oh my, lawsy-dee

Ironic, isn't it?

The same group of people that turned the Ronald Reagan funeral into a ten-day political paean to the glories of right-wing policy are the ones who are now shocked, shocked I say, (Heathcliff, fetch the smelling salts quick, now!) over a couple of critical but civil remarks about the realities of our current national situation at the funeral of a lifelong and high-profile civil libertarian. The ugly racist stench of their tut-tutting seems to be overlooked by many of our countrymen, but there is an unmistakable reek of "don't get uppity" in their chiding.

I guess they feel a two percent favorability rating among Americans of African heritage is insurmountable, so they are going to take the opposite approach and try to further marginalize our fellow citizens who happen to be black and don't follow the rules for "house negroes." With government-approved haters like the fundamentalist christians preaching the elimination of people with different sexual preferences, the violent, racist and jingoistic self-labeled minutemen "guarding" our border from hispanics seeking opportunity, and with the Bush administration ensuring a right-wing caucasian majority in a traditional democratic stronghold by not reviving a moribund New Orleans, it looks like they think they have a broad enough power base to become more overt in their effort to take over the United States and re-form it into their dream theocratic-militarist-corporate state.

It seems more clear every day that the end result of all of this is going to be the United States militarily and politically battling the other nations of the world as it simultaneously faces the chilling prospect of another civil war. Unfortunately, just the same as happened in the Civil War, it is another vocal minority that once again appears to be dragging the entire nation into ever-increasing chaos. Less than half of the population of this country supports the extreme positions this group stands for, yet they are dictating policy that affects all of us and will continue to burden our descendants and pretend that their stance represents the largest part of the citizenry.

Slowly, painfully, people are starting to wake up. Americans are starting to notice that what this administration says and what it does are entirely different things. We may be a self-absorbed people, but sooner or later we begin to understand when there's something wrong. Our national understanding eventually ousted Richard Nixon. We are at one of those historic intersections now. As a nation and as individuals, we are going to be forced to make decisions about who we are, what we stand for, and what we will tolerate as we hurtle into the future. It is time for all people of conscience to speak out, loud and proud, and give the people who are dragging us headlong into apocalypse clear notice that we will not stand for the destruction of the dream of "a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."


Stand up for what you believe in. Help keep America free.