I used to be a neocon, you know a “new conservative” , from the Ronald Reagan era. I was all-in with whatever my country was doing to protect others from the dastardly deeds of their own governments. And war? Don’t mess with Uncle Sam or we’ll kick your ass. As for those that would keep trying the patience of our greatest ally in the middle east, I said, Just turn the desert into glass. Yep. Nuke ‘em. And I was a grown man saying these things, one that had spent nearly 2 years in a combat zone, coming under fire on occasion, utterly uncaring as to what happened to other people, that we invaded for no reason (Iraq). I had no feeling for the locals while in country and even less, if that’s possible, for all Arabic peoples, and later Persians. Whether Palestinian, or Iraqi, or Egyptian, I clearly held a disdain for entire peoples that had never threatened me.

I still believe in my country, as I think most people do right now. It’s just that many of us have become disillusioned with the track we seem to be on that we were promised, promised, we’d never have to travel down again. It’s not just taxes, or even Drill Baby Drill, it’s the way we are positioned in the world and not just how other countries view us, but how we treat with them.

At the beginning of Trump’s first term, we were winding down almost two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The country was exhausted of expending blood and treasure for, well, nothing. Name something that was accomplished. Saddam overthrown? Big deal. He was virtually imprisoned in his own country before we invaded in 2003 and unable to affect anyone or anything on the world stage. Libya? We took what was become, if not a friendly state, at least a neutral one, to a failed state almost overnight. Today, it is a horror in North Africa that has actual slave markets in broad daylight. Go ahead and name a country that we’ve had some sort of military incursion with in the past thirty or so years that is better off since with our assistance.

No, I haven’t become a liberal, or a progressive (gag) whatever that is – I’ve just become a woke conservative that now realizes that I’ve been lied to by the very people that I’ve voted and argued for, all my adult life. And because so many of us former “Reaganite’s” are leaving the fold, the politicians are now more and more fearing what we might do at the ballot box. Especially this fall. Notice how one party seems to be moving even further left while conservatives dump the Republican Party to become independents. And by the way, Reagan was not the great president of our time. He was an accomplished Hollywood actor with great speechwriters. Other than that? Not much there.

It’s time all of us left the old ways behind, walking away from the liars and scam-artists we’ve been electing to office at every level, enriching themselves over their constituents. Let’s start by voting them out of office, then charging them with something like “official corruption” and put them where they belong.

Leavenworth,

Happy 4th of July!