Summer's End Omissions

Labor Day marks the unofficial end to summer even though the official end is still a few weeks away.  What have we learned this summer?   We have learned a lot.

The near simultaneous deaths of Aretha Franklin and John McCain put obsessive Trump hatred on full display.  Never mind the irony of having Louis Farrakhan and Al Sharpton on stage with Bill Clinton, both of these memorials were used as platforms to bash Trump.   Sadly, the Queen of Soul featured the Kings of Race Baiting and Anti-Semitism on her stage and the day that was to honor her.

McCain’s in particular was shameful.  His own daughter talked as much about Trump as her own father.

McCain’s burning hatred to Trump obstructed the repeal of Obamacare.  And like Hillary Clinton and Obama, he dismissed evangelical Christians as “agents of intolerance,” referred to Tea Party members as “wacko birds,” and called Trump supporters “crazies.”   While McCain’s military service is to be respected, his career as a politician was less than stellar, culminating in a disastrous presidential campaign in ’08, although I am still undecided as to whether a McCain presidency ultimately would have been worse for America than an Obama presidency.

McCain garnered effusive praise for “reaching across the aisle” but conspicuously left out invitations to his funeral to people on his own side of the aisle—a Republican president and his own running mate, Sarah Palin.

It occurred to me that Trump must have tremendous power over these people for them to make Trump the focus of memorial services, rather than the people that have just passed.   But for the Left, no platform is inappropriate for a rousing Trump hate-fest.

Not to be outdone, our neo-Marxist Pope and his cabal of archbishops are eager to change the conversation after the Pennsylvania AG issued its report on the widespread child abuse and the accusations by Bishop Vigano that Pope Francis knew about the shenanigans of Bishop McCarrick. 

Our local Archbishop Cupich took a page out of Cardinal Law’s playbook, announced that the Pope had “bigger issues to deal with,” and that he “wasn’t going to go down that rabbithole,” and promptly disappeared for a weekend retreat at Mudelein Seminary.

Pope Francis himself has remained silent on all this, and, in fact today, tweeted out that we need “prayer and silence.”  No we don’t.  We need truth and transparency.  Francis's tweets and statements omitted any discussion of Vigano's serious charges.

Yesterday, Pope Francis declared that plastic straws in the ocean were an “emergency” that demanded immediate action.    And it is true that plastic in the ocean is not good for sea life.  But fondling children and seminarians is not good for them either and is more in your span of control, Francis.

Incredibly, the Trump haters tried to turn memorial services for John McCain and Aretha Franklin to conversations about Trump and Pope Francis tried to turn the sex abuse scandal into a conversation about plastic straws.

Hollywood, of course, jumped into the mix by putting out a film about Neil Armstrong that conspicuously omitted the planting of the American flag and the American flag on the uniforms of the astronauts.

Actor Ryan Gossling defended it by saying it was a human achievement and director Damien Chazelle claimed he was not making a political statement.

Do these people think that we just fell off the turnip truck?  Of course omitting the American flag from the film is a political statement.  And the moon landing was not an achievement of all of mankind.  It was a uniquely AMERICAN achievement.  It arose out of the space race with the Soviets.  It was Americans that harnessed the technology that enabled Neil Armstrong to step on the moon. 

Hollywood’s attempt to rewrite history disrespects the memory of pioneers like Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee who died in Apollo 1, and the work of Katherine Coleman Johnson, one of the mathematicians who overcame racism, prejudice and Jim Crow (see the film Hidden Figures), and who  ironically celebrated her 100^th birthday the same week that it was announced that First Man would omit an American flag.

Thankfully, Neil Armstrong’s partner on that mission, Buzz Aldrin, tweeted out photos of Buzz in a t-shirt with a picture of Armstrong planting the flag on the moon, and tweeted out photos of the mission itself.

For every John McCain, we have a Rand Paul.  For every Cardinal Cupich, we have a Bishop Vigano.  For every Damien Chazelle, we have a Buzz Aldrin.

We are pushing back.