Trump Lost, Biden Won. Get over it.

It seems to me that when the Seditionist Caucus met at the White House with former President** tRump to plan the January 6th Coup Attempt, their Dear Leader must have recently watched the movie Independence Day, probably with a big tub of buttery popcorn and a Diet Coke.

We know Trump likes short, punchy chants ("Lock her up!"), and I believe he was probably quite taken with a part of the speech Bill Pullman's character, President Thomas Whitmore, gives in the movie: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight!" (no doubt tRump imagined himself in the role, nobly issuing those words). So is it surprising that several of his sycophants have used the same phrase to stir up his cult followers before the insurrection?

Ted Cruz at a January 2nd rally in Georgia: “I am proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, as we defend the United States of America, as we defend our Constitution, as we defend our freedom, and WE WILL NOT GO QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT ...”

Conspiracy theory believer and rabid gun rights activist, Quongresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene in a video invites her followers to come to D.C. on January 6th: "We aren't a people that are going to go QUIETLY INTO THE NIGHT."

Of course it should be noted that the movie quote is actually paraphrasing a line from Welsh poet Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" and the GOP should be made to know that Democrats--and OK, a few other good members of the GOP--will NOT go gentle into the night (aka darkness) that Trump and his cult sought when trying to overturn a free and fair election. We will "rage against the dying of the light" and we will not let democracy die.

******************

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

<Note: Except for the last paragraph, the following document was produced before 6:32 PM the sixth of December 2020. In light of events that took place on 6 Jan 2021 there is more to be discussed.

This seems like a good time to introduce a few thoughts about political issues. Next month (January of 2021) we expect to replace Donald Trump with Joe Biden as president of the United States. As a Conservative I have mixed feelings about this event. I do not consider the election of 2020 to be any more honest or legitimate than progressives did the election of 2016. However my reaction will not be to declare that Joe Biden is “not my president,” I will not demand that he be impeached nor will I move to a foreign country merely because his interests are opposed to mine. I will not begin a hate campaign.

Just because this sort of resolution was sought for by Democrats and Progressives as the result of the 2016 election does not mean I will act out the same sort of foolishness. Instead, I will do my best to act the part of a true conservative. To demonstrate what sort of behavior this entails, I hereby submit a few excerpts from a conference talk given by James E. Talmage in Salt Lake City, Utah, during October of 1915. This will be followed by some reasons why Talmage had good cause to resent the United States government and react in the way so called liberals did to the four years of "The Donald" just past. Let’s see what Talmage does instead:

Excerpts delivered in SLC Tabernacle, 1915

The mission of the Church is to prepare for the coming of the Christ, for the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, which has not yet been set up upon the earth. Modern revelation makes plain the fact that there is a distinction between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven as we use, or should use those terms.

… But we have been taught still to pray that the Kingdom of Heaven shall come, and the Lord has made plain that the Kingdom of Heaven shall come and be made one with the Kingdom of God, which latter is already set up upon the earth.

… God raised up mighty men who pledged their lives in defense of those principles of liberty. The men who framed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were men who acted as they did because the Spirit of God was operative upon them.

…

This nation has been directed from the first by the overruling power of God, and though at times there have been internal troubles, though some have allowed partisain preferences and prejudices to becloud their view and shut out for the time being the greater purposes and objects beyond, yet in time the Lord has brought out all things well. And we as a Church and as individual membersof the Church feel it to be a part of our religion and part of our duty to our God to be loyal to the nation of which we form a part. Let that loyalty be expressed in our united support of those in whose hands the Lord has entrusted the affairs of this nation. In every Latter-day Saint home prayer should be made for the President of the United States, for his cabinet, for the national congress, for all the officers of this nation, that they may be led to do that which shall further the purposes of God in the advancement of this people. I pray for the President of this Republic though I have never professed membership in the political party to which he belongs. He is to me no member of a political party but the president of the nation; and he requires the assistance and direction and inspiration of the Lord that he may accomplish the purposes which God intends to have accomplished in the leading of this nation to its glorious destiny.

And when the Kingdom of Heaven shall come it will be established in the midst of this nation and upon this glorious land of Zion, the American continent, and out of Zion shall go forth the law, and other nations shall be governed by the laws of righteousness and the better part of human nature shall be developed and the millennium of peace shall be inaugurated. For this we are preparing. May our preparation be effective, may we be true to the right, to ourselves, to our fellowmen, and to our God, I reverently ask in the name of Jesus Christ, our Master. Amen.

Delivered by James E. Talmage, Council of the Twelve.

Salt Lake City Tabernacle, SLC, Utah, Sunday October 10, 1915

At the time of this speech Talmage held the same office in his church as Reed Smoot did when appointed as the first Senator of the state of Utah in January of 1903. Smoot was not allowed to act as the Senator of Utah until the end of February 1907. The intervening four years were spent in testimony and arguments that now fill four large volumes of the public record. Four years of trying to prevent any Mormon from ever serving in the Senate. Fourteen years before Smoot was elected as Senator, federal courts decided that “Mormon Aliens, though in all things else qualified could not become citizens of the United States, because of their membership in the Mormon Church.”

For now, I just wanted to say the 2020 election did not cause me any serious emotional angst. In my seventy six years I have only voted for one president that actually won. He was a president they loved to hate. I voted for him because Ben Carson (my actual choice) suggested it would be appropriate.