By Terry E. Manning
Sometimes it’s an elephant. Sometimes a donkey. At other times, a horse or a dog.
The story and its message remain the same.
An animal is tied to a stake and learns to respect limitations. If it goes too far or tries to pull away, its leash delivers a harsh reminder.
The boundaries become so ingrained that after a while, all that is necessary to keep the animal in check is the existence of the leash around its neck. It doesn’t matter whether the other end is still attached to its anchor point.
But what if there was a dog that pulled and pulled until the stake became uprooted? The dog would be free to roam, wreaking havoc wherever it went.
Out in the rural area where I grew up, this sometimes would result in destroyed flower beds, slaughtered pets and farm animals, and even fears of leaving the house over concerns of hearing the telltale rattle of that leash and stake being dragged along.
This is the world in which we live. We collectively are the neighborhood being terrorized by the feral energy that has retaken the Oval Office.
If there is nothing else I have learned about our government, it is that we lean too heavily on the assumption that the people who run for public office start from a baseline of good intentions. We give the benefit of the doubt to them that regardless of which party they represent they are tethered by a basic human decency that will prevent them from going past certain boundaries.
The nation’s founders certainly never planned for the kind of animalism that has seized the reins of power in this country. The documents, laws, and rules these great men devised all relied on the notion they would be honored. That court rulings would be respected. That checks and balances would be enforced. That truth was irrefutable. That the tether would hold.
In response, many of us became lazy in our duties as citizens, spending less time vetting candidates and more waiting to be wooed and wowed by a haircut, a movie-star smile, a waggish wink, the chance to be part of something historic. While these things seduced us, platforms and policy fell by the wayside until we allowed ourselves to believe they didn’t matter anyway. We meekly accepted the fallacy of both sides being the same.
Then we heard the rattle.
Norms were violated. Things typically left unspoken were spoken — and loudly — from the most elevated platforms. Seemingly every other day brought a new unprecedented violation of the social order.
A few years ago, the word “unprecedented” was used so often it wore out its welcome. We grew tired of unprecedented actions and unprecedented utterances, especially those that effected chaos and uproar. And so we un-presidented the unprecedented.
We pivoted back to normalcy in the form of a lifelong public servant who epitomized traits such as duty, tradition, and character. But normal is boring to people whose attention spans have been trained to ingest the world in 60-second video clips and 144 characters or less.
So now we hear the rattle again.
Despite promises they would decrease “on Day One,” prices are rising. Airplanes are falling from the skies as overworked aviation employees are forced out of their jobs. They and other federal workers nationwide are targeted randomly under the pretense of fiscal “efficiency.” I wonder how chasing down so-called fraud lines up with paying for vanity-driven trips to the Super Bowl and Daytona 500.
Leaders in blue states are threatened openly with losing federal funding support if they don’t bend the knee and cater to impulsive and often illegal whims. Red-state voters get to find out funding streams they hoped would turn off for “woke” causes can unexpectedly dry up for jobs and services they like and need.
But who wants to do anything about this roaming unchained menace?
Not those helping form a growing pack of ravagers. Not those who fear speaking out lest they draw the pack’s attention. Not those who look on in glee at the mayhem. Not those who’ve decided to sit this one out and watch the country burn, as if they won’t get singed, too.
Perhaps some of those folks who felt a line was crossed when the current president braggadociously referred to himself as a monarch will finally make a stand. Assuming they survive the outbreaks of various maladies we might all face since so many of that contingent also are anti-vaccines.
He wants to be called King; he should pray folks don’t start associating him with Old Yeller.
Terry E. Manning is a Clemson graduate who worked for 20 years as a journalist. He can be reached at teemanning@gmail.com.
