Thoughts on Saturday Evening 3 Days Before the Inauguration of Barak Obama
We are in the last days of the most evil and dangerous presidency this country has ever experienced.
To begin to repair the damage wrought by the right-wing wrecking crews over the past 28 years, our nation will require far more than a savior. Obama alone cannot get us out of this mess. The Democrats cannot do it by themselves.
We, the citizens, enabled our presidents, congresses and courts to bring us to this point. We will have to stop the enabling.
The habit will be hard to break.
We voted for men (and a few women) who told us what we wanted to hear.
They told us that greed was good. We eventually came to believe it.
We paid no attention to their crimes--and their crimes were numerous, from Iran-Contra to the looting of the financial industry.
We refused to notice the militarization of our police forces, and the gutting of our constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Without questioning, we allowed ourselves to be terrified by whatever our elected officials told us we should be terrified of, and gave them free rein to do whatever they wanted to do to free us from the fear du jour.
We let them instigate wars and conflicts that we had no business fighting.
We allowed our manufacturing industries either to close or to move overseas.
We spent all our spare time watching television, where we slowly became transformed from citizens into consumers who have consequently almost completely forgotten the knowledge of how a citizen is supposed to act.
And, worst of all, when the nation experienced the trauma of 9/11, which happened because our bozo of a president ignored repeated warnings of the attack, instead of impeaching him for criminal negligence, we bestowed upon him the powers of a Roman emperor, which powers he used to invade a nation that had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, to torture prisoners, and to reward his political allies by paying them huge sums of money in connection with the Iraq war, much of which they promptly stole.
And nearly half of us who cast ballots in 2008 voted for an elderly half-wit, who, along with his vulpine running mate, promised to carry on the very same policies (if he could only remember what they were) that brought us to this point.
It is enough to deeply discourage anyone who loves his country.
With Obama as president and the Democrats with a majority in Congress, there are grounds to hope that our nation is in somewhat more responsible hands that it was before. To preserve the republic, however, will take more than responsible caretakers. It involves changing the fundamental direction of the ship of state, away from a nation completely controlled by large corporations, banks, mass media, and the military, all of which have demonstrated conclusively that they cannot be trusted on their own to act in the public interest.
A formidable task, indeed. Let the work begin.
Tom Lowe
To begin to repair the damage wrought by the right-wing wrecking crews over the past 28 years, our nation will require far more than a savior. Obama alone cannot get us out of this mess. The Democrats cannot do it by themselves.
We, the citizens, enabled our presidents, congresses and courts to bring us to this point. We will have to stop the enabling.
The habit will be hard to break.
We voted for men (and a few women) who told us what we wanted to hear.
They told us that greed was good. We eventually came to believe it.
We paid no attention to their crimes--and their crimes were numerous, from Iran-Contra to the looting of the financial industry.
We refused to notice the militarization of our police forces, and the gutting of our constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Without questioning, we allowed ourselves to be terrified by whatever our elected officials told us we should be terrified of, and gave them free rein to do whatever they wanted to do to free us from the fear du jour.
We let them instigate wars and conflicts that we had no business fighting.
We allowed our manufacturing industries either to close or to move overseas.
We spent all our spare time watching television, where we slowly became transformed from citizens into consumers who have consequently almost completely forgotten the knowledge of how a citizen is supposed to act.
And, worst of all, when the nation experienced the trauma of 9/11, which happened because our bozo of a president ignored repeated warnings of the attack, instead of impeaching him for criminal negligence, we bestowed upon him the powers of a Roman emperor, which powers he used to invade a nation that had nothing to do with the attack on 9/11, to torture prisoners, and to reward his political allies by paying them huge sums of money in connection with the Iraq war, much of which they promptly stole.
And nearly half of us who cast ballots in 2008 voted for an elderly half-wit, who, along with his vulpine running mate, promised to carry on the very same policies (if he could only remember what they were) that brought us to this point.
It is enough to deeply discourage anyone who loves his country.
With Obama as president and the Democrats with a majority in Congress, there are grounds to hope that our nation is in somewhat more responsible hands that it was before. To preserve the republic, however, will take more than responsible caretakers. It involves changing the fundamental direction of the ship of state, away from a nation completely controlled by large corporations, banks, mass media, and the military, all of which have demonstrated conclusively that they cannot be trusted on their own to act in the public interest.
A formidable task, indeed. Let the work begin.
Tom Lowe
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