I woke up this morning and I felt it. No I really felt it. The rage thats been buried deep inside of me for perhaps my whole life. It's simmering in my soul, baking to the marrow of my bones and yes boiling in my blood. What rage? Thats a fair question to be asked but chances are you already know what I'm talking about because my rage is your rage. It's our shared experience maybe the last shared experience in our culture. We may have differing positions on it but it's still there. This silent but all consuming, never ending rage.
I woke up this morning and I felt it. No I really felt it. The rage thats been buried deep inside of me for perhaps my whole life. It's simmering in my soul, baking to the marrow of my bones and yes boiling in my blood. What rage? Thats a fair question to be asked but chances are you already know what I'm talking about because my rage is your rage. It's our shared experience maybe the last shared experience in our culture. We may have differing positions on it but it's still there. This silent but all consuming, never ending rage.
I woke up this morning and I realized that it's not that they don't get it, it's that they just don't care. It's blatant too. They obviously don't care. You don't have to be a Harvard grad to see it, hell I'm not, I scraped through high school with enough of a bruised ego to hide in the military for four years. They chide us with their lies. They goad us on with their distortions. They mock us with their distractions. Because we fall for it. Because we know how outrageous their accusations are. Yet they seem just like us, white, angry, fed up. They put the flag on their lapel and to us that stands for something, for justice, for righteousness, for liberty. They believe like us, in God, and they trust in Him, just like us. When I woke up this morning though, it was clear and that clarity brought on the rage. They don't believe in that flag or the values it stands for. They only want one thing, these hungry hogs, to feed at the trough of our money and our power. They know that if they accomodate us, we the quiet angry many, that we will bring them to our trough. So they get up there, or they convince someone like us, to get right in our ear and whisper about God and His Glory and they relate it to our suspicions of things that we haven't had time to consider properly: gays, abortion, guns, service economy. They tell us about folks we know, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and they talk about how they believed like you do and then they say well they never envisioned the world we live in today. Government is so big and clumsy, it wastes your money and eats your future and your childrens future. They say government is bad. This is what I realized this morning: they are right! Government when Republicans run it is bad. This is because when Republicans run the government it serves the real power behind that tired old party. Wealth. This is why our bosses make five hundred times more than us, this is why our banks are in danger of disappearing, this is why our houses are on the auction block, our gas tanks empty, our children unable to attend school, our young people dying in a war with no end for no reason, this why we can barely afford food to eat, we fear a cold because we have no insurance, this is why we love our country but fear our government. When Republicans run things, there are no boundries, there is only the rape of the land of the free and the home of brave. I suspect we know all that together, you and I. But there is still the flag and they say troops and 9/11 and Hussien and God and Bless and America and they smile when it's said. So tired from the day, tired from the fear we shut down and concede though we know a government of the people and by the people and for the people can never be a bad thing. But the flag, troops, POW, 9/11, God, terrorist, tax relief, flag, POW, Hockey mom, God, POW, flag, an eagle, gays, troops, security, POW, God, guns, Hockey mom, Maverick, Nascar, God! GOD! But their lying and we know it and they know we know it and yet we still walk into it. I can't join you anymore though friends.
I woke up this morning and I felt our shared rage, I heard the same words uttered by the same bitter old man and the cynical but pretty woman. But something else was on the air. I couldn't quite hear it at first, the blood in my ears pounding as it was. So I looked out the window to see if it was there, the sun seemed brighter, the grass greener, the sky bluer and I listened closely and in the midst of all the noise and the lies I heard it, one word followed by two others: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! and it stopped. It all melted away. The smallness of it all drifted out of my life. Enough. Is. Enough. That was it and suddenly it seemed like the long darkness was over, the sun will shine and there will a morning in America...for real this time. This voice it asked us not to cower of others to turn against one another but to stand with him, to stand by each other and together, UNITED we will stand against the noise, against the lies, we can achieve our goals and he was right. Because he offered that most precious of gifts, not a cult of celebrity like the Republicans claim, but self-governance, the needs of the people tended to by the people. He offered us the America we all believed in. He offered it back to us. He stands for us and I stand with him. We stand with him.