t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 04 February 2008
As the election season begins in earnest, there will be debates and political promises plastered up and down Main Street, USA. Television stations, both local and national, will compete for campaign dollars and airtime and exact a premium price for a few seconds of your time, for a few high-priced sound bytes to persuade you, the voters, to make your choice.
But for now, I want to talk with you about this country, this precious piece of democracy, this dream we carry in our hearts and in our eyes. Make no mistake, we must be clear-eyed in our view of the world and in particular our view of America. Good and bad, we cannot flinch in our vision, because vision is not only hope; it is reality. Vision is more than ethereal dreams or utopian desire, it is the acute observation of blemishes and progress, of wealth and poverty, of joy and suffering and the riot of the soul at injustice. Vision is not merely a philosophical adjective, but a verb, an action - the course to be taken.
In America we have the right to vote, or not. But the right to vote is more than a right of choice - it is an implicit and implied trust between We the people and our elected representatives. We the voters trust the elected to actually represent us, to listen to what we say by the casting of our votes. Candidates who run for office subject themselves to the trust of the people's will, and more importantly agree that the people are to be trusted; not coerced or intimidated or discounted or spied upon for political gain, but trusted with those inalienable rights to dissent or agree with whatever political platform is put forth. And more importantly, each and every vote must be counted, or else we diminish the very democracy we claim to cherish. Anything less is the action of thugs and scoundrels.
These have been dark days for American democracy and the American dream. We have lost trust in one another, trust in our inalienable rights and trust in the principles upon which this nation was founded.
Where once we dreamed beyond the boundaries of oceans and stars, we now huddle in apprehension and frame our fears within fences and borders and walls that limit our imagination and our compassion. Where once we embraced the magic of diversity, we now seek shelter in the mold of sameness, hesitant to break that mold. Where once we embraced the right to assemble and dissent, we now corral and censor. We now legislate corporate protection, regardless of the crimes of those corporations against our citizens. Where once we understood that freedom of religion also included freedom from religion, we now administer spirituality litmus tests for any and all citizens and political candidates. Where once we understood that majority rule must be balanced with inclusion and protection of the minority, we now seek to empower select elite minorities to override the rights and well-being of the majority. And that was never the American way.
In America, we dream; not from gluttony and greed, but from our natural-born desire for betterment, from the longing to improve our lot in life and that of our children and neighbors and fellow citizens. Ours is not a dream of empire, but of empathy for those who suffer and those who struggle to provide even the barest of necessities; a dream not of wealth, but of health for every child and adult so that they may live their American dream. It is a dream of inclusion, not exclusion. Ours is the dream of the angels.
In the opening of his poem, "The Trial By Existence," Robert Frost captured the essence of America:
The Trial By Existence
Even the bravest that are slain
Shall not dissemble their surprise
On waking to find valor reign,
Even as on earth, in paradise;
And where they sought without the sword
Wide fields of asphodel fore'er,
To find that the utmost reward
Of daring should be still to dare.
- Robert Frost
It is time that America return to its previous self to rediscover that "utmost reward of daring" and continue to dare against the storms of political malfeasance and subversion of the principles of our Constitution and Founding Fathers. America is a trial by existence for democracy, a trial for the whole world to see, and now is the time to be daring and faithful to the American dream for the betterment of citizen and government alike.
But what about terrorism, you ask?
Terrorism is not a single identifiable enemy. Terrorism is an affliction of the human spirit, an evil malady of hopelessness and violence. Terrorism is the sickness of our age, a plague of the heart and soul whereby the few instill the fever of fear in the many and paralyze the very core of freedom and democracy.
And the cure for terrorism is American daring to refuse to buckle to fear by turning against our fellow citizens and spying on them and imbuing them with the stain of distrust as though We the people cannot be trusted except as we comply to the will and whim of government. We are the government. We must dare to refuse to turn our privacy into a corporate profit center for data mining and Orwellian guardianship; dare to embrace constitutional rights rather than shredding them as though the Constitution were nothing more than an inconvenient cluttered piece of paper.
So let us begin to reclaim the dream and the daring vision that is America.
Let us have the daring vision to enact universal healthcare for every citizen and child in America. Do not let the naysayer persuade us that it is impossible. We have been to the moon on a promise and a dream. Surely we have the means to ensure preventative healthcare for our children and each other. The infrastructure is there with our VA and Medicare health systems already in place but poorly managed. The tools are readily available and conversion is within our grasp.
Let us dare to care for our veterans. Suicide and PTSD are not acceptable collateral damage in a fight for freedom. We have the means to establish local community centers for the treatment of veterans and the dedication to create veteran mentoring programs that could enable both volunteers and professionals to mentor and partner with the ever-increasing number of veterans who need counseling and support for themselves and their families. We have the ability to eliminate obstructive bureaucracies and means-testing to provide for "him who has borne the battle," as Abraham Lincoln said.
A nation that cannot care for its veterans or its children cannot face the world in good conscience. For as we stand and send them off to battle, so must we stand and face their flag-draped return. They have served: Duty, Honor, Country - and not in the dead of night or in secret darkness, and neither shall we. With honor and respect and empathy, we must stand beside our grieving families and pay the respects of a grateful nation.
We must hold fast to our Founders' vision of democracy. We must and will refuse to surrender our civil liberties and privacy to the fear-mongers who seek to line their pockets with our lives. A nation that spies on and fears its own citizens is not America; it is a totalitarian regime.
We must reclaim the vision of affordable education for our children. Surely we can see an imbalance just from the 2007 budget figures: $481 billion for defense, $100 billion supplemental spending for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and $56 billion for education. Has our vision become so frightened and distorted that we choose to put more money into war and the destruction of the world than into educating our children?
Let us dare to confront the control of the public airwaves. The hands of corporate conglomerates seek to strangle the very air that belongs to We the people and squeeze out every nickel possible. So be it. We must and shall fight the battle of the people's grassroots communication through support of Net Neutrality. The people's voice, our voice, must be heard, whether liberal or conservative, religious or atheist, the public forum must be held above the fray of profit and censorship. The benefits of technology cannot be controlled by the rich and powerful. It failed in 1776 and it will fail now if we dare it to be so.
We must restore faith in voting in America. One person, one vote - fully counted and fully enfranchised. Requiring onerous qualifications and proof of multiple forms of identification is a targeted sin against the minority, whether of color or of class, and cannot be tolerated. Our election process must be restructured and made accessible for every citizen without intimidation, phone jamming or any of the other so-called political tactics that have become standard practice and marginally legal. We must dare to restore sanity through reform to campaign finance in this country. No lobbyist or conglomerate should have more access or more rights than We the people.
So now we vote. Our vote is not just the passivity of choice. but also a vote for our own action and participation in the American dream and in our own government. Activists and dissidents and great debate founded America. It was good enough for the Founding Fathers - it is good enough for us. Partisanship should be embraced and compromise carefully weighed against the needs of and benefits to the American people. Anything less is a corporate marketing plan to sell snake oil for what doesn't ail us.
We are America, daring and visionary, and as we emerge from the darkness of the past few years, we see the light of hope and promise - and, in the words of the poet, "find that the utmost reward of daring should be still to dare."
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