The Force for Change

Can you feel it? Positive energy is on the rise. We the People are slowly coming to our senses, recovering from the shocking blow of 9/11. The characters, the voices, the issues are starting to look like something I recognize—the world I was raised in—instead of the alien landscape of lock-step nationalism, propaganda-fed paranoia and timid political capitulation that spread outward upon the land from that horrific day.

It’s a slow-motion dam burst. I’m personally enjoying watching the GOP work double- and triple-time sticking fingers, feet, elbows, and heads into holes and cracks great and small. Anything to hold back, stifle, or re-route the burgeoning outrage of the American people.

But it worries me that the guys on the other side of the aisle—the Democrats and the progressives—are stepping up, shoulder to shoulder with the GOP and the right wing crazies, looking for all the world as if they, too, are bent on keeping the power of the people from growing to politically inconvenient proportions.

We all understand what Republicans have to gain by maintaining their tight control of….everything. But what’s up with the Democrats? All I hear is whining about how the grass roots movements are either too emotionally driven, poorly organized, or misdirected to be effective. Immigrants? "You alienate people when you carry the Mexican flag." Exxon boycotts? "Stupid! Too little, too late." Get out of Iraq? "We need to study this for awhile."

Let’s face it, donkeys: you are living up to your label as the "party of no ideas." You don’t have any, and you don’t like anyone else’s, either. News flash, guys. The people are on the verge of taking it into their own hands.

I was young in the sixties…just fourteen years old when that decade passed into the record books. So I don’t quite recall: Did the people take the lead and drag the politicians along back then, too? I do remember that those years were turbulent and messy, brilliant and strident, and often violent. Massive change never comes from "doing it by the book." History doesn’t have time for cautious baby-steps.

All we need to do is keep the momentum building. Eventually, those guys in D.C. will get the idea. Or get out of the way.

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