Op-Ed: No to the smug old elite

As an active citizen, I respect anyone with the dedication to step into the fray to serve conscience and defend principles. Left or right, I am glad to share the arena. We who do this can take some small satisfaction that freedom has not been totally wasted on us.

Right or wrong, we exert ourselves and engage in the rough-and-tumble because we have made the wellbeing of society our personal concerns. In a larger sense, it doesn’t matter so much to me whether I agree or disagree with my fellow active citizens. We engage in the discussion, each fighting for what we believe in. We then must trust our fellow citizens to decide issues at the voting booth with wisdom and fairness.

However, this personal admiration does not automatically include the smug, self-satisfied, self-appointed arbiters of good taste who purport to represent the “best” people. Folks with this attitude of effortless entitlement were on full display in Bill Buley's Feb. 16 article, "Keep Idaho, Idaho."

These representatives of the power elite of old came together to damn people whom they deemed to be far right extremists and newcomers. They exhorted Idahoans to reject what they called extremism and return to the small town sensibilities of fabled yore.

I understand the allure of the mythic "good old days." We reminisce about when times were simpler, people were more decent to one another, and common sense was a more common virtue.

What sane person wouldn't want us all to rise above the acrimony of contemporary controversy and trust in the good will of all concerned? We could return to a proverbial Mayberry, inhabited by latter-day Andy Taylors, Barney Fifes and Thelma-Lous.

The problem they ignore is that we no longer live in normal times.

Canadians have had their democracy stolen in a totalitarian power grab, justified by Trudeau as being necessary in the face of what he calls domestic terrorism. Genuine dictatorship is being piloted on our northern frontier, because uppity truckers dared exercise their free speech rights persuasively.

Mexico is in a state of Civil War, where cannibalistic Drug Lords have leave to act without restraint.

Western Europe sleeps while to the east an aggressive Russia threatens the peace of the world.

China openly threatens Taiwan, and world peace in the east.

Meanwhile, our wealthiest elites support the Democratic Party and their allies in academia, Hollywood, and the news media. They obsess over notions of parlor Socialism, fetishized identity politics and deconstructing objective reality. They fiddle while preventable inflation and rampant crime threaten to burn down the American Dream.

All of this affects our quaint little state and its hardworking people. The old elites are either complicit in this general dissolution or willfully ignore it because it is simply too disturbing.

No, people like me who are demonized as newcomers on the far right may not have all of the answers needed to heal our society and revive our nation. However, we are at least willing to live in the real world; a world in a state of flux where everything we hold dear is at risk.

We have awakened because circumstances are so grim. We have no intention of going back to sleep and letting the very leaders who brought us to this sorry state continue to wield unchecked power in our name.

• • •

In Maine and then Idaho, Ralph K. Ginorio has taught the history of Western Civilization to high school students for nearly a quarter century. He is an “out-of-the-closet” Conservative educator with experience in special education, public schools and charter schools, grades 6-12. He has lived in Coeur d’Alene since 2014. Email: rginorio@cdapress.com