Transition Choices
We've been supersized, marginalized, contorted, and distorted. Facing our demons means admitting our mistakes and getting on with our lives.
Face Your Demons
Are we ready as a nation, to face our weakness, our fears and just get on with the hard work? There are a number of television shows that have this theme: Reaper, Ghost Whisperer, Medium to name a few. The archetypal journey of the hero or heroine facing supernatural negativity (weakness and obstacles of mega, super, ultra, steroidal proportions and the main character overcoming these “challenges”) occurs all in a half hour time frame. Given so much lip service “encouragement” from our communities, how are we at this current juncture poised to face our obstacles? Is the sum total of our heroic journey just another couch potato experience?
In my humble opinion, talk is cheap and so small town America has been racked with despair. Despair due to a civil war of politics. The small town of have and have-nots where the party divide plays out. Where the great greed of domination, that is the true filter down system from Bush's oval office, keeps us in our place. We know what's going on. We, who read, and want change, we who know that politics, oppression, and suppression have cycles. We, who will be the heroines of tomorrow, with broom and mop in hand. Or are we to continue in the same victim-like fashion of being dumped on by the greedy hoard: corporates ruining the environment, provincials who are afraid of anything but the status quo, the churches who control through fire and brimstone oration, the inefficiency of bureaucracy?
As a nation, we must rebuild. We must have change. The revolution of the sixties was a social upheaval. A necessary response to so much authoritarian control. The people needed to know who and what they were capable of as a group. Branded as mere rabble, the angry mob has always had a way of grabbing attention. The web creates an easier access to mind share, but can it help us activate, motivate and act on building our future? How does the individual identify as a “we?” Through my political party, through my friends, through my kids, and of course the web, this is where I find the communal “we.”
It is very difficult for any true Democrat to have a national identity, or much identity at all. We have been so thwarted in the past eight years. My mother used to say, “what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger.” What she didn't elaborate on, is what doesn't kill you may imbue you with wounds, setbacks, even paranoia (when so many personal and individual rights have been misused).
Even the Republicans should stop pretending that the last eight years of rule were good. Most of you are now in a worse position than you were eight years ago. A vote for McCain/Palin is a vote for more of the same. Just face your demons and admit that Bush was a mistake and that you'll stop voting out of blind loyalty to the party line.
I will not vote for any more pain. I am willing to face my pain, my demons and get on with the hard work. Pain is the vote for McCain and Palin. My mother would put her hand over her mouth in a conspiratorial manner and whisper “Palin is just P-L-A-I-N,” spelling the word out to emphasize her opinion of this waif's lack of intelligence. To my mother's generation of Democrats, Palin is not well-schooled, or disciplined in ways that engender respect. In that way she is plain and simple but not a national leader. Obama and Biden are leaders, they are not Big Bosses, overlords of the Golden Rings of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They know through humility that if they get into office, nothing but hard work will be greeting them on the road ahead.