 |
| English: Tea Party protesters fill the National Mall on September 12, 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| The Gadsden flag (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| Dr. Jerry Falwell (en, d. 2007), the founder of Liberty University (en), was a Christian pastor and televangelist. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
 |
| English: Inauguration of Jimmy Carter (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I am a woman without a defined decade of influence. I am
sometimes included in the baby boomer generation and other times I am not. I
did not experience the social uproar of the sixties but was most definitely
framed by it. This makes me a political pundit in the middle of generations
that define our culture wars.
Having prefaced this essay with that statement, I have to
say in all my years of experiencing the yang and yang of progressive secular
thought and conservative Christian thought; there has never been such a great
divide, I had much greater faith in the world when the Christian right was full
of people with fourth grade educations and sent their meager earnings to gaudy
television evangelists.
When I was growing up conservatives were the men who showed
up for Morning Prayer so they could catch an early tee time at the golf course.
Yes, the trailer park crowd could be rallied for the right, but most were
happily waiting for the return of Christ. It was true beyond doubt to them
because Israel
had been restored. None of us had to fear the social and political power of the
less than intellectually sound. The
Moral Majority is the same political persona is that is now called the tea
party.
Then something happened. Was it “inspiration” from Jimmy
Carter explaining to Playboy that he was a “born again”? If there is an iconic
socialist Baptist it would be the personified by Jimmy Carter, a man who
publicly lives his faith. It was the
national nervous breakdown of the nations baby boomers who had recovered from
their. "summer’ of Love and still woke up to find themselves no more
spiritually enlightened then their parents. I suppose we will never know. The Christian
right caught the nice man who works in middle management and made him reject
evolution and vote to save Fred the Fetus.
Yet, I look everyday at a country tore at it core. It may
not seem so, but even our moment of national unity after 9/11 was tarnished by
some semi literate mentally unstable preacher. They claimed it was because our
nation tolerated homosexually and did not say Christian prayers at public school
that was at the heart of all our nations’ woes
Sometimes I wake up and wonder where all the adults went.
This is a very true experience for anyone who lives in the intellectual death
trap that is the true Midwest . Oh, I am not
speaking of nice restored urban neighborhoods and artistic havens in all of the
large and midsize cities in the Midwest, but the real Midwest .
The Midwest where everyone knows there are
still towns no one black or Hispanic will stay too long after dark. The Midwest that has small cities where there use to be good
paying union jobs. These are now home to working poor subject to ‘right to work
“legislation.
Victims of subsistence wages still did not turn to vote in
2014. Poor white folk sit on their porches
complaining about Obama being well someone who is uppity. We all know how that
goes. Minorities in communities where they are the demographic majority would
rather burn local businesses then vote and change the community leadership that
is at the source of many of their problems.
Many do not vote because it is easier to see yourself as a
victim of the right. It is easier to say the politics of hope were dashed by
the tea party in House. Many do not vote because they are not sure what the
Congress is or even does. The” I don’t vote because it won’t matter 'excuse, is
old and rubbish. Your vote never counts unless you cast it.
The mindless religion and the politics of greed define at
least of fourth of the voting population and yet because of practices such as,”red
mapping” this minority tries to justify what remains of W.A.S.P power... Our
nation is stifled by their power as Washington
can not move forward on the simplest of policies. We are letting the inmates
run the asylum. The rational adults have gone half cocked dressing up old culture
war issues for new battles. Yet, we can not win these battles unless we send to
home to their gated communities. There will be no return to sanity in this
country till the sane are returned to majority power in all the branches of our
government.
We Democrats failed our fellow Americans. Our message was
not to be about income inequality or women’s reproductive rights. The majority
of Americans are for these things and a whole host of supposed liberal issues
and ideas. The minority now rules in Congress because of the apathy of our
base.
There is no major soul searching on platforms to happen to
make things better in 2016, other than we need to go door to door and in every
public realm and register the true majority of Americans. We need that message
that every vote matters and every voice matters.
We need to be big and
bold in this message and work the streets to make sure people don’t lose the
very right so many Americans died to preserve. The right to work should not be
thwarted because a person lacks a ride to the poll or twenty bucks for an ID. If
the committed work to get out the vote and talk to the common folk about the
real self help they will see if we win elections, then things will look very
different in 2016. Hope and true democratic majority rule will be restored.
No comments:
Post a Comment