Most mornings, my wife and I walk from our home in the University neighborhood to the top of Red Hill. On weekdays, we start with the pleasure of watching children gathering for school buses. On Sundays, we negotiate a steady stream of cars carrying people to worship in their churches.
Today, looking out on Pocatello in the morning light, I’m thinking about a book I read—“The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914.” The author (Christopher Clark) showed that the war was not so much a war of choice as a war of neglectful leadership—a war that nobody wanted that destroyed three empires, took 20 million lives, and forever soaked the soils of Europe with the blood of their youth and ours.
Now my question is: Are we sleepwalking towards our own catastrophe? Our current elected Congress has used none of its constitutional powers to prevent this president and his administration from ricocheting from one disaster to the next. No one is saying, “No!” to the often childish but very consequential ranting and bullying.
Let me take a moment to mention just a few of this administration’s “accomplishments" that keep me awake at night.
Foremost, we have engaged in another war in the Middle East. “Epic Fury” should be “Epic Folly,” with all the predictable consequences. The President’s ongoing braggadocio prevents us from gracefully extracting ourselves from a war that is racking our economy and stressing most of our family budgets—unless we happen to be among the favored wealthy who may even be profiting from this war.
Simultaneously, we have actually unleashed an attack on our nation’s health and health care systems in the figure of RFK and his enablers—an attack that threatens decades of medical progress. Go visit the old cemeteries and read the gravestones if you wish to convince yourself of the grief our families have been spared with modern immunizations.
Let’s not even think about the goodwill of our allies and friends that have been helping to keep us strong and safe from catastrophic war for 70 years. This goodwill—traded for some fantasy about looking into the eyes of brutal dictators and finding good friends.
No, I don’t feel like a restful night is coming anytime soon.
I believe that we are no longer in just a normal political contest. This feels different, more dangerous. Can we wake up to the realization that this midterm election may be our last chance to check this disaster, this failure of leadership?
Pocatello, as I gaze out this morning on your peacefulness, I send a prayer that we come fully awake and say, “No! We won’t allow any more of this craziness. No more sleepwalking."