Charles P. Pierce at Esquire Magazine is doing the yeoman's work this year of heaping shovel loads of shame on our President and politicians for seeing that the comfortable are not afflicted -- at the expense of the already afflicted:
The Congress of the United States left town this week very proud of itself. It had reached an accommodation by which the Republicans agreed that they would allow the government to function in a minimal capacity over the next two years and the Democrats agreed that they would be grateful to the Republicans for doing that. And then they all wished themselves well and went home, many of them, the ones proclaiming themselves most loudly to be the followers of the Jesus Christ of the Gospels, looking forward to being able to say "Merry Christmas" freely again, free from the liberals who have placed imaginary shackles upon their fictional freedom to keep the day in their own way. And tonight, many of the members of that Congress once again will go to the church of their choice, as the old public-service ads would have it. There will be candles and singing and fellowship and, afterwards, people will come to the house and there will be more candles and more singing and much more fellowship and nobody will be hungry in those places.
We are two nations but we do not have to be. We are two nations because we choose to be. We are two nations because we have separated churches from religion, religion from faith, and faith from the gospels. We are two nations because we pray to god and against our fellow citizens. We are two nations because we have made of religion a set of laws, and a set of laws into a religion. We are two nations because we hate the sin but love the sinner, and we are not wise enough in our hearts to know that you cannot divorce one from the other. Hate is hate. We are two nations because we hate the sin and are not wise enough in our hearts that this is very definition of self-loathing, because we all stumble and we all fall, rich and poor alike. We are two nations because we choose to be.
There is a kind of justice rising, I believe, and not just because of the season, although I freely confess to being a sucker thereto. There is a pope impatient with the shotgun marriage of cupidity and virtue, and who is not shy about explaining why. There is a sense in our politics that we are now paying for having abandoned the creative act of self-government through which we build a political commonwealth, a sense that we allowed that great work to be hijacked by religious grifters, and political bunco artists, and the various assortment of thieves and brigands to whom we handed the world's finances. There is a feeling in the land that the mist has begin to burn away, and that we see more clearly than ever the consequences of decades of choices, made and not made, and that we see more clearly than ever the work that has to be done to repair what we have chosen to do to our country and to ourselves. We can still refuse to do the work, but we no longer have the excuse available to us that we don't know what has to be done.
We can remain two nations because we choose to be. Or we can shake off the lethargy of an atrophied citizenship. We can rediscover the common good, the deep and abiding current within true democracy toward equality and justice. This is, after all, a season of hope and rebirth and of the fall, silent as the dead of night, of an old order and an ancient way of doing things. We are two nations, but we do not have to be.
I wish you all joy. Be well. Be at peace.
Merry Christmas.http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/christmas-serial-part-3-122413
This country's destiny, as it has been since it's inception, truly is in the hands of it's people --- and most assuredly not the hands of a selfish minority of plutocrats. All it takes to ensure that our Great Experiment succeeds is a collective will to acknowledge that the path we are currently on is the wrong path, and that our democracy's survival is wholly dependent upon the acceptance of the reality that we are all in this together ---- united we stand, divided we fall.
The Gadfly sincerely wishes all of you dear readers, yes even The Gadfly's detractors, a wonderful Christmas and best wishes to you all in the coming New Year.
----TFG
No comments:
Post a Comment