Political Medusa
Mark Greathouse
(12/2022) The mythical Medusa was one of the monstrous mythical Gorgons; the only mortal one. She was beautiful, but her hair was composed of snakes and anyone looking directly upon them was turned to stone. Perseus killed her. No, he didn’t look directly upon her. He used his polished shield as a mirror to cut off the monster’s head.
One of the trick gun contests in the wild west shows was to use a mirror to hit a target behind the shooter. I hope that image helps in visualizing Perseus and Medusa.
Today, the United States faces a political Medusa in the form of radical far-left politicians. Imagine the radical agendas as snakes emanating from a Medusan head. Mirrors may or may not be the answer, but the outcome of dealing with our nation’s challenges will need more than reflection. Seems that every time a snake is severed from the head, another grows in its place.
The Medusan political snake heads have identities. The underbelly of today’s woes is a far-left globalization movement (the European model) that has insidiously evolved into a Gorgon of ever-greater influence and flies in the face of our nationalistic republic form of government. Fortunately, the Gorgon is mortal. Little wonder that today’s economic woes were created by a combination of two snakes, as wildly profligate government spending has been layered upon an anti-fossil fuel energy policy stoked by promoters of climate change panic. To make matters worse, most of the snake heads insidiously leverage failure-ridden socialist and even Communist political philosophies. To wit, lets examine a few of these snakelike Medusan marvels.
Inflation, essentially too many dollars chasing too few goods, is at a 40-year high. The dump of Federal printed and borrowed dollars into the economy in 2021 was a huge contributor to inflation as exacerbated by reduced oil production and refining. Due to dependence on the U.S. dollar, all developed countries are suffering the extended effect of inflated dollars. It’s not so much that goods cost more, as our dollars buy less. Today’s dollar buys 11.7 cents less than a year ago. Oh, and don’t ignore the 25 percent drop in your 401K. The administration’s redefining of recession cannot change the fact that we’re in one. Lastly, the misguided Federal Reserve’s Medusan raising of interest rates despite historical failures of that solution will turn our economy to stone.
Our southern border is a clear and present danger fraught with drug smuggling, human trafficking, violent crimes, and sowing of economic chaos. Lying DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas condemned migrant whipping despite knowing in advance that mounted border patrol officers had not whipped illegals. Our border leaks like a sieve despite Mayorkas’ claims otherwise. Fentanyl formulated in Communist China plus other hard drugs are smuggled across open borders by Mexican terrorist cartels causing loss of thousands of American lives. My own family in south Texas has experienced dangerous encounters with illegal aliens and must always carry guns for self-protection. Like a Medusan snake, Mayorkas must go for his lies and derelictions.
The Gorgon monster snake of our education system is failing miserably. I’m reminded of President Reagan’s caution that we’re but a single generation from losing our republic. Transgenderism, critical race theory, and the like have no place in our education system.
Climate change panic is totally unfounded. Read the United Nation’s 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) comprised of 195 scientists warning of dire consequences of global warming but not nearly to the extremes promoted by U.S. climate alarmists. Notably, we need CO2 to live, and the world will not endure mass starvations due to over-population! Meanwhile, the wrongly-named Inflation Reduction Act leaves us to suffer under Green New Deal boondoggles. EVs, hybrid vehicles, windmills, and solar panels are woefully insufficient to stop so-called global warming, and it will be decades before adequate infrastructure is in place to support energy alternatives. The Green New Deal agenda threatens to bring America to an inglorious end that our children must face. We need a vibrant exceptional America to inspire technological solutions to climate challenges. The Medusan "Green New Dealers" must be stopped.
The draconian lockdowns and masking mandates of the COVID19 pandemic deserve a separate op-ed in addition to a special place in hell. The head liar of the Medusan snake is the narcissistic Dr. Anthony Fauci who sustained the panic so as to maintain government control. Vaccine mandates turned out to not be supported by "science." Natural immunity was ignored. Even election integrity was compromised due to lack of confidence in new voting processes. The new Congress must sever this snake head right away.
Crime is on the rise! I’m scared to go into a major urban area these days and fearful of crime metastasizing into suburban and even rural areas. The Democrat-supported defund police movement coupled with soft-on-crime George Soros-backed DAs and prosecutors has resulted in record high crime. Stores are ransacked at will, folks are attacked at random, police are disrespected, and citizens fear being unintended victims of gang violence on their streets. Congress can lead the rhetoric to restore confidence in law enforcement.
Our national debt is $31 trillion. Visualize 62 football fields of $100 bills stacked 6-feet high. Ironically, the largest holder of U.S. debt is our own Federal government. The debt-to-GDP ratio is rocketing past 130 percent, nearly three times its 2002 level. Scary! Cutting taxes will kickstart investment in our economy. The two-headed snake of printing and borrowing money must be severed. Money hemorrhaging must be stopped!
Wokism is the cowardly recasting of history manifested in stoking identity politics aimed at canceling or censoring everything in sight. We dare not attempt to engage these elitists in their irrational folly, as they’ll bring us down to their level of stupidity and beat us with experience. As it is, we increasingly whisper political discussion or suffer persecution. Neighbors turn in neighbors as in "Fifth Element" and "1984."
More Medusan snakeheads? Our military is being ever-weakened by recruiting failures, stupid COVID policies, social experimenting, and inadequate budgets. American diplomacy is so inept, so counter-productive as to earn mocking on the world stage. Our workforce participation is at records lows while welfare increases. Ever-more-perverse cultural mores are promoted. And second amendment rights are threatened.
The midterms have given us the prospect of putting a tourniquet on the administration’s wild agendas thanks to controlling purse strings and investigating malfeasance, but the battle rages on. We dare not allow our nation to fall into tyrannical big government control that our Constitutional republic was designed to prevent. Pray we fend off not just socialistic trends but radical democracy that would let folks do whatever they wish on a given day so long as they have the political power or votes to do it.
Lest it not be "top of mind" for you, permit me to "circle back" to Medusan politics. The GOP has two years to map out extricating America from the clutches of the evil radical leftist Medusa. Congress better polish its shields so as not to be turned to stone. The new Congress must begin to behead the political Medusa without shooting itself in the foot.
Just sayin.’
Read past edition of the Tumbleweeds
Read other articles by Mark Greathouse
