Where have you gone Thomas Pain? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you -Woo woo woo-
WOO-HOO!!! Yes folks Election Day has come… and not gone away, once again this year. Last year we lost Massachusetts to Mitt Romney on Guy Fawkes Day of all days. Now… Hell, who the funk knows what we’ve lost this year ‘round. Maybe our country, surely our faith in the informed voter. As Jon Stewart pointed out the other night, on his popular cable program The Daily Show, why is it if you poll Kerry and Bush supporters you find that a large percentage of both are confused as to what their own candidate’s positions are?
Why indeed? Is it because their ADD brains can’t focus on more then one idea at a time? Or is their genuine misinformation floating about. -huff-
Remember when people read the news and weighed the issues?!?! Good, me neither.
People it seems to me that just about every president, or representative, ‘we the people’ elect pander the American people with false promises and subterfuge. Do you realized that the man on the twenty dollar bill was president during what some historians have called ‘the First Holocaust.’ That’s right President Andrew Jackson turned a blind eye to the rights of about 15,949 people as they were forced to march the bloody ‘Trail of Tears.’
God Bless America!
And yet there was a time when our country was asked to help set up democratic regimes in other countries. When we, Americans, were thought of as the noble and free. When the world modeled itself on us… Now we bust on in like Clint Eastwood in a Spaghetti Western forcing our capitalize version of democratic on people who just want a chance to stand, or fall, on their own.
Like the Spanish Inquisition brought justice, we bring the best ideals of love, hope, and freedom to Iraqi…Come on, when the freakin’ Pope says you’re unjustly attacking/killing, people it’s a good bet someone in power should have listened, especially a ‘Good Christen’ like Mr. Bush.
So what’s to do?
What does all this ranting, all this blogging, get us? Besides that 'oh so clever' feeling. And the grand illusion that people, who don’t already agree with us are reading our impotent rage?
The world that remains the same...
So what do we do?
We commiserate on the internet and curse the stars when we should be getting back into the fight. We are still living in a country divided, between those who want to take away rights to secure the thinking of 200 years ago. And people who want change. Who want to expand on the ideals of 200 years ago. And there’s a momentum here that we can still build on. But we HAVE TO MOTIVATE!!!!
Remember what Olde Honest Abe said "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other."
The greatest gift Thomas Pain gave us was ‘The Rights of Man’ and because of those rights we live in a country where we can make mistakes, and we can solider on. Where we can work to change all the things that are wrong if together we fight hard enough. But we can’t do it by sitting on our bums. Rocking the VOTE was only the beginning, we’ve got to write in and call in and come out of those thrice mortgaged homes in-between taking care of the kids and working our two jobs to march. To stand up and be counted.
Yeah it’s a pain in the butt, but look at the alternative. Hell, look at countries like Afghanistan? They live in squallier, women afraid to leave there homes for fear of rape and murder, in comparisons we live in a paradise. We are the richest most powerful country in the world with the ability to help our fellow man, just like every religion preaches.
But if we don’t want to be thrown out of paradise we best do all we can to make damn sure that we live up to our hype, that WE ARE the best damned country on earth!
Now I better get off my high horse and do some work. So until King George the 2nd finds god, again, or the whole of the country walks out on work to protest for peace I’ll be trudgin’ through the muck with you all trying to make sense out of the awful lies.
2 Comments:
First of all, it is spelled "Thomas Paine." Of course, he personally spelled his own name either Pain or Paine, depending on his mood. But anyway, Paine looks better, IMHO.
Secondly, the only people who listen to or repsect the Pope are Catholics. Bush is a Protestant. And they HATE the Vatican, in a historical way. The Pope only has, and only ever will influence Catholics, who mostly reside in the Blue states anyway, so it makes no difference to American politics what the guy in the funny hat says.
And thirdly, where did all the effing Nader voters go? He lost over 3 million votes, which, according to the Dems, should then have gone to Kerry. But Bush killed in the popular vote. Perhaps the Nader people didn't like the Dem tactic of trying to force them off the ballot and turned coat on the Blues. Ya think?
Good shit. As much as it inspires me, though, I'm trying to bring about some kind of change through my novel and stuff. After all, that's one way that things brought me to my mindset now. There's all this learning I have to do for it and so on and so forth. I'm not complaining. If anything, I'm looking for some kind of innovative way that I can make a difference when I work eight hours a day, have a total of something like a 2 hour commute, have a 3 hour class on Mondays for my socially changing novel, and have tons of work to do for that class!
If anything. . .I think the change comes from changing the media from a circus to an actual outlet for good information and analysis, bettering the education system for critical thought, and changing those red states to blue through education and understanding of perspectives etc. etc. rather than trying to influence the swing states.
Seriously, as much as we have to maintain the Democratic status of Massachusetts, what kind of change will really happen by influencing just Massachusetts or New England voters. And I know that you're probably pushing for a more radical official political angle, but again. . .New England's generally already open to that stuff. We need to influence the middle and the south of the US.
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