There’s much to celebrate in this country, what with the Biden administration working to right the things that have gone wrong and to change our attitudes about the need for legitimate, responsible Big Government, but none of us are celebrating just yet. .The anti-big-sane-government forces working against us don't like what they see and are building to an obvious pressure point.
Who's going to win the battle for the life and soul of the country? We’ll know in a few weeks, when the polls close and we know which side is going to be in charge of our lives. Do we get better health care, more equitable social services, a move toward climate responsibility, a stronger work force, a weaker billionaire class? Or do we go back to the Trump era, where all we’ve worked for continues to erode until it finally disappears?
Who gets to decide? What's our role in all of this?
I know we all think we’re good and kind and an asset to, rather than a carbuncle on, society, but can we be good and kind and still have bad thoughts about those people who aren’t? Those awful people who refuse to give a thought to anyone outside their own circles and have no desire at all to be anything but mean to the rest?
Damn right we can.
It’s a kindness to go outside of yourself and think more about those who can’t speak for themselves, who have no power, who need a helping hand against an entire segment of society bent on destroying them for no other reason than sheer meanness.
It’s a kindness to demand justice when those who are strongest are holding down and intimidating those who are weakest and most vulnerable.
It’s a kindness to castigate those who go on the attack against others over their gender, their beliefs, their sexual orientation, their poverty, their illnesses, their addictions, their caste, their color, their places of origin.
Along with that kindness comes a need to stay strong. The only way to save the people we keep working to save is to get out there and knock a few heads together. Not literally, of course, because that’s not us, but figuratively.
Because those people doing bad things to the people we care about are bad. To the core.
Now is not the time to be polite. Good manners never won wars. And forgiveness, as I’ve mentioned before, is exactly what those bad people are hoping for. I don’t have to tell you who I mean. I don’t have to tell you what they’ve done. You know who they are. You’ve lived through what they’ve done. Now we have to concentrate on the battle ahead.
Someone said recently we should stop calling it a ‘battle’. I found the idea startling—that we should be polite about a war being waged against us. We shouldn’t give it such a provocative name because it might, you know, provoke them.
I mean…yeah! Let’s provoke them! Let’s give them holy hell for what they’ve been doing to us. They’re not ‘our friends across the aisle’. They’re not well-meaning but ill-advised, they’re not foolish, they’re not brainwashed, they’re not patriotic, they’re not afraid.
They’re cruel and they mean to destroy us. They march along with false flags and big guns and tell vicious, damaging lies in order to preserve their white ‘Christian’ place in a country that’s moving past them, that’s rising above them, that’s demanding a reasonably good life for everyone.
We can’t get there by trying to understand them or by setting them a place at a table they’ve made dangerously wobbly. If we’re divided, they divided us. We’re past waiting for them to see the light. Now we have to gather our own strength, set our own boundaries, and stick with it, no matter how hard they go after us for doing what’s right.
It won’t be easy, but war never is. This is a war we have to win. We have to be strategic, we have to brave, and we have to be resolute. While it’s fun to ridicule Trump and the rest by calling them names or making clever memes with distorted faces and figures, that’s a feel-good pastime. Our jobs aren’t done once we’ve spread them around. That’s not a job at all.
Being kind is often hard work. it requires a strong heart and a selflessness we’re not always used to giving. Being kind enough to save an entire nation is nothing short of mind-boggling—which may be why we haven’t thought of it that way. But if you love someone or some thing you’ll do anything to save it.
That’s where we’re at now. Do we love our country and the people in it enough to do whatever we can to save it? Can we set aside whatever petty differences we might have had and work now toward a common good? Is this battle worth it?
How do we do it? Together. We rise together. We vote together. We do it by being kind to each other as we work at driving out of the people trying to destroy us. No country has ever won the battle against the forces of evil without the majority of its citizens joining together as one to end tyranny. We’ve done it ourselves a few times.
It’s how we got to be the United States of America.
