It's Not Too Late

Will We Honor the Blessings of Our Founding?

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“A vote is a kind of prayer about the kind of world you want to live in,”  said Senator and Reverend Raphael Warnock.

With so much cynicism and disinformation, it's easy to want to sit out politics.  That's where this quote from Reverend Warnock finds us.  Teetering on the edge of a cliff.  The demagogic dreamweaver would have us believe we are in a nightmare that only he can wake us from.  And yet the opposite is true.  We have problems and a system that needs attention and revision.  But the fantasy that he peddles is barren.  Women have already lost bodily autonomy because of his bogus Supreme Court picks.  He would not honor our treaties and alliances.  His Project 2025 would dismantle our institutions.  His election would be the last.  He has said so himself.  We would no longer be free.  Can you believe we are even discussing this?

My vote, my prayer for the kind of world I want to live in, will be for the Harris Walz ticket, obviously.  I want to live in a world where a brown woman can be President.  Where her opponent doesn't make veiled racial slurs about her.  A world where our soldiers and their resting places are not dishonored for cheap commercials.

I want our nation to be that shining city on the hill, even if those who spoke of it as such have torn at its very foundations.

We are absolutely a beacon for the world.  And in saying so, I admit we have so much room for improvement in our treatment of other nations and their citizens and our own.  But we are the grand experiment.  What happens when people rule themselves?  What happens when we reject monarchy?  What happens when the promises of a nation's founding documents do not match up with its treatment of its inhabitants?  What happens when people-power overcomes hatred and freedom expands?

I'll tell you what happens.

A backlash of epic proportion. 

You and I are in the eye of that hurricane.

It seems like a regular election approaches, with two candidates that have competing visions.  Taxes, foreign policy, and all the boxers/briefs filigree of a typical election year.  Business as usual.  Both sides.  Doesn't affect me.  Coastal elites and all that Jazz.

But nothing could be further from the truth.  We have the most stark contrast since our revolution.  That choice was self-rule vs taxation without representation from a distant and stilted monarchy.  All give and no take.  And so our forefathers rebelled.  They could no longer stand the hypocrisy and risked everything and became David against the most mighty of Goliaths. 

For over a decade these brave men and women, shoeless and ill-equipped fought against the strongest military in the world.  And they prevailed against all odds.  They did this for us.  So that we could be free to choose the course of our nation and our lives within it.  So that we may taste freedom and autonomy on a scale never experienced in the world to that date.  So that we could later free enslaved people and enfranchise women to the point that one could be our next elected leader.  Just 250 years after our unlikely inception.

What a story and what a prayer they made when they chose sacrifice over conformity.  When they chose nobility over subjugation.  When they chose to embody the high ideals of the Enlightenment authors that informed their consciousnesses.  When they drew a line in the sand and said, "No more," and were willing to fight and die for it.  That was Patriotism.

And just 250 years later, we take this epic blessing on our lives for granted.  So many of us would piss it away in service of petty grievance and opportunism.  And this is the natural by-product of freedom: complacency, intellectual laziness, nihlism.  But so is re-awakening.

We have 2 choices.  We can wait until we are no longer free and reawaken.  We can create an underground resistance movement that battles the dictatorship for decades and hopefully, one day, reclaims power and re-establishes a democratic republic. 

Or we can wake up now and do whatever it takes to keep this nightmare scenario from taking place.  Luckily, we don't have to pick up arms against our brothers and sisters.  We don't have to hate anyone.  We don't have to ship off to a foreign shore to die in battle.  We just have to vote.

Just vote.  Maybe tell someone else to vote.  Tell them how it's a prayer for the kind of world they want to live in.  Tell them they matter and that their voice matters.  Tell them it's not too late.