I am a Democrat.
I supported, donated money to, and traveled to volunteer my time on behalf of our current President in the general election.
Last week, I spent hours standing in the midst of that great collection of humanity shedding near frozen tears on behalf of what we have accomplished.
But we have far more to do. We have much further to push; even beyond the greatest ambitions for success that our President might hold.
I am no fan of war. I do not claim such terms lightly.
But now is the time for war. Not a war in the direct sense that we have seen the results of recently; there will be no decomposing bodies on the street, no orphaned children wandering ethnically cleansed neighborhoods.
Instead, now is the time for war in its greatest sense: ideological war.
A war of ideas. A war of political capital spent in the greatest manner possible: not only to empower those at the bottom of our society; but to foster a new civilization offering a sufficient base citizenry to prop up the elites who otherwise will soon find one not worth existing in.
Perhaps to some degree my revelations of our current predicament are a consequence of maturity; a result of my lack of ability to see longstanding desperate needs that have developed long before this crucible we now find ourselves facing.
But we must accept that as a country, we are pressed against issues that are existential. And that there must be answers that supersede political expediency.
We must accept that this moment calls for radical answers in the face of radical questions. That our decades under the shortsighted rule of those enthralled with their own motivations has created a context for necessary patriotism not seen since the Depression and World War II.
We must accept that three decades worth of the hyper-partisan rule of conservative America has created a time where we must be equally strident in remedying their failures.
While I can respect President Obama’s desire to bring all to the table, now is the time to only admit those approaching with good ideas in good faith.
Or else all might be lost.
At this moment, our nation stands at the mercy of an irreparable financial system. We are the sole industrialized nation that fails to recognize access to health care as an essential human right. We find ourselves guilty of heinous international crimes against humanity. And we are still a nation waste deep in the prosecution of illegal and futile war.
Perhaps it is my greatest failing that I come to grips with my own personal responsibility in correcting such ills at this moment of our utmost power. But this is our time to correct this. And any attempt to negotiate the much-needed solutions to these Constitutional threats with those responsible for their creation is doomed both morally and practically.
Despite having stood against the TARP bailout, I understood the motives of those on the left in its implementation.
Naivety is a dangerous impulse; quite often the lack of will to consider the worst possible outcome drives those to accept convenient yet wasteful solutions. Yet the transparency of failure in our attempted quick fix is startlingly apparent. Perhaps the obviousness of its remedy is equally politically terrifying to many as it is apparent: nationalism of our financial system.
I suggest this not as an ideologue, but rather as a dispirited realist who recognizes no other affordable solution.
We can no longer afford to protect the prosperous few at the cost of the many. There is no bad bank that can absorb the great cost of our recent excesses that does not threaten the foundation of our financial underpinning. It is now time that we require those most complicit in the creation of our current context to share the burden in correcting it.
And while those implicit in offering financial machinations to create the illusion of prosperity in a time of dissolution, few single root causes have been as responsible for the underlying issue as the exponential rise in the cost of private health care.
Indeed, there is no proposal on the table from any ‘mainstream’ politician that provides any remedy to this predicament. Our nation fights a globalized industrial battle with one hand tied firmly behind its back on the basis of the great failure of our political establishment to consider the one essential component to make us internationally competitive: a single payer health system.
Beyond this, a great moral dilemma extends: that we accept the suffering of our fellow citizens as a result of a ‘free market’ system. We have created a system in our society that accepts that those entering young adulthood walk the streets of our cities and the fields of our agrarian valleys take each step on a gamble; that those less fortunate in their pre-retirement years must face the great physical threats without concern.
In the face of obvious systemic flaws in our healthcare system, instead of offering a system divorced of our current inflated costs, we instead offer government subsidies for the current system. This is not only wrong, it costs us money we do not have.
Yet, despite these imperative domestic issues, there is one great failing of our nation that extends its effects beyond our shores.
In the wake of our morally justified intervention in the second World War, with the financial benefits reaped by all in our nation readily apparent; a permanent militaristic mentality was fostered in our once internationally isolated nation.
The debates of what came before me are immaterial; all I can speak for is what was committed in my adult name.
Under the presidency of George Walker Bush, innocent men and children were rounded up from around the world both free and oppressed; and subjected to treatment that violated international law and basic human morality.
Perhaps the most egregious flaw in our recent national discourse has been our willingness to view our behavior as a domestic issue.
As a society that allowed crimes of state to be committed to a disheartening extent in plain sight; our attempts to negotiate a response to our activities in house represent a failing of our nation.
As the opposition party throughout the worst actions carried out by our government, while still carrying the guilt of our inability to prevent or stop them; we carry a profound moral obligation to use the mechanisms of our lawful society to right our wrongs.
In all of these matters, the great force that prevents our pursuit of a more perfect society is political expediency.
It is political expediency that currently finds our President mired in arguments irrelevant to the great task at hand of literally saving American society at this desperate hour.
But our representatives’ failures to fight these necessary battles on our behalf represent a failure of our movement twofold: the first is our unquestioning acquiescence to holding power. As our power is yet new, perhaps it is premature to judge our merits on this front.
However, our most explicit failure is our inability to define these issues to the uninitiated. I recognize the force of the establishment in foiling our efforts to a large extent; while simultaneously recognizing the extent to which new forums such as this create new mechanisms to circumvent them,
But circumvent them we must. And push even the most beloved of our representatives toward embracing that which is right in lieu of political expediency we must; while concurrently making what is right politically expedient.
Because our nation is as stake.
Because we are at war.
And we can’t fight over John Conryn’s vote anymore. There’s so much more to do.