A new feature in hopes of making some sense of things

Halloween is over. All Souls Day has passed. Yet the ghouls are still around.

That’s how it feels anyway.

I keep thinking of this one Halloween front yard display that snuck up and kicked me right in the truth.

Yeah, yeah, some out there are gonna argue that this whole display is hyperbolic, or woke, or belongs to a “leftist lunatic” but all of those accusations are wrong. The family that lives here is quiet and has offered me and mine a reserved friendliness of hellos for the over quarter-century that we’ve lived down the block from them. They nod. They smile. They play with their grandkids.

What they have never done in the entire time we’ve been neighbors is make a political statement.

Never.

In over 25 years.

But this year they felt compelled to handcraft a cemetery mourning the passing of so many things that through our history have made America actually great.

Whether those things are all completely dead right at this second is a distraction not an argument worthy of merit. The stunning statement here was made by a quiet family that never raised its voice before but needed to now.

I admit to being stunned by this display partially because of who made it, but also due to its understated eloquent truth.

America is dying.

More precisely, America is being murdered.

Look at that picture again, and we can see that each of those gravestones marks a right or function or ideal foundational to America that has not, at the very least, been lessened if not thoroughly compromised.

Hard to deny unless you drink the Kool-Aid. (My apologies to Kool-Aid.)

And it is getting worse.

Just this weekend, federal agents (yes, ICEholes) pushed down seniors and gassed kids on Halloween. They continue to detain people wholesale resulting in very few actual arrests.

And on All Souls Day, the Federal government stopped all SNAP benefits (blaming the Dems for shutting down the government even though MAGA runs the House, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court), setting up millions of Americans to starve even though they have billions in backup funds for exactly this situation.

This is Making America Great Again?

I know, I know, it seems better for white supremacists and billionaires who dream about being trillionaires, but that isn’t most of MAGA.

In fact, much of MAGA is going to start truly suffering as the economic impact of the tariffs and alienating other countries and going to war with South American countries and declaring war on African countries on Truth Social, continuing to bait unrest and violence in blue cities, stripping farms of their trade markets, and now starving millions of Americans by withholding SNAP benefits kicks in through the holidays.

No Thanksgiving.

No Christmas.

MAGA world is looking bleak.

Add to that the spiraling questions and federal law enforcement battles over Charlie Kirk’s increasing difficult to explain murder, and the weird bond between Kirk’s widow and the married vice president, and some of the red state faithful must be having difficulty staying in MAGA matrix.

And as health care benefits become horrifying bizarre and Christian friends and neighbors find themselves financially devastated because Momma got sick, well how long can all this madness be ignored?

And Democrats aren’t gloating. Nothing to celebrate here. Both sides of the political spectrum are going to be forced together on this. united in suffering, with a new American bond forged right there on the quiet family’s front lawn.

We’re all going to find ourselves praying fervently at the graves of all the ideals that truly made America special for all of us, and now, by their absence, makes America a grey and desolate cemetery where the American Dream lies rotting six feet under spoiled ground.

Unless…

We all begin to do what Americans have always done best in times of crisis.

Despite ongoing prejudices and political differences, in times of war, famine, disease, and death, the best of us have made the effort to help each other, to build, or rebuild our strength, right the wrongs (somewhat), and defeat the occasional madmen who spring up to defile history.

We’ve done it before.

We’ve stepped up and accomplished what was considered impossible again and again, each time for the greater good.

Can we do it now? Is the Idea of America still strong enough to stir in us the ability to rise above our programming to think and act like human beings toward each other? Can we save ourselves from the political mess we’ve all collectively allowed to fester into existence?

Or are we already under those headstones.

Arguments can be made either way, but the time for arguing is wanting, if not already over. The time for action is now. Small statements like that front lawn (and maybe, hopefully, this quiet little essay) should move us to look at our fellow Americans not how some news station or social media posts casts them, but as they are: human beings.

And seeing our fellow Americans, and the common humanity shared despite what hatred teaches, should move us to small actions. Donating groceries, walking in protest, participating in the upcoming Blackout, saying in everything we do that we choose humanity, we choose the American Spirit over the festering hatred the current government is unleashing.

That is a hope for America I never want to see joining that graveyard.

And it is entirely up to us.