Tripartite Discord

 

Legs One and Two

Tripartite Discord

The Ruling Mobs

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

            For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and (it) shall be turned unto fables.

                                                                         ~ 2Timothy 4:3-4

            The dark days of June are upon us.

            In the movies, this segment would be shot without lines. Rather, the narrator would be called upon to describe how the hero fell into the chasm of despair and chaos. It would be a time of his walking the tightrope of life and death or salvation and damnation. He would be out of character to those who loved him and knew him by his roots. Those were hard times, but wait … what’s he doing now?

            Coming back into everyday focus, the dismal days of June are characterized by three matching standards that threaten to wreck everything. Drought, water (or the absence thereof), and near chaos rule the days. So it has been on the ranch everyday since May 15, the day that June formally started in 2022.

            The cattle were moved to fresh pasture and put to bed with the intention of stressing them the least possible at this most difficult time of year. Knowing the rules and the pattern of our rotation system, they spread out through the Trail Pasture and dropped their heads and grazed. All seemed to be good until we made the next water run and found the Raegan and Manuel Troughs almost empty as well as the storage serving them both.

            Caught with our pants down, the mystery of the difficulty getting water upslope to that part of the system when it is hot and most critical has reared its ugly head yet again. It is probably just a venting problem, but we will work and work until one morning all will be good, and the water will flow normally as if by repeated magic. That wasn’t yet the point on Thursday, though, and the decision was made to valve another pump into the line and either blow through that vapor lock or break a line. Either way, this must be resolved, and it eventually will.

            If only our world problems were so easy to solve.

            Legs One and Two

            The manifestation of Franklin’s fear of formal government only grinds begrudgingly toward oblivion.

            Cutting to the chase, the realization that derelict leadership has continued to ride the backs of taxpayers to the point of no return must now be apparent to everyone short of the idiot classes. The problem can be dissected in numerous ways, but the point must be made there is no reciprocal control of the debt side of our national equation. The majority of the governing emphasis has long been the spend side of the decisions. Great effort from the court jesters is directed into what and how to spend more money. That is what federal budgets are. They have advanced to the point that over 66% of all annual expenditures are required as if there is legal commandment from the federal deity of largesse for such extravaganza.

            Another way of viewing this phenomenon is the point that management of the federal budget reflects the whim to forever maximize the bounds of spending. As such, there is no counterbalance to manage the much more fundamental courtesy to the American people of constraining the outflow of money. There is no central authority of minimizing the spending frenzy. There is demonstrably no such national conscience. Congress has no aptitude or intention of changing, either. They are a collective column of  tribal members posturing to get their shot at the helm.

            The first leg of the American model of confrontation and growing discord is thus revealed.

            The next leg of societal discord deals with another realm of balance. The matter is how the legal system has evolved and practiced today. The victim in the American system has progressively grown ever more silent to the point there is no recompense for being violated. There is no counterbalance to manage the violence, the property loss, and the wrongdoing perpetrated upon a public that is still prone to be law abiding.

            Rather, the prevailing legal rights are reserved for the perpetrators.

            There is no central authority of altering the system, either. Technicality is the byword. The end result is the greatest hidden tax upon the masses in the history of the world, but there are beneficiaries. The biggest rewards revolve around the handlers and the enablers of America’s most privileged class … those perpetrators themselves.

            The Ruling Mobs

            The concluding leg completes the discordant American Tripartite.

            It is worth noting it was no accident that the Framers wanted to avoid the divisions that ripped England apart in their own civil wars of the 17^th century. As such, there was no mention in the Constitution that elevated the word of that day for political parties, factions, into prominence. There was a general theme that such parties were corrupt relics of the monarchical British system that ultimately led to the first American Civil War.

            Hamilton referred to political parties as the most fatal disease of governments.

            James Madison wrote in Federalist 10 that a central theme of a well-constructed Union was to break and control the violence of faction(s).

            John Adams worried that a division of the republic into two great parties is to be dreaded as the great political evil.

            But factions we have in the form of polarizing political parties. Prominently they have been on display in every issue. The outcome has long been that the citizen statesman has been displaced by the tribal political mobs.

            Like the spend and debt syndrome and the elevation of the perpetrator over the victim, there is no counterbalance to reinstall the individual as the constitution’s common denominator. The political parties have no attachment. We are left to reread and contemplate Washington’s words in his farewell address:

            The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.

 

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.