We have to recognize something going forward here, folks: Cynicism is our enemy.
Our enemy is the blatant disregard for the needs of the country, in the favor of a wealthy, powerful few. Our enemy is the emphasis on numerical gains over gains in the real world, pushed by those who don't care how many communities they destroy or how much they weaken the economic and social fabric of their country.
Our enemy is a philosophy that says it's alright to take the deficits that your party is mostly responsible for creating, and then blame the other party for them, and using that to fight against that party's attempts to clean up your mess.
Our enemy is religion that takes the most cherished words of its founders regarding charity, mutual goodwill, the paying forward of mercy and forgiveness, and junks them in favor of worldly rhetoric that condemns sinners where God promises forgiveness, that takes away from people where God tells us to give, that tells people to hate those different from them, not of their faith, though their savior tells them to love their neighbor, love their enemy, love even those who curse them.
Our enemy is the ideology that seeks to save millions of fetuses and embryos from abortion, yet would allow insurance companies to deny coverage to that woman, and their child should they be born with a pre-existing condition- or AS a pre-existing condition.
Our enemy is politics that dredges up the worst, most hateful prejudices, and flies them as banners of common sense, people glorifying themselves for their daring at saying such ugly things, and cursing those who find fault with them for their political correctness.
Our enemy is the monumental kind of deception that sends clueless, badly misinformed, angry fanatics out there to disrupt discussion and debate of policy, while those arranging the trips and funding the logistic rake in the profits from the very folks who would see their bottom line affected by the reforms.
Our enemy is the weak-ass sensibility that would have us give up, sit on the sidelines as one crisis after another crushes that much more of what is good and great in America out of it, and just declare this decline inevitable.
Our real enemy is a stubborn, self-involved, insular politics that can justify an endless blockade of legislation from duly elected representatives and Senators because some folks want to keep the power they held for the better part of two decades.
Our real enemy is the despair that tells us that this is all our fault, when the folks keeping this up, who could stop it in an instant, are the folks across the aisle.
We want to defeat the Republicans, and their fellow travellers on our side of the fence. But first we must defeat something else: the irrational, psychological effect not just of the recent political chicanery from the right, not just the blockade of the Senate, but of decades worth of political cynicism that comes down to a calculation of what it takes to render people inert and apathetic in the face of the destruction of their own best interests. That leads them to refuse the help of government when the problem they face is of a scale and kind that only a government can effectively handle.
We didn't just get where we are on accident. The dominance of Republican power, of conservative power was a work decades in the making, and it's gone to such an extent that the Republicans are willing to let bad laws with worse results stay on the books, bring us to the brink of defeat in the wars we fight, fail again and again and then drag the nation's feet on redeeming those failures to continue that power play.
Their very policy is cynicism and distrust. Their policy is, help the rich and powerful, and you'll help the poor. Eventually. Their policy is government should stay out of business's way, unless the price is right and somebody needs a tax break or a favorably written law.
I could go on, but I won't, since I already have. We have seen bones through noses, watermelon patches with fried chicken in front of the the White House, and those who invoke dictators and concentration camps to fight against a duly elected President and a healthcare plan intended to save, not kill, thousands of Americans a year.
These are people who want power without having earned the right to that power from the people.
And yes, they've succeeded in this and other things.
But will they succeed forever? Not if we unite America around something more compelling. Not if we stand up and continue the fight past election day, past inauguration, past a flawed and disappointing first year, past everything. We do not win, unless we are every bit as stubborn as they are. Idealism or Pragmatism, neither wins against cynicism if we fail to uphold the bright shining ideas, or at the very least the nitty-gritty truths of what our needs and what our means are.
We can win against these people. American has won against the cynics many times before. But it only wins when we don't let cynicism take us over. It only wins when we fail to realize that acknowledging the reality of corruption and despairing of bringing justice against it are two different things. The challenge is difficult, and so the dedication must be that much greater.
We cannot undo decades worth of damage to America overnight. It will probably take as many years to bring America back as it took to chuck it into the toilet. But we got to believe one thing: That American can be restored, and that this is worth fighting for.