Thanks to the Republicans and their enablers, we are undone. To paraphrase Lamentations 2:5:
Greed has become as an enemy. It has swallowed up our nation, all our palaces. It has destroyed our strong holds, and increased our grief and sorrow.
I hear from among the wealthy the theives who care only for power and material gain. More. They cry for more.
Truly, we are visited with retribution. We have pandered blood and treasure for oil and power. Sad, dark days. I fear for my country.
More below the fold.
God, I love this country. I'm blessed to have traveled her wide shores. I've camped beneath the stars of the Sonoran desert, ridge-walked along the Appalachian trail, watched summer storms break across the plains. I've met good men and women at work and at play. I've seen the best of us laboring in post-Katrina New Orleans, assembling sandwiches at a soup kitchen for the homeless, cleaning up our parks and rivers, teaching newcomers to speak and read. My grandfather, a Methodist preacher, always told me we are a great people. I believed him and I still do. It was only natural that I volunteered for the military when I failed in my first attempt at college. Military service has been in our family since the Civil War. My grandfather served in both world wars, and my father was in the Navy in the early days of the Cold War. So I did four years and then sailed through college. After that, it was two years in the Peace Corps, where, truth be told, I did more to make our nation more secure than in my military days simply by demonstrating that we can all get along. Since, I have continued to directly and indirectly serve my country, accumulating more than 12 years duty overseas. I cry whenever I hear the Star Spangled Banner during our trips back home. Service to country is my life. It is my family's life. My four boys live service to country every day. I know first hand what it means to be American when flying the Stars and Stripes would invite violence, and I've been lucky enough to have lived in countries where the people are grateful for what help we have provided.
The last eight years have not been easy. At first it seemed as if the belligerent Bush & Co. were playing out some Cold War script, fulfilling Soviet propaganda fantasies that we had labored long to correct. Then came 9/11 and I cried for justice and the end of the Taliban. But the administration failed to satisfactorily end the Afghanistan war, and I began to sense that my anger and righteous outrage had been appropriated for an amoral ends. Then, Iraq. It was the worst. We lied to ourselves and we lied to the world. Decades of hard-won reputation were utterly destroyed. In 2004 I worked to defeat the Bush machine, and, like many, I had confidence that we would succeed. But, when the returns came in from Ohio I learned the voters had the balls to give the conniving GOP bastards a second term. I was at a loss to explain. My country had been hijacked by thugs who sought only power. As if power and wealth alone were all that was worth possessing. As if power and wealth alone would serve as a means to their ends. As if the rest of us were simply obstacles in their pursuits. I was not for them, and that made me against them. I watched as the Republican Congress frittered away the people's money on useless projects that served narrow interests. They're spending the government out of business, I told my friends.
And it's come to this, a near complete financial meltdown. The Republicans and their enablers have bankrupted our future.
As I type, W. is speaking to the U.N. He looks and sounds like any autocrat - someone who insists on complete obedience from others; an imperious or domineering person - but I can't imagine anyone is listening. I'm not.
I'm working to defeat the Republican machine, to rid the U.S. of leaders that hate because they only understand hate. They don't understand the power of love. They don't understand that we can get a lot more done by holding hands than by killing each other. They don't understand because they hate. I pray we are not a hating nation. I pray that we are a nation committed to improving the life of all men and women who share the same basic human values -
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
Let's work together to throw off the yoke of this government. It is our right, it is our duty.