I must first admit that I am no politically intellectual giant. I have no pithy commentary, nor do I possess the keen insight or the ability to express it as eloquently, that many of you here possess. It is the reason I come here, because I lack the ability to put into words the types of analyses for which so many of you are so brilliant at. I am pretty Joe Average in my scope of political understanding, and as such look forward to my daily "dose" of DailyKos. You all help to educate people like me and disseminate information that so many in the media either will not, or,due to time restrictions in a typical broadcast, cannot.
All I have to offer are my own experiences and observations from street level.
But even this average citizen senses a change in the direction of the wind politically. Around my office, discussions have changed radically in just the past several months from ones of tacit support for this Administration and their policies, to real and open dialogue about the issues. Gone for the most part is the blind acceptance that "Dear Leader" and his cronies know best. Gone seems to be the "they obviously know something we don't" attitude that peppered so many of the conversations I used to have with friends. Gone, too, are the attacks from my own family, staunchly Republican in their political leanings.
Something is in the air.
Much more than I have ever heard before, those around me have shifted their tone of conversation away from being afraid of external threats, to actually being afraid of those internally taking place in our own country. They have begun to question, and even fear, our leadership and what is happening on the political landscape. They talk tentatively about loss of freedoms, heavy-handed tactics, and the general feelings of being talked to like children by those they helped to elect. They are talking about, even though many still in hushed tones, have they gone too far? The rumblings of honest questioning are taking place all around me. And the first stirrings of fear that we have gone down a wrong path are being woven into many of the conversations I have been having with those who, for years, refused to even acknowledge that there may be reason to doubt. No longer will Bush or his cronies come on the TV and be greeted with the likes of "That's my guy!" a la my Aunt, but instead now there is genuine worry about what they, and by extension we as a whole in America, have done. And yes, there is an undercurrent of fear in their voices and questions.
I came of age during the Reagan era. Even though I disliked many of his policies and politics, I always held to the belief in our political process, and that in the end he would someday leave office and that the next wave of politicians would work to fix the mistakes of the past. Then came Bush senior, and although I, too, found him inane and ineffectual, I also knew that he would go.
But I wasn't afraid of them. Never was I afraid. I scoffed at them, I took with a grain of salt what they said and did, I discounted them with an eye to the future. I held to my faith in the "system."
I had no reason to be afraid.
But somehow, there came to power not only an Administration, but an ideology, that for the first time had me genuinely concerned. And I watched the people around me succumb to the power and persuasion of this ideology, fronted by an Administration that played cheerleader for it. I witnessed those I care the most about fall into a deep intellectual coma, blinded by rhetoric and deaf to reason, jump on board. I watched a media whom I always believed was supposed to be a source for rational and critical discourse dissolve and become a propaganda tool for those in power. It was then I grew deeply afraid. I wondered: What happened to my country? What is happening to my countrymen?
The rhetoric grew and grew. The Coulters and Hannitys and Limbaughs and O'Reillys crawled out of the dark recesses, and were given a place at the table to spew misinformation and vitriol. They were allowed, no encouraged, to violate the boundaries of common sense and good taste. And I watched my countrymen eat it up in spoonfuls, agreeing and becoming more and more inflamed by it. Being whipped up into a frenzy by dictatorial-style speeches from the President of the United States and his supporters simply served as a proper stage on which to act out a minority's collective hatred toward immigrants, gays, those who believed in the right to choose their own destinies, and others. No target was too big or small. And I watched people who dared to speak out be targeted for attacks. The outright dismissal, and labeling of those who questioned ANYTHING as traitors, horrified me. What was happening?
But it seems that vitriol and outlandish messages can only take an ideology so far. Lately, we have seen the crumbling of that ideology. Its edges are not so sharp as they once were. More and more people around me are asking themselves if they are to blame by having encouraged it. And I tell them the only thing that I can, which is the truth: yes. Yes, you fed into this and made it stronger, and now it is coming back to bite the hand that helped to feed it.
Could it be that the collective breath of America, held for so long after 9/11, is finally being exhaled? Could it be that we are finally waking up?
And so all around me, all of the sudden, the questions many of them never dared to ask, swirl about. Were we right in voting this in? How could we have been so mistaken? How do we fix this? I wondered often if I would ever hear them ask these things, believing that they were too far gone to even pose the questions. Yet the day seems to have finally come. And hopefully not too late.
Something is in the air.