On verge of constitutional emergency

Sound the alarm! We’ve got a national emergency on our hands!

Well, it’s really more of a constitutional emergency, as President Trump has opened the door for all future emergency declarations to be defined by politics, not real threats to our health and safety. He has conjured up a national security crisis at our southern border and, in doing so, has opened a new world of absurd possibilities. Allow me to illustrate …

Let’s start with hair. The way Americans have decided to comb, cut, style and color their hair these days is causing great confusion, which someone should declare an emergency.

Once upon a time, your hair defined your place in society. Middle-age men kept it short and conservative, married women kept it fluffed up, curled and contained with a couple pounds of hairspray, while young people grew theirs wild and unruly, to fit their rebellious demeanors. Now we’ve got war veterans with ponytails and hippies with bald knobs. It’s become impossible to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys anymore. Even our president is sweeping his true identity under that rug atop his dome.

Then there’s race. As racial and ethnic groups intermarry and copulate without birth control, the lines between black and white and all the other colors of the human condition are becoming blurred.

Pretty soon you’ll have to ask people directly which race they belong to, before you can prejudge them. This is particularly tough for white pureblood racists, for they will soon have to face the reality that they are a minority themselves. That’s certainly not the America I grew up in.

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Of course, there are some real crises out there — so serious they’re hard to laugh at.

Climate change could destroy the Earth as we know it, and yet a significant number of Americans don’t believe it, or don’t care.

We’ve now got more guns than we do people in America, along with an epidemic of mental illnesses and drug addictions. That’s not a good combination in any day and time.

And then there’s the war on truth — perhaps the greatest threat there is against our way of life. Once political persuasion and blind faith trumps rational thinking and real science, our ability to effectively govern ourselves will unravel.

That last one, at least to me, is a much greater crisis than some stupid idea that a “wall” will stop an “invasion” that doesn’t exist along our southern border.

“The truth shall set you free,” says Jesus in Scripture. Perhaps he would agree that the opposite is also true, that lies steal away freedom. Control the truth and you can control the people.

You might as well turn the alarm off now. The noise is just way too distracting, and it keeps us from hearing that far-off voice in the wilderness — crying over how absurd our national conversation has become.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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