Hopeful Signs

November 15, 2007 · Filed Under Opinion, Politics

After years of complaining about politics in America, I’ve had a recent spurt of energy. I see signs that real Americans have had it with the status quo and are taking steps to change things for the better.

I’m not used to these feelings of hope and thoughts that we the people is anything but an inside joke on capital hill, you know where we are controlled from on a national scale. At first I thought it was something wrong with me, some kind of physical symptom of a disease or early stages of Alzheimer’s, but since no other symptoms have manifested themselves I wondering if it’s a real feeling.

The last thing any of us want in life is having people laugh at us because of something foolish or stupid we’ve said. It has been safe for me to be the pessimist since Bobby Kennedy was killed, but that is exacting what the evil ones wanted. Now that I’m much older I realize I helped allow “them” to have it all their way, by refusing to become involved at any level looks like that was a big mistake. I still don’t want to sound like a fool but each of us will have to do something to stop this race to the bottom our country is on or we’ll have to explain to our grandkids how there was nothing we could do. If they point out all the ways we could drug our feet we’ll be lowered in their eyes for handing over a mess to them. I don’t want my granddaughter to think I am a coward or lazy for that matter.

So, after all those years of laughing at the phrase “get involved” I find myself playing catch-up. I have no powerful friends at any level. The only weapons I have are my words and their exposure to the public. I want to help, I want America to rise again to where people all over the world respected us and wanted to move here. We are the greatest country that ever existed. Our elected officials as a conglomerate have allowed our borders to vanish, our manufacturing jobs to be handed over to anyone that wanted them, to place military weapons above the public educational system (by the way requiring no child be left behind without funding the requirement is a joke, a very bad joke), and to allow the dollar to sink to the point that it takes thirty of them to buy a hamburger in Europe, under the excuse of trade imbalances.

I see hopeful signs: cities enforcing citizenship requirements for jobs, people against the Iran, I mean Iraq War, with the six hundred billion spent to date (ten times the administration’s initial estimate of its cost), Minutemen trying to stop the invasion from the south, Debold machines being scrutinized for software biases deliberately written into the code, cold hard questions raised about the Patriot Act’s disastrous effects on our civil liberties, questions being raised about building seven at the trade center dropped by timed explosions, and resistance to the phrase for English press1.

“They” want us to settle for grumbling and complaining. “They” are traitors, let’s have “Crimes Against Americans” trials where our leaders have to prove they haven’t harmed us deliberately for their personal gain and advancement. If they’re innocent they will not do everything in their power to stop the trials from starting immediately.

By Lloyd H. Frye
Op-Ed Columnist
The Hot Joints