I got up just before 6:30 this morning to get my daughter ready for the school bus. I turn on the TV, expecting the Royal wedding to be over, but it was wrapping up the church service (I’d missed the vows). I went into the whole royal wedding with a “So what …”, but as the last week progressed I found myself not eagerly, mind you, but hopefully looking forward to it. While I didn’t plan a party and plant myself on the couch early this morning, I watched as the young couple, just a couple years older than my oldest daughters, emerge from the church to the loud cheers of the masses waiting outside. I felt a bit of an uplift. Kate is strong and beautiful and mature, and not the timid and mousy, and overshadowed Diana. She looks to be self-assured and confident in every way. William is every bit of the best of his poor Mum whose best quality was her nurturing personality, and he is far more aware of the real world than his smarmy father was/is. Right now that young couple have more worldly and ‘commoners’ clout than the occupiers of our White House.
I must tell you all that I have been a bit MIA in the last week or so because I have been so worn out by all the BS piling up in this country. I was up late the other night when the raw videos of the monster tornados in Alabama began hitting the web. I was in shock and awe, literally, seeing the size and scope of the fists slamming down from the heavy skies to change lives forever in just a matter of minutes. I checked on the national weather stat sheet to see tornado warnings up all around my sister in Georgia as the system moved into her area. It was near midnight and I frantically began calling her cell and house phones with no answer. She has two young teen boys. I finally managed to get an answer from her first thing in the morning at her office. A tornado had touched down about a mile from her home, and not far from her office. She had some patients that hadn’t shown up for their appointments in the morning and she was worried, not getting responses to her calls to their homes.
Anyhow, back to the wedding across the pond … I was comparing the newlyweds to William’s parents’ wedding day. Such a hoopla that wedding was, and at the time all I could think was how arranged and fake it all was. Not so much this morning. Kate and Wills were on the balcony and looked so comfortable. (I imagined them kicking off the overbearing threads later tonight and chasing each other around their honeymoon suite in a slightly drunken state, giggling and making fun of old Uncle and Auntie So-and-So from the reception as they fall in total exhaustion atop the bed, thankful the to-dos are all over and they were finally alone … I couldn’t bring myself to imagine Di and Chuck in such a scene.) Then I realized the last time I had seen the young man in that setting of London was his Mother’s funeral as he and his brother Harry walked stoically behind the casket past some of these same people now gathered and shouting good-cheer to the newlyweds.
So, as the newlywed Duke and Duchess of Cambridge stood on the balcony, the Royal Air Force made the flyover and I teared-up, realizing I was connecting to this other country’s tradition and existing “leadership” because ours is so damn lacking and nearly destroyed … unrecognizable. The ONLY element left to our fabric here is our military, and they most times, seem under attack by this administration or totally ignored by him. Oddly, I felt something I can only describe as a “channeling” of a long-gone British citizen looking to the USA for help/support/rescue during the German Blitz in WWII. I looked at those three British jets and thought, “My God! Our country needs rescuing! We are under a blitz here!”
Anyhow, it’s all part of the “Progressive” plan … Get us all disheartened and conquer us. I’m trying hard to get past this foolish feeling of doom and dread. I am better than this … We all are. We are better than those who seek to dishearten us. And as I look at the people walking amid the ruins of our South, looking for loved ones and picking through the fragments of their lives, I see our strength lingering there. As Americans we have historically taken gut-kicks and used the pain as strength. Historically we have drawn strength from the pain-filled strength of our fellow citizens. Our pain is a gift, if you will. We have never seen our pain as an injury, but as a labor pain we must ride-out in order to birth our re-building. It is where New York and our nation were on 9/11. It’s where we are today in the deep South, and across this country.
We have NO leadership coming out of DC … We MUST look to the foundings of our leadership in this nation … to ourselves … to We The People. Why? Because THAT is where the leadership was meant to be. Our Founding Fathers meant “We The People” to be the kings and queens of our own lives. Over the last 200 years we have allowed that leadership to be stolen from us … Well, we have lazily surrendered it to others who have not had our best interests in mind, but their own power and ambitions, and mostly to destroy our ability to lead ourselves.
Rep. (LTC) Allen West was on Glenn Beck’s radio show yesterday morning. The interview is great, as usual. West is commanding, resolved, and righteous. But he says something near the end of the discussion, a quote by Plato …
We have real leaders among us right now. No matter that they feel they just aren’t ready to reach for the Oval Office in 2012. We The People need to express to them we do not have the time to wait for them to ‘get their feet wet’ in The Swamp. Rather, we do not want them becoming tainted by the scum in that Swamp, and carrying it into the White House. They need to understand we do need somebody ‘non-establishment’ as President because we do NOT need another professional politician as POTUS. We need one of us to take the lead, and get to the job of digging us out of these ruins we, and our government, have made of our Republic … because nobody will be sending in planes, jets, paratroopers, or troops to rescue us. Just as they now must in Alabama, Mississippi, and the rest of the storm, and soon to be flood, ravaged South, we have to help ourselves out of this mess. No outside help is coming.
And so, when the young couple surprised everyone with a second kiss on that balcony before ducking inside, and I took it as a kiss for luck. For them, and for us. But with luck comes responsibility …
“Those who refuse to participate in politics shall be governed by their inferiors.”
(Cross-posted @ CW)
Putting aside the fun of royal love, and potential fairy tale “happy ever afters,” Human Rights Foundation wonders about A Royal Wedding Divorced of Human Rights Concerns; Dictators Will Eat Wedding Cake:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thor-halvorssen/a-royal-wedding-divorced-_b_854430.html
Ziva –
Leave it to the HuffPo to point this out, but to completely over look the big White House bash a few months ago for Chinese President Hu Jintao. The State Dinner was thrown by the 2009 Nobel Peace prize recipient, with 2002’s NPP recipient (Jimmy Carter) attending the party for the Chinese leader … all while the 2011 recipient Liu Xiaobo was being held in Hu Jintao’s prison back in China. HuffPo doesn’t seem to have a problem with Obama observing “protocol”. Nor do they have a problem with Obama continuing to keep Gitmo open, or continuing the black-ops and rendition practices. I recall these groups in their orange jump suits protesting and demonstrating waterboarding outside the Bush White House not too long ago, but miss seeing them there in the last 2 and a half years.
They also felt no problem with Obama bowing to the Saudi King. And funny the HuffPo article chooses Kate Middleton as an example of “if she lived in Saudi Arabia”, when they don’t typically give a fig about the Saudi women who do live in Saudi Arabia … or the Muslim women all around that region of the world being sexually mutilated, married away to old men while still young girls, beaten, stoned, hanged, and forced to hide their bodies and faces from the rest of the world because they are somehow evil. Oddly HuffPo has a problem with Syria, when the White House and State Department don’t seem to. Hillary called Bashar al-Assad a reformer. They also never have a problem with people in NYC courting these dictators, and most recently that monkeyman who runs Iran, when they are in town. And where is the outrage for Jimmy Carter’s recent fawning trips to Cuba and North Korea? Nor is there outrage for those Hollywood elites who frequent the posh abodes of castro and Chavez.
The writer apparently has no problem with the U.N. still considering a seat on the Human Rights Council for Syria, in addition to being just about ready to sign a $38 million check for the Syrian government. Nor does he have a problem with those that are sitting on the Human Rights Council at the UN who treat women as badly, or worse, than he describes in Saudi Arabia … or gays in Iran. I’m not justifying or condoning these countries, their leaders, or even the invites to them. I am, however, and as usual, weary of people, such as those writing for HuffPo, and their selective righteous indignation.
As for said wedding cake … It was a glorified fruit and nut cake … fitting for the dictators.
As I read the ripping of the British monarchy in the article I couldn’t help but recall how much of a problem Obama has with the British … oh, and how he and Michelle were snubbed.
The President and First Lady were snubbed because he unceremoniously returned a bust of Churchill to England given to this country, not to him. An unforgivable insult, I’m happy to report, the Brits did not overlook.
Drillanwr, The article was written by Thor Halvorssen, President and CEO of Human Rights Foundation. He is not a Huffington shill, and the foundation does good work, including standing up for human rights in China. A partial list of is here: http://humanrightsfoundation.org/
From what they said on commentary on Fox this wedding is not an official state one because the groom is not yet to be king. Charles comes first. So many heads of state were not there because it was not required. Former prime ministers were not invited. So it was not a political snub that the Obamas were not on the list.
Honey, the King of Swaziland was invited. Obama was not.
Maybe he was a personal friend.
Okay why was Sarkozi not invited? What about other European leaders?
Listen, I would like nothing more than to know that this couple was appalled at our President in a way half of this country is not and should be. But we mustn’t say things if they aren’t true.
Does anyone know who else of note was not invited?
Was Netanyahu invited? Was the invitation to the Obamas the only held back one that shocks?