…then we don’t have much at all.

But since when does our country hinge on maybe?

The Democratic Party is no longer the party of Andrew Jackson and segregation. They no longer dress up in white sheets (except maybe Robert Byrd) and turn fire hoses and German Shepherds on black school kids trying to get equal voting rights.

And the Republican Party is no longer the Party of Lincoln, the party that barely held the last best hope for mankind together so that it didn’t perish from the face of the Earth.

I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that both parties were being run from the same corporate bank account. This statement isn’t just pissing in the wind because corporate entities (meaning companies as well as “Non-Profit” religous entities and special interest groups) have taken control of our political process and are not going to let go until we excise them with ruthless and effective measures.

No one can question the integrity of the American citizen. Our culture may have become extremely pussified since the counter-culture of the 60s let thoughts of love and peace overshadow the need to duck when someone throws a sucker punch at us but the blood of the patriot still flows in every person’s veins in this country and one need look no further than the national momentum of solidarity that followed the 9/11 attacks as proof.

But as we learned, this solidarity through struggle doesn’t last long and breaks apart very soon like The Friendship is about to in the Big Brother house (I still can’t believe that bitch Jennifer stabbed Kaysar in the back like that).

In the year 1913, at the 50th anniversary of the battle of Gettysburg, surviving veterans of that war camped out for a three-day celebration that saw Confederates breaking bread and sharing stories with their once sworn Yankee enemies. The highlight of the event was a recreation of General Pickett’s tragic charge that led to the massacre of his entire division by Union soldiers behind a well-fortified, low stone wall.

After three days of comraderie, 50 years after three days of the tragic murder of 43,000 Americans by other Americans (compare this to the numbers coming out of Iraq after two years of fighting), the veterans were fellow citizens again. And when the rebels began the charge and began yelling the rebel yell for the first time in that hallowed ground since the original massacre, the Union soldiers threw down their arms, jumped over the stone wall, and ran to embrace their brothers from the south.

Just thinking of these old men in their ragged uniforms with 50-year-old bullet holes, running to embrace each other on the field where they lost their youths makes my spine tingle and tears threaten even now…

I believe that we can still have that camraderie even when you, as my fellow citizen, insult the President I voted for and who I think has done light years better than his predecessor who brought shame and disgrace to our nation and allowed a very dangerous enemy to take form and amass the means to murder three thousand of our fellow countrymen.

But I refuse to hinge my future upon maybe.

Men and women of honor take control of their circles of influence and effect positive change by acting from a center of integrity toward those around them.

Justice begins at home and flows from the way we talk to and the things we think about the face in the mirror in the morning. If we can’t be civil to that person then how in God’s name do we expect to create a civil society.

How can we be shocked to find the world in the state it is today when we are so fragmented inside our own minds, hearts, and spirits that most of us wouldn’t run to hug ourselves if we saw our shadow walking alone across a deserted street?

My mother used to say begin by cleaning up your own backyard before you tell other people how to make their lawn greener and cleaner. This is still good advice in any situation.

LINKS:

  • Middle Eastern Dude Embarassed of Penis Pump in His Carry-On Tell Baggage Screeners, “It’s a Bomb” and Now Faces Three Years in Prison (Story Link)

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