Dear Editor,

Imagine a present-day version of Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Today, the small boy no longer cries out that the Emperor rides buck nekkid in the parade. Why? Because now, many in the crowd are similarly unclad — or clad in such threadbare outfits that sane, creative dress and pride in one’s apparel and appearance are no longer considered necessary or even worthwhile.
Such is our present mental and moral state, daily dissecting democratic government and vital, sustainable commerce.
Our Caesar, the Orange Julius, flies to and from each of his private White Houses, while California and the rest of the country burns, frittering and twittering his shallow dreamworld deep into our national fabric. All while The Intercept reports stories of Betsy DeVos’s brother and mercenary armies’ salesman, Blackwater’s Erik Prince, along with Iran-Contra villain and criminal Oliver North, selling Kansas’s own Mike Pompeo, and Caesar, their own private CIA and Secret Soldiers — using your taxpayer money.
This is ugly enough, but another circus is Caesar’s threadbare crowd of followers, our own representatives.
When Dodger Marshall almost gleefully anticipates the emptying out of Environmental Protection and Internal Revenue offices, thus crippling key protective government functions, when our one Senator who can still talk (Moran) speaks of giving away our tax money and government services to the richest citizens, not as ‘trickle-down,’ but as ‘building up,’ then it is clear that we, the People, are no longer served by these titular potentates, but rather under attack by them — or more importantly, by their owners. And when owned, we and they are slaves.
We wait as the Christ Child turns fitfully in the manger. We wait, while wall-building governments, sick with power and paranoid with fear, madly plan planetary destruction. We wait, through our occupation by militaristic minds, for a return to social programs securing justice for all.
But, as Joan Chittister says, while we wait, we learn and grow more conscientious, creative, unsuppressed and unsilenced, bringing hope that stays and stays, till someday, the Star finally shines — and not just over Bethlehem.
On that day shall we be clothed in Glory.

David Norlin
Salina