This goes out to two groups of people: People who need to remember what hope is...and people who really need to learn the meaning of despair, for justice is well and truly coming their way.
They would prefer it to come on the backs of ballots, if they thought it through for more than a few seconds.
And I have no doubt that that most certainly is so.
All I have to say is below the break.
We need a better course.
There is no `Stay the Course' option; the United States of America has been run aground. We're stuck in sand. We're taking on water. We've taken casualties; many of us will never see their homes, ever again, thanks to `staying the course'.
`Stay the Course', nothing. We need a better course.
Look on the work of these so-called mighty, my fellow Americans, and forbear no more. The first and last thing they have ever asked of you is for more treasure for the richest of the rich, that those who have the least pay more in taxes, so those who have everything can pay less. Then they asked you for more treasure for their wars. Then they asked you for your sons and daughters, real sacrifice, human sacrifice, on the altar of their self-interest. And when anyone balked, the message sounded out over the ship's intercom: "Stay the course. We must stay the course."
`Stay the Course' toward the evisceration of our economy, our military, our families? All in the name of tax cuts and windfall war profits? Forget it. We need a better course.
We were asked to sacrifice, and we did. We gave of our time, our savings, and our very flesh and blood to help, again and again, Americans rebuild after disasters natural and inhumane. Our forebears did as much, and so did we. When their turn to give of themselves came and more, to give of the public trust set aside for such things, they refused, or directed such common wealth to private firms and friends. Or they simply sat back and watched entire cities die, and the last of shred of trust in their trusteeship died with their callow unconcern.
`Stay the Course', by feigning ignorance of the obvious, flouting explicit mandates to act on behalf of the American people in time of need? That was grounds for revolution, once upon a time, and that is no course to stay upon. We need a better course.
We were told we were at war with a new kind of enemy, that many of our notions of right and wrong, of rights and guarantees under law, would have to change in order to fit the times. We were asked to trust in our elected leaders, in our system of government, that those who held power in the name of the American people would not abuse our trust; no, they would honor that trust to the utmost. So, when the new courts, and the new prisons, and the new ways of interrogating prisoners, and the new methods by which our fellow Americans could be sorted out, friend from foe, quickly and quietly and without any fuss at all, many nodded at said it was good.
Then the truth of how dangerous a course we'd been asked to stay upon was made manifest. We had overnight become a nation under surveillance, yet not under law. We had men boiled and abused and flayed and mutilated in the name of the American people, and were told by our trusted leaders that it was not our place to criticize, that to second-guess such necessities was tantamount to treason. We were told, this time far more aggressively, to stay the course. Or else.
Eff that. That's not nearly good enough. We need a better course.
We were told it was not our right to decide matters of life and death within our own households, that none of our bodies belonged to us, but rather to the state. Our stem cells, our wombs, our blood, our children, our very selves were not our concern, but that of the regime. We were told the Constitution no longer mattered, that judges who upheld such arcane and wrongful words were fair game for vigilantes, that a bill of attainder were okay, if the ruling party approved of it. We were told that either we stay this course, or there would be violence over it. A governor contemplated such mischief, then flinched. A president prepared for the same, then had his recklessness handed back to him by the Supreme Court. The Law of the Land would prevail.
That course did not stay. And a better course ensued.
Many ask: "What better course?"
I have only one answer, also a question: "What other course is not?"