The recent health care summit hosted by the president is only the most recent example of the futility of attempting to govern in partnership with people whose only concern is to obtain power for power's sake. If we sit back and allow this approach to continue we shall not only lose HCR, and lose elections we may lose our democratic republic. But we don't have to. What is it worth to you?
Metaphorical frogs in a pot?
Update: America is the richest nation in history, yet we now have the highest poverty rate in the industrialized world with an unprecedented number of Americans living in dire straits and over 50 million citizens already living in poverty.
Every member of this community is all too well aware of the daily hourly disinformation campaign with its vitriol and nonsensical facts published and broadcast about any and every issue that faces this nation and its people.
While we may disagree regarding the solution to the problems with Health Care, Unemployment, Bank Fraud, Iraq Occupation, Afghanistan Occupation, Campaign Financing, Hunger, Poverty, Regressive Taxes, Torture, ....
we are in agreement on the path to resolution of our disagreements; democratically elected representatives guided by constitutional limits leading to incremental policies enforced by law.
My friends, for nearly 30 years we have witnessed that those who do not see the problems we see, do not care for the human costs of broken policy they have imposed, have neither the respect for the principals of the flag they wave, the words of the founders they quote nor care to obey laws when it is an inconvenience to obtaining greater power and wealth.
Those who oppose you will use any and all means to quiet you and steal the sustenance of the democratic institutions that enable you.
They will deny you the means to obtain reasonable inexpensive medical care and laugh at you for bringing it up.
They will preach free markets and glibertarian nirvana to you when you are unemployed and losing your home, then siphon hundreds of billions of dollars to feather the nests of criminal banksters in the blink of an eye.
They will send your sons, daughters, husbands and wives in to war with lies killing them by the thousands.
They will torture and illegally detain you and claim that memos from sociopaths absolve them of any crime.
We could go on, but as I said, you know all this.
When finally it all became too much, we organized and mobilized and took back our federal government with HUGE majorities. We knew in our hearts and minds that once we exercised our power in this democratic republic things would change - didn't we?
But here we are in February 2010, a quarter-way through a presidential term, half-way through the congressional term and what has been accomplished? Shall we "start over"?
What this community needs to understand is that those opposed to us have no intention of playing by rules. They are power hungry and spent 2001-2008 enjoying the taste and the benefits of unbridled undemocratic power. They obviously like it.
While peace is our preference and calm reasonable debate and deliberation is our preferred path, sheep get slaughtered. There is no lie they won't tell. There is no embarrassment that shall shame them. There is no unethical, immoral or deadly path they will not consider in the pursuit and consolidation of their power.
With democratically elected majorities that have not been seen in 30 years, we need to see and understand it is not sufficient. We need to understand that reasonable arguments and issue framing is not sufficient. We need to understand that the only side which has any fear of consequences in this debate are those who have all too frequently been stamped in to the dirt.
My friends, there is a long trend here. We don't need to contemplate the motives. The facts and tragic results of the trend are plain to all of us. There is no known path to reversing the trend. We all know that what we have done and what we've accomplished thus far may have modified the rate of change in the wrong direction, but the trend continues .... with disastrous and deadly results.