The question that seems to buzz among many democrats and liberal republicans seems to doubleback to whether or not it is possible for Clinton to secure the party nomination. I understand the excitement. We have a black man with a wife that was honest enough to not smile and wave but express discontent over how some things work in America and we have a white woman that could presumably have her spouse behind the curtains pulling strings and who seems to genuinely want to make things better but seems to have grown contemptous of politics. Energetic people that don't like politics make dangerous presidents, espcially if they haven't evaluated this situation as a possibility. On the other hand, people that are energetic and love politics that prefer to push rather than cooperate or prioritize "winning" relative to progress are not any safer because the whole point of having a president that has views similar to the electorate, is to have policies pursued that are favorable to you. Any canidate for any office in public service that emphasizes "I", "me", "my," or "mine" makes me nervous. Why? no free lunch. As I listen to promises and all these good things spoken from all the canidates (to be fair McCain has positions on a fair number of issues that are really close to Clinton and though I don't agree fundamentally with the republican ideology I can't ignore that fact that the guy has thrown alot of the same problems into the open that the GOP has traditionally denied or ignored to the detriment of our society), regardless of whether or not I agree fundamentally with their politics, I'm not hearing alot about cost. Obama keeps stressing the American Dream, how hard work fixes things, and that we can change some of what's not okay to being okay and I wish he would knock it off. The American Dream is a joke. It's a deceitful and potentially heartbreaking kind of propaganda. There was a time when the priciple was relatively accurate but that died years ago when white identured servants found themselves having completed their indentures but in utter poverty because the land that they needed to start building their lives had already been claimed and settled. As a few accumulated alot, alot were able to accumulate progressively less and less. As these class divisions developed and expanded the American Dream was inversely affected because upward social mobility grew more and more difficult to achieve. Even today with all the "stuff" we use attempting, or at least presenting the appearance of attempting (which is not necessarily a bad thing, fake it till you make it comes to mind), to strive for equality of opportunity only one-third of the population as a whole on average will move up even one level socioeconomically, one-third won't move at all, and one-third will fall. So if you have two siblings and you are able to move up the social ladder a rung, statistically, you have tipped the scales of probability against your own flesh and blood, because only one of you can succeed. This is the reality that the ideology of the American Dream masks. I won't presuppose myself to speak on behalf of any other, but I prefer a hard truth to a gentle consolation or reassuring pep rally. I don't believe it's possible for there to ever be an equality of opportunity in the absence of everyone having complete and accurate information upon which to base their decisions. Kids should not be told that they can be whatever they want to be if they work hard and want it bad enough because it's not true. A short chubby kid with severe asthma that grows to be a short cubby adolescent with severe asthma, and then a short chubby adult with severe asthma, is never going play professional footbal or basketball or anything else that requires a healthy body and level of conditioning that would make the average healthy person pursue a different activity. And you don't have to tell the chubby kid that he can be anything he so desires to hurt him. If he has a slim or fit and athletic brother or sister and they are frequently reminded that the sky. . .for them, is the limit, the default implication for the chubby kid is that he will never reach the sky, so he doesn't try. He sits on his butt in front of a tv with a bag chips, a two liter bottle of coke, and plays video games with characters doing all the things he has convinced himself, that he can't. This ladies and gentlemen, is our societies underclass. They don't have anything, they are content to not have anything, and they don't care to try to do better because they are convinced that the goods of society can not be bought by them with the sweat of their labor. From their perspectives, the effort of climbing the mountain is simply not worth the view from the top of it.
We can't aford to advance as a country powered by a dream that is nothing more than that. Folks, it's time for a wake up call and every man, woman, and child needs to have an opportunity to really listen, ask questions, receive honest answers, and realistic suggestions as to what it's going to take to really better themselves over the course of their lives and the lives of their children. We say that America is the land of milk and honey, and that is true for me. I have everything I need, alot of what I want and most of the stuff I want but don't have are a couple of years of being within my grasp. For thirty-three percent of an ethnic group in the same city I live in, the comforts I often take for granted, are their American Dream and when I consider the realities they face it's heartbreaking. I can't imagine what it would must feel like to rock a crying child to sleep for pain of the ache of a three day empty belly or to be so hopeless, that the very thought of trying, is so exhausting and defeating that one resigns himself to life on the fringes of a world in which he is unwelcome and yet incapable of resisting his longing for, playing the role of punchline or conflict, unable to exist within and yet unable to escape or free themselves from it. This is the cost of the American Dream.
How do we fix it? My mom's jeep broke down a couple of months after she had finished paying it off. The jeep would have cost more to repair than it was worth, so she towed it to a dealership and exchanged the jeep for an eclipse. She ended up with another car payment and a vehicle she could trust that she need not be anxious of that impending breakdown on an empty freeway, in the middle of God reconsidering whether or not to drown the Earth, and a dead a cell phone. In otherwords, she felt secure in the neglible likelyhood of finding herself alone and up s***creek without a paddle due a breakdown of the eclipse relative to the jeep. I said that to say, it's time to stop patching, and duck taping, and W-D- 40ing the social problems resulting from the society we've constructed. The problem with compromising having a side that wins is that the other sides lie in wait to take a shot at it. Almost one-hundred and fifty years ago, Abraham Lincoln said, "a house divided against itself, can not stand." We could start over by choosing to not let our differences and disagreements interfer with the pursuit of realizing the practice of values and principles upon which exists little, where any contention is found, that has been boasted since before the birth of this country. It's time for an awakening, an awakening in which differences are denied the power to divide, not by policy or law but by that element of man that is good and kind and just. I believe that if every person could come to that place within themselves in which selfish desires for "I", "me", "my" and "mine" vanished like the dew collected on flower petals that glisten on chilly spring mornings in the presence of the passion one accrues with growth and understanding of "duty", "honor", "family", "community", and "country." One small ember can cause a fire that rages out of control and destroys all the old and grown over vegetation that's choking the forests floors and depriving it the suns healing touch. It is in this way that ancient forrests are reborn and reborn and reborn again and again. Thomas Jefferson said that a little revolution now and then was a good thing, as necessary to democracy as the storms are to nature. I think it's past time for a good old fashioned forest fire to rage through America and destroy all the crap that's keeping nutrients trapped in dead material. I think it's time to return the forest floor to the seedlings. It's time to go back to the basics, the priciples of our version of democracy as well as each persons individual responsibility that must be carefully tended to that accompanies it.
If you know an ember, warm yourself in it's glow, if you don't, become that ember that ignites the passions that burn so hot in you, within the souls of others. Jefferson also said that the biggest threat to the republic was apathy. That's an enemy we can, and for the sake of the future, must fight right here in our own homes, in our schools, our churches, jobs, and within our own hearts. . .or time will surrender us to it. I believe it was General McArthur who said, ". . .in war, there is no substitute for victory." I thought that was rediculous and dismissed this as rantings of a soldier having a hard time taking off his unform, but I was wrong. At least in this case, as the stakes could not be higher nor the outcome more uncertain.
