Faith Up to Reality

A TRULY TERRIBLE thing has happened, The American people have lost Faith. No one is exactly sure when Faith disappeared or even where they might have left it, but the grim fact speaks for itself: Faith is missing.

In this time of crisis the nation's leaders are all pulling together in the search to find Faith. President Ford has asked all Americans to join with him in locating Faith immediately. "My very existence depends on it," he said recently, James Reston has written over 200 articles in the New York Times, all seeking Faith. Reston says that his very existence depends on it too.

Therefore White has just written a book about how we lost Faith, titled Breach of Faith. He says it's a tragedy that we lost it and blames the loss on Nixon. This is hard to believe. Even Nixon couldn't be solely responsible for all the Faith that's missing. But it's a serious problem. Secretary of State Kissinger told the West Palm Beach Rotary Club last week that "our loss of Faith is no laughing matter." Kissinger said that he was unable to keep bombing Cambodia because we lost Faith. That clearly is no laughing matter. What good is a Secretary of State who can't bomb occasionally?

The problem of missing Faith is so serious that William Colby, director of the CIA, has initiated Operation Find-It, a clandestine project designed to infiltrate and assassinate all individuals responsible for losing Faith. Colby told a Senate committee last week that so far the CIA has assassinated over 20,000 people who either "actively or inactively participated in the plot to lose Faith." But so far Faith itself remains at large.

The FBI, however, has received several reported sightings of Faith from concerned citizens around the country, Some people say that Faith was last seen when Kennedy was elected President in 1960. Others claim to have seen Faith briefly when Nixon resigned, but it disappeared again when he was pardoned. It is all very confusing.

Ellsworth Bunker says he hasn't seen Faith since Teddy Roosevelt conquered Cuba in 1897. If this is true we have a real problem on our hands. Anything that has been lost for 80 years is going to be hard to find. But we should join President Ford in looking for Faith all the same. It's the patriotic thing to do.

IT MIGHT HELP to think back over some of the events of the not too distant past to try to discover exactly who is most responsible for losing Faith today. I began looking through old newspaper articles in hopes of gleaning some clue as to when Faith might actually have first disappeared. It seems that some Faith was lost when President Kennedy was assassinated. Some more slipped away when Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated too. And a big piece of Faith was found missing recently when people realized that the police still don't really know who assassinated them. But that's ancient history. Faith must have disappeared since then.

Maybe a little Faith got lost when we began dropping over 200,000 tons of bombs on rice farmers in North Vietnam back in 1965. I bet some Faith was missing after we obliterated Laos, destroyed Cambodia and then created and colonized South Vietnam, all in just three presidential elections. It was good for employment, but it must have been hard on Faith.

Back here in the USA there was lots going on that affected the state of the national Faith. I'm almost positive that some Faith was lost when Governor Rhodes of Ohio told us that the demonstrators at Kent State were "worse than Nazi scum," and then watched the National Guard murder four of them. More Faith disappeared when the Mississippi State Police blasted student demonstrators at Jackson State and then told an ambulance driver to "come pick up a couple of dead niggers." But these are small events. They alone couldn't be responsible for all the missing Faith.

IF YOU THINK about if you realize that there is probably nothing that completely explains out losing Faith. It seems to be a multi-faceted rip-off. Personally I lost a lot of Faith when the U.S. Department of Justice lost all of its conspiracy trials against those radicals who were threatening the National Security. I thought they would win at least one trial out of twenty. But I guess that's the breaks of the game.

Some friends of mine lost Faith when they found out that the FBI, CIA, IRS, and U.S. Army had more files on people than the KGB. But that's probably because they were on file.

My nephew lost Faith when he realized that President Ford appointed Vice President Rockefeller, who gave Secretary of State Kissinger to former President Nixon who appointed President Ford who pardoned former President Nixon. My nephew says that that's not participatory democracy. But then he's precocious.

A radical I know lost Faith when he read that Mao Tse-Tung liked Richard Nixon and blamed his resignation on the fact that there is too much political freedom in the U.S. But my radical friend probably just envies Mao. He comes from a bourgeois family.

President Ford is right. This loss of Faith really is a big problem. So far everyone from the U.S. Army to Mao Tse-tung to my nephew seems to be implicated in losing Faith. No wonder Dr. Kissinger is to upset. Not even William Colby can assassinate all those people.