Rock-a-Bye Americans, Aloft in your Dreams

Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,

When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,

And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

If children can take, abide, withstand, and survive the lyrics to the above nursery rhyme and common children’s prayer; then why can’t adults take, abide, withstand, and survive when straight talk labels an adversary a bigot? Bigger question; why have some parents, must have been coddled and spoiled sometime in their lives, changed the last line of the above nursery rhyme to such as, “And mommy will be there to catch baby’s fall?” Makes one wonder, who is the child in the room? Because it appears adults, some adults, have a really hard time handling the truth, especially when it comes to labeling people and situations for what they are.

For instance, President Obama is the adult in need of a child in the room to call workplace violence by its proper name: Radical Islamic Terrorism. Likewise many adult Republicans are seriously in need of him they think of as a child, Donald Trump, to call Hillary Clinton by her proper name, bigot. How about the verse we sang, holding hands dancing around in a circle?

Ring around the rosie,

A pocket full of posies,

Ashes, Ashes, we all fall down.

Another verse for the children in the room. Some experts say it references the plague. Others say it is of pagan origin. Some versions include sneezing at the end. This version of the rhyme could speak of cremation, certainly of death; that all of us eventually “fall down.” “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” as it were.

According to a major public polling organization, Wikipedia that is, the term bigot is said of one who is “intolerant or hostile towards different social groups (especially, and originally, other religious groups), and especially [ those ] one whose own beliefs are perceived as unreasonable or excessively narrow-minded, superstitious, or hypocritical.” (Strikeouts and addition are mine. They make better sense of the polling.) The Wikipedia article goes on to say it is possible the first French use of the term bigot was by a King who exclaimed our English form of, “By God” when his son refused to extend his foot towards his betrothed so she could kiss it. (Kissing the man’s foot was the required custom.) Here was a young woman with a belief system that would not be so presumptuous, so utterly forward to kiss the foot of a man who had not offered his foot to her.

Standoff. A young man sitting in judgment of the woman he would marry for her beliefs. The King exasperated with his son’s pettiness and rudeness, while the love of his life waited for her man to “get over it” and “on with it.” The King perhaps desiring his son become more like the child he once was when he wasn’t so full of himself; the woman likely wishing the very same thing. Bigot/By God, words for use by kings and children, not adults. It’s quite a useful word when another word won’t do the job.

Contrary to Hillary Clinton’s mistaken view, those who have closely held beliefs not in synch with the Utopian Left: those who think God did not get it right; are not bigots. Rather they are the religious, the contemplative, the honorable, people of character, Benjamin Franklin’s industrious people, and George Washington’s loyal people. They are the French Huguenots, Palatines, and persecuted fleeing Quakers and Pilgrims of our time. Imagine, she has the impudence to infer “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” should not have found a home in the New World; that they don’t belong anywhere because they are and always were according to her, “bigots.”

So let Trump’s critics accuse him of lofting words and phrases like a child. He’s in erudite company with those who can handle talk of death and dying, those who can call a bigot “a bigot” by her proper name.

Rock-a-bye Americans, aloft in your dreams,

When the winds blow, your dwelling will creak.

When prudence fails, civilization will fall,

And down will come America, children and all.