively, coming soon to a community near you, literally!

George Washington called America “The Great Experiment” because nothing like this had ever been attempted. Every mishmash of people in history existed in fealty and compliance to a ruler. Only a few tried democracy or its permutations. We discovered that as the population grew, the democratic process became unwieldy, and as they grew economically, their rulers’ and leaders’ desires mushroomed into avarice.

Imagine pure democracy with a population of 3.9 million citizens – that was America’s population in – and their state-of-the-art communication capabilities in 1788; it could take months to tabulate votes, and by the way, fraud is not a twenty-first-century invention.

The designers of this country introduced a blended concept – The Democratic Republic – where members of the body politic selected representatives to manage the country under an appointed-elected president.

The people would have a choice… a voice… control!

Lincoln paraphrased the idea in his Gettysburg Address: “Of the people, by the people, for the people.”

RMS Titanic encountered an iceberg and sank in less than three hours; 706 survived. America hit this partisan political iceberg and began sinking almost immediately – we’ve been bailing ever since. We’ve been slowly declining for over 245 years toward our inevitable demise, but our current misleadership is doing everything in its power to hasten our journey to the bottom.

America hit the iceberg that I call partisan politics because only a tiny portion of its glacial mass is visible above the waterline; the majority remains hidden below the surface.

The partisan political solution to floundering is to drill more holes in the hull to let the water out. Like all of the other cockamamie ideas from our misleadership, it sounds good, but it is quite impractical. Little thought is given to viability, long-term impact, or significance, and little thought is given to the people.

What about – We the People?

What’s happened to this country?

We’re going down fast, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the craziness. The government wrested control and told us to sit down and STFU!

They arrest dissenters, just like all totalitarian regimes.

They jail them with fabricated charges, erase or hide evidence, and lie to protect their narrative. They instituted a two-level justice system enforced by weaponized government agencies: just like all fascists.

People are angry; they are lashing out violently, but rather than addressing the root cause, they ban the available tools because, you see, they are the cause.

It has to do with duplicity, that is:

·  deceitfulness in speech or conduct, as by speaking or acting in two different ways to different people concerning the same matter; double-dealing.

·  an act or instance of such deceitfulness.

·  Law. the act or fact of including two or more offenses in one count or charge as part of an indictment, thus violating the requirement that each count contains only a single violation.

·  the state or quality of having two elements or parts, being twofold or double.

As I read the definition above, I am acutely aware of the influences driving America to this inevitable and cataclysmic end. People can see the double standards and hear the lies despite the corporate media’s insistence that all is well in Oz.

The problem with lies is that truth eventually emerges to expose treachery, but the damage done in the meantime is incalculable.

Oh No, ANOTHER Iceberg!
Consider the brilliant idea of defunding the police and diverting those funds to Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity – DIE.

·  In fairness, the published acronym is DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, but I think DIE accurately indicates this folly’s results.

DIE’s altruistic yet implausible theory states that exclusion, inequity, and systemic racism are the root of criminal activities. If everyone were equal, illegal activities would cease. Crime rates in America have increased by 28.64% since DIE’s reemergence in 2019.

According to Clay Higgins – a US Representative – violent crime rates in 14 major cities have increased by 40% over 2021.

DIE is killing America.

The intrinsic issue with equating equity with equality is that they are different.

The semantic difference: being the same and having the same are vastly different concepts, yet we’re led to believe that they are synonyms and have other implications.

· Equality means each individual or group is given the same resources or opportunities. Equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

There I go splitting hairs – not hares again – but there is a fundamental separation in the intent of these words and their societal impact.

DIE is only one example in the cluster of twisted misinformation partisan politics spreads. There are so many that it would take several more pages to list them all. If you take the time to open your mind to alternative views, you’ll recognize that there is something rotten in the DC swamp.

Swamps exist in areas with poor drainage and sufficient water supply to keep the ground waterlogged, with a high enough supply of minerals in the water to stimulate the decay of organisms and prevent the accumulation of organic materials a self-propagating and parasitic system.

QED – This is how DC survives all attempts to drain or eliminate the quagmire.

Truth, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, so it follows that it depends on your political perspective to discern the facts, but why should we even need to wonder?

Don’t we deserve honesty from the government we pay to support?

Has dishonesty become the norm?

Is up really down?

We’re convinced that someone is lying, but who – THAT is the $41 Trillion question. There is a dichotomy here. Something cannot be accurate and false simultaneously; it must be one or the other. Left is not right, nor is right left, yet that’s precisely what we’re expected to believe.

Our border is not secure and safe if over 11.7 undocumented immigrants live in America, which does not include CPB’s 6.1 million enforcement actions and the estimated 1.2 million who eluded them. Together, the number grows to 7.3 million; the entire illegal population swells to 19 million – estimated.

Yet… the border is safe, secure, and closed.

There’s an old adage that figures lie and liars figure. The funny, not humorous, thing about statistics is they are wholly dependent on interpretation and the figures used or excluded in the calculations. Think of it like balancing your bank accounts, omitting some charges, and doubling the deposits.

·  Stated unemployment is 3.6%.

·  The number of working-age Americans is 207.7 million.

·  The inactive labor force is 99.93 million.

·  The number of unfilled jobs is 10.5 million.

·  There are 5.7 million unemployed.

So if the unemployed took these available jobs, there would be 4.8 million unemployed, plus the 99.3 million that refuse to work makes 104.1 million unemployed a far larger number than the advertised 4.8 million.

So… 47.8% of the available workforce refuses to work?

Wouldn’t that be the unemployment number?

If there are 10.5 million jobs and 99.93 million people to fill those jobs, doesn’t the actual unemployment number exceed 10%?

I admit that my math may be wrong, and I don’t exclude the diverse groups to reduce the actual number. There is no place I can find that states the real unemployment rate. Regardless of my lame attempt to make my point mathematically, it’s all a lie! It’s what the government wants us to believe.

“See… We’re doing a GREAT job…”

Oh No… ANOTHER Iceberg!!!

Over the past 800,000 years, the earth’s experienced eight cycles of ice ages and warming periods ending with the ice age about 11,700 years ago, so it follows that this is the period of warming marking the age of human civilization.

In 1969 panic ensued when The New York Times published several articles on climate change and warning about the effects of pollution on our climate. Dire warnings from eminent scientific prognosticators said that the ice caps melting would lead to the extinction of several indigenous species like the polar bear and several species of avian life, and climate alarmism was born.

Non-scientific acolytes of the Environmental cult, seeing the potential of a power-grab, boarded the Global Warming Band Wagon lending official political credibility to the cause. Never let a crisis go to waste!

Who doesn’t want to save the planet? The problem is that it’s not in jeopardy but never stopped a politician or their mendacity machine.

Here’s how it always, always works…

·  Find an issue and or create one,

·  Make people afraid of it,

·  Blame someone for it,

·  Tell them that YOU have the solution,

·  Profit – profit – profit.

In 2022 the US spent $165 Billion on disasters attributed to climate change. Even though there is little physical evidence to support the claims, federal expenditure to combat the natural and normal climatic cycle will exceed $44.9 Billion this next budget cycle..

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates the cost of achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to ensure compatibility with the Paris Accord to be $6.9 Trillion per year. The World Bank estimates that the required global infrastructure investment will cost $90 Trillion by 2030.

The estimated value of Earth’s top three precious metals:

·  Gold is a bit over $10 trillion.

·  Silver is a bit over $1.3 Trillion

·  Platinum is around $7.44 Billion

If these estimates are accurate, there is not enough precious metal to cover one-tenth of the cost of this folly. The only recourse is to follow America’s example to print the money you need – it is commonly called fiat currency, meaning that nothing is backing it – it’s just paper, which all begs the question, how will the world fund this lunacy? Think about it…

The Final Iceberg!
Returning to the home country, the proposed budget for next year exceeds $7.2 trillion! We already face a $31.7 Trillion national debt and $182.7 Trillion in unfunded debt. Yet we have no issue spending money we don’t have. We have a massive problem with leadership!

As HMS Titanic sank, “The string players performed ‘Nearer, my God, to thee,’ a 19th-century hymn published in Hymns and Anthems to calm the doomed ship’s passengers. The Hymn, written by Sarah Fuller Adams (see below), is a retelling of Jacob’s Dream from Genesis 28:11–12 of the Bible.

· “When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.”

Will there be calming music as we go under?

What song will they play?

April 6, 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!