Absalom

But, oh! for Absalom,--

For his estranged, misguided Absalom,--

-Nathaniel Parker Willis-

What could be more fun that spending a sunny 73 degree Saturday at the County Fairgrounds with hundreds of fellow Hams, looking at equipment, attending seminars on ionospheric science and space weather and browsing the flea market? Perhaps a day free of Obama Derangement Syndrome; a day without having to hear that the roads are so bad in Chicago because "that's where Obama's from." I'd like to be able to discuss APRS without hearing that "Obama turned off Loran-C in order to make us all helpless so that the USSR will have an easier time taking over and making us all Communists. Obama, O-BAHma, OOOOH-Baaaaahma; the braying of asses in the Florida sun.

I'm tired of hearing that Shirtless Joe from Snakeshit Junction doesn't feel safe from Pelosi and the Gummint Gungrabbers with only 10,000 rounds of .223 in his house in the swamp or that "if taxes get any higher we're gonna have to have another revolution." Joe's actually getting a tax break this year, but I guess he's worried to distraction about how Warren Buffet is going to like the extra 2%. He never said a peep about the three trillion dollar war because he supported the troops. He'll never in his life make enough to approach that bracket.

I'm tired of the daily delivery of e-mail lies about health care reform and how everything from the Postal Service to the Pentagon is not only dysfunctional, but Maoist, Trotzkyite, Marxist COMMINISM! I'm fed up with hearing about Obaaaaaaaaaaaahma's plan to import and support illegal aliens at public expense, make Capitalism illegal, turn the schools into brainwashing centers and do away with private property.

Two years ago I watched my mother die, her brain eaten away by disease until she was unrecognizable and recognized no one, and I feel the same way watching my country turn into a pit of bloody, barking dogs tearing themselves apart. Unwilling to be governed and unwilling to participate in government, demanding the lawless freedom of the wild animal and total protection from all harm and all at no cost we howl at the moon. Suspicious and angry of everything and everyone; we're not the patriots who founded a secular, democratic republic and we don't even remember our real history as we brag endlessly about freedom.

No, Jesus was mocked, abused and scorned once again in the streets of Ohio as he's so often been and by the same kind of people -- whether it was in Salem or Selma or Jerusalem or Birmingham, and nobody cares. We brag endlessly and lie constantly about "Christian" values none the less; force Christian oaths on ourselves and demand the tyranny of Natural Biblical law instead of Democracy and we call the radical treason "conservative."

What does one do, powerless to stop the mortal decay of our closest kin, whether it's a mother, a father, a son or a country, yet unable to bear the sight of it?

. . . misguided Absalom,--

The proud bright being who had burst away

In all his princely beauty to defy

The heart that cherished him--for him he poured

In agony that would not be controlled.