Rant

On November 4th, 2008, the people of America perpetrated a failure that will echo down the halls of history. It was the failure of hatred, fear and prejudice. It was the failure of almost 400 years of institutionalized and societal oppression of any person whose skin tone was darker than a sun tanned Anglo-Saxon. It was the failure of the legacy of lynch mobs and the KKK. It was the failure of Jim Crow laws and segregation. It was the failure of the idea that America has any second class citizens.

It was a failure of the American people to continue to follow a failed political and economic ideology. It was the failure of voters to continue to swallow any more of the fear mongering, jingoistic,corporatist propaganda conservatives continued to spew. It was the failure of John McCain to convince America of his knowledge of how to “get bin Laden” or that “The fundamentals of the economy are strong,” or that even he had any real faith in that spectacular, idiotic failure, Sarah Palin.

We must not fail to do more than just hope that the 44th President will be able to lead us out of these desperate times; we can take an active role in helping each other. We must not fail to urge our Representatives and Senators to work on solving the myriad problems facing our faltering country. We must not fail to demand that former officials be held accountable for their illegal actions. We must not fail to show the world and future generations that we a nation ruled by law and not by men. The health of our nation demands that we pay attention to more than the full-contact “sport” of elections. We must not fail to hold up our own end of the social contract. We must not fail to live up to Benjamin Franklin's answer to a question regarding what kind of government the Constitutional Convention gave us: “A Republic; if you can keep it.”