In my personal life, whenever something earth-shattering happens that at first seems unfair or almost too much for me to handle, I stop and ask myself a few questions: "Why is this happening?" and "What is the lesson I can learn from this?"
That might sound dumb, but I try to look at challenging situations from a perspective that allows me to learn, otherwise I just end up feeling sorry for myself, and that's never helpful.
Watching the President and his party hijack this country and exile the Constitution has been stressing me so much lately that I thought it might be helpful if I tried to learn something from this experience since I feel myself becoming a bit overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the wrongdoing of this administration.
Here's what I came up with. What has this experience taught you?
Why is this happening?
The first time I voted in a presidential election, I voted for Michael Dukakis. Not the best introduction to politics.
But then came Bill Clinton!
Now he was exciting, and it felt good to pick a winner. Clinton gave my political curiosity new life and I had a reason to care since my candidate actually won.
I tried to educate myself politically by regularly watching the TV news and the reading the Sunday New York Times. But I was still lost. TV news only left me with more questions, and even though the Times gave me more background, I still found myself confused about the political process and with no frame of reference with which to analyze the big political news of the day. I tried to keep up as "my candidate" was dragged through the political muck year after year. It didn't seem fair, but what could I do?
Then the bottom dropped out. When Clinton admitted that he had actually "had sexual relations with that girl", I just gave up. I was hurt, disappointed and let down by my first political hero. So I stopped paying attention since it didn't seem to matter whether I was paying attention or not. Clearly the president and Congress had an agenda that didn't involve me. I continued to vote, but I didn't think my vote really mattered, much less my opinion.
Then hurricane Katrina happened. For the first time, a president's
(non)response to a catastrophic event was brought into my world, in real time, by the internet. I was horrified! How could I be witnessing this? I'm American, dammit. Why is this happening?
Then I realized that I had stopped paying attention. I had given up on politics. I had made a conscious decision not to watch the news (it was always so negative anyway) since I knew I wasn't getting the whole story.
In fact, hardly anyone I knew was paying attention. Everybody seemed to have collectively just stopped paying attention.
So maybe the answer to "why is this happening?" is that at some point many people decided to stop paying attention.
What am I supposed to learn from this?
I have learned that, as citizens, we do not have the luxury of not paying attention. That's like Nancy Pelosi taking impeachment "off the table". Just as our elected officials have a constitutional obligation to protect our system of government, so do we. Just as our soldiers are doing their part abroad, so must we fight for our freedoms domestically. We are obligated to defend this country from ANYONE who would subvert our freedoms or claim powers of office that do not exist.
I have been heartened by the amount of influence we in The Blogosphere have been able to exert lately. It's about time. But this is going to get harder before it gets easier. We are a small group facing down a juggernaut of a political machine that has no intention of backing down.
We must insist that we remain involved in the workings of our country, always. Thankfully, the internet came along at a most critical point. Just when our voices had become marginalized and ignored, we found a medium through which we can again be heard.
This is the new politics of America. Where the people remain aware and involved. Where we remind our representatives that they work for us. If we have elected officials who don't even know that they have the power to impeach the Attorney General (I'm talking to you, Rep. Tauscher)than they obviously need our help.
So thanks, George Bush and Dick Cheney. I know you didn't mean to, but you taught me a very important lesson. Now I know what happens when I stop paying attention and blindly trust my country and my freedoms to others. I won't make that mistake again.