As network television winds down the regular season with cliffhangers and questions of life and death for the star characters and major long-running shows come to their final conclusions, life and art seem to have a lot in common. HBO’s blockbuster Game of Thrones concludes with massive war, fallen heroes and the epic power struggle for who will sit on The Iron Throne and rule the kingdom? As I write this, the final episode is yet to air, however, as we look at where the plot currently stands, the idealistic belief in honor and trust above treachery, the hope that truth is rewarded over falsehood and deceit, and perhaps that justice ultimately wins in the end have ALL been destroyed.
This is not unlike the confusion around the truth and the lies, the loss of confidence and questions of integrity we are witnessing in this nation right now. When the people who place their hand on the Bible or some other sacred text and swear to protect and defend the constitution and our country, this United States of America, against All enemies both foreign and domestic and then fail to do so, it has real life consequences. The Game of Thrones will end and then people will endlessly watch reruns, deconstruct and theorize about its plot lines and debate the outcomes chosen by its creators just for the fun of doing so. There are no real life consequences involved!
The struggle for power that we find ourselves witnessing right now in our nation’s capitol is just as epic, just as treacherous and potently destructive as the battles that television’s genius creators have marketed and sold to the public. The fact that the public is more engaged and captivated by who will take The Iron Throne rather than the very real and documented case for obstruction of justice by the President of the United States and his refusal to submit to the 1st Article powers of the U.S. Congress to have oversight authority over the Executive branch of government has, by many accounts, put our nation into a “Constitutional Crisis.” A Constitutional Crisis puts the very democracy that we take for granted at stake. It is incumbent upon those who swore an oath to protect and defend our democracy to do whatever is within their ethical and legal authority to bring back the balance of power to our co-equal branches of government before the damage becomes irrevocable.
The erosion of our systems of government is real. We are looking at insidious corruption playing out in the highest office in the land and 
obstruction in plain view. The elected officials who have been sworn to protect and maintain a set of checks and balances are Missing in Action. If they continue to slow walk, delay and deny their obligation to hold our President and our public officials to the sworn oaths they took it will be game over. As obsessed as America is with its epic television series, let us all pray that our national story of loss will not yield a similar outcome. Because our Iron Throne is the American (d)emocracy and we are in an epic battle for the soul of this nation. The people of America need to come off the couch and get in this GAME! You will not be able to avoid it for much longer.
