Posts
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their Constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it.
--Abraham Lincoln
Not a huge fan of using quotes usually. I think it’s kind of hacky. If you are going to write something and can’t illustrate the point effectively yourself; don’t write at all! (Some of you just said…well then stop typing!)
Once in a while however, a good quote can really knock your thinking from one of myopic indoctrination to one of clarity.
Americans have become so influenced by the deluge of information and misinformation thrown down at us like so much offal over the last 150 years, that we have lost sight of who we are and how this country is supposed to work. The bulk of Americans no longer see themselves as We the People, but as Us the Powerless.
Think about it hard. The last time you got screwed by Bank of America, or the DMV or Wal-Mart, etc; what did you do? You probably screamed like hell up to a certain level of management and then gave up regardless of how truly pissed you were; chalking up whatever egregious indignation you suffered to the inability to fight such a behemoth of an organization. Of course, it’s true that for one individual it is virtually impossible to “fight City Hall” as it were.
But with a coalition, Americans can “fight City Hall”, or Bank of America, or Wal-Mart or whomever. That’s how our country was built. We are not powerless unless we make ourselves powerless and that is exactly what we have done.
This is why when I hear someone scoff at the idea of revolution my blood boils over.
Talk of revolution usually elicits two responses:
1. Abject revulsion; as the word Revolution to most liberals has become synonymous to drunken, inbred ramblings of racist redneck hicks propagated by a love of hell raising and hatred for authority in general. Liberals believe that anyone who even thinks of revolution to be clearly devoid of any semblance of intellect whatsoever. Revolutionists are in effect, dangerous ignorant extremists to most Liberals.
2. To conservatives and moderates, the idea seems fantastic, but impossible to achieve given the size and ingrained infrastructure of our current Government. The prospect just seems so damn daunting.
To the first group, my response would be: you are the truly ignorant amongst us.
Are you implying that Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, George Washington, Ben Franklin et al, were extremist dolts? Is it because you have become so fat and happy given the liberties these revolutionists fought for that you couldn’t possibly fathom any other mode of operation? Are we now to be a country that merely opines rather than takes action towards the betterment of their own people’s destinies? Or, shall we allow the Government to do that for us?
Liberals are not patriots. Oh, not by a long shot. They have no problem taking and taking and bitching about how little they receive for doing nothing and how stupid everyone else is. They offer solutions in which they have no intention of helping to achieve. Their raison d’être is perpetuating cradle to grave government reliance.
These are the same people who have labeled the Tea Party folks an ignorant mob of predominantly white-faced miscreants looking to shore up their 2nd Amendment rights. Clear and utter bullshit. Tea Partiers are not the problem, they are doing what they can to showcase a growing viewpoint: American Government as we know it does not work!
To Conservatives and Moderates: I would beg look back to the beginning when Britain’s Goliath-like grip was broken by a rag tag, ill equipped group of patriots who were short on resources but long on belief in the power of regular people and the desire for a good quality of life unencumbered by Government. This should be the very inspiration we need to begin a real change, not the crap Lord Falderal sold the nation last year. The first American Revolution was a seemingly impossible undertaking: fighting the formidable British Empire. But they did it and so can we. Any nay saying on the subject is bilge.
The difference between now and Revolutionary times is there were real leaders then. Now, we have nothing but trained rhetoric specialists and lawyers with aspirations and personal agendas. Any idiot with a team of newly minted college English majors sporting laptops and a teleprompter can get into office regardless of their experience in real life.
There was also a more pure distribution of information; no Internet, or biased media poisoning the minds of voters into thinking things are not what they really are and that the citizenry are in essence controlled by the Government and not vice versa. Sure, there were fewer people to get the word out to, but at least the voting public could be confident that information looked something like the Truth.
Today, the well has been poisoned. I know very intelligent people who take the word of CNN, MSNBC and even FOX as gospel and vote accordingly. Mindless. There is no initiative to seek the real truth since it is just easier to take the word of whoever the flavor of the week media correspondent is and go with that.
Seldom will you find me agreeing with Sarah Palin, but she is right on point with the media. Amazing things can be done through editing and camera angles as well as selective choices of dialog to use in any media package be it audio or video. They have the power to make an idiot look like a genius and a genius look like an idiot. Ask John Stewart, that’s how he makes a living. We have become a sound bite society and we use these clever edits to choose our so-called leaders.
We have let this system run on autopilot for way too long and are paying the piper for it now. The United States Government and Capitalism as a whole is a rudderless ship careening towards the reefs of destruction. The near miss of Lord Falderal’s hapless healthcare reform is the perfect example. Despite an overwhelming amount of people who were against it, it would have passed both Houses because our leaders have no clue what their constituents really want. And, for those of you who see some sort of conspiracy by the right wing that claim Falderal is tinkering with Socialism; here’s a clue, he is and it is no conspiracy.
This collective legislative scum could care less about the people they represent. They care only about their own careers and their places in history.
Thankfully the people of Massachusetts spoke, sending a shot across the bow of rank and file legislators all over the Nation. Now the House healthcare plans will have to be scrapped and retooled. The message is clear; the people are angry and will not be pushed around any longer.
Massachusetts was indeed a game changer, and it should be used as an example of what can be accomplished when people get together, express how they are feeling and turn those feelings into action. If the aforementioned topics in addition to the Massachusetts election don’t get you fired up, how about this: the Supreme Court's latest ruling on Campaign Finance? It not only lets the foxes into the henhouse, it also filets and breads the chickens.
It’s time to find real leaders regardless of what party they come from; strong leaders that can speak directly to the people at their own levels. We haven’t had a real leader since Teddy Roosevelt was President. In short, we need a real revolution. Not the kind where we forcefully take over the government, but the kind with a long-term strategy devised to dump this President and the entire legislature. We the people must take over the government and get back to where we came from.
It is also important to realize that revolution is not about throwing out the party in control and replacing it with the other party. It’s about rethinking the whole structure. It’s about replacing the morons who are running things from the Executive Branch down. They no longer represent real people; they represent party hacks and special interest groups. If Massachusetts didn’t illustrate that point, I don’t know what else would.
Can we do it in the next three years? Yes, we can; only this time for real.
--Thomas Jefferson
