Journal | President Biden’s Address ~ Capitol Hill ~ January 6, 2022
I
LAST EVENING it was good to watch President Biden’s Address to the American People.
The 46th President has been required to deal with matters that the majority of us would not have even an incline of where to start, even though our comfortable armchair persuades us that we almost certainly know better.
There are good and bad people in politics.
Bad people in politics cling to agendas that aim to fragment or destroy their own society. In that respect, America is at more danger than most, given that it has fault lines running every border of its fifty states.
II
The President spoke plain home truths.
I’m reminded of a farm, the shouting, the hollering, then the realisation that all were united in one thought. All animals are equal!
And so life on the farm ticked along awhile. And then that utterance : [i]
yes, all animals are equal,
but some animals
are more equal than others
Being a centre-right centre-left person, I have no time, in either direction, for the extremes.
I enjoyed reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1945) at school in the 1960s. I had good examples to write my essays on Hitlerism and Stalinism to name but two ogres. I grew up slightly in awe of the USA. I see things fifty years on very much in the cold light of day.
III
America. As a foreigner, I’d say that your 46th President is absolutely correct in his assessment. For us all on the outside of your borders looking in, we have a wider perspective and do not see things through the narrow, beautiful, shaft-light of the US prism.
In the old world language … it is time to get the house in order, and not take for granted that material and military superiority grants the right to be the leader of the free world. There are at least two who wish to seize that for themselves, regardless of the price.
IV
We are dangerously close to what that one group of animals down on the farm thought to be an accurate definition of equality.
Or, as in that ancient verse of scripture…
the writing is on the wall
[ii]
Let us all, the English-Speaking Peoples, stand as one. The night is dark, and in the dark do people plan evil things.
Resolutely stand ~ by, behind, with ~ the 46th President of the USA.
[i] Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)
[ii] Daniel 5: 5-12
3 July 2022
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
First written 7 January 2022
Banner Image Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
