I've always remained an aloof observer and commentator on politics. It's a matter of preference that I have, perhaps, allowed to become a matter of personal pride. The crowds at rallies and marches, making phone calls to potential voters, fundraising, these are all things that I abhor personally.
Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I've lived through enough elections to have seen the GOP at their mendacious worst. I remember the Willie Horton ad when it was aired (and I was still naïve enough to think Dukakis was a viable candidate). I remember the Clinton revolution, and the stunned Republicans who hadn’t seen him coming. I remember Dole’s pitiful campaign, and Bush’s remarkably dishonest ones. But this campaign, McCain ‘08’s dishonorable, sleazey, race-baiting, lying, inveigling and obfuscating nightmare of a campaign, has finally forced me to do the unthinkable: volunteer.
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways,
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
We all knew how bad the GOP could be. We discussed it often, Obama made a point of bringing it up in speeches. But then Tuesday came. The media, in full "vetting" mode, was debunking Sarah Palin’s smiling lies on an hourly basis. And she kept repeating them. The GOP base, once happily sedated by electoral malaise, was excited by her lies (which they see as standing up to something, someone, that they could never truly define). And McCain began a series of awful broadsides, literally accusing Obama of supporting legislation aimed a child molesters (a sore point with me) when the legislation in question was meant to protect the victims.
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And I know the attacks will continue, will get worse. There will be no quarter asked or given this election. The primary already exposed the racial fractures in our party, and now McCain is determined to exploit them in the most scurrilous, awful ways available to him. Pundits and bloggers were amazed at how negative McCain went before the conventions, and asked "where will he go from here?"
And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?
The answer is obvious: straight to the bottom, to the Abyss, to the lowest, most depraved political practices ever imagined. This will be two months of fear, anger and hate, and all approved by John McCain. John the Maverick, John the Liar, John the Traitor to his own biography.
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
He would wrongly smear the name and political career of a parent with awful innuendos about child molesters, all to win.
He would lie about his own record, and his running mate’s, completely contradicting their political careers, all to win.
He would fracture our nation as the primary fractured our party, all to win.
He may destroy what is left of our malfunctioning democracy with lies and slime, all to win.
Oh, what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what'll you do now, my darling young one?
Obama's books and speeches have made on thing clear: Barack Obama is not change. His years as a community organizer taught him that a leader is only an organizing principle. The will to change, the demand for change, must come from the people, from us. It is not enough to write diaries telling Barack how to adjust his messaging, to attack this and say that. We must do the work ourselves.
Change must come from us, not Barack Obama. Change will not be easy, and it never is. But it starts with individuals saying "Enough!" and doing something about it. We are the change he's talking about.
So I’m putting away my keyboard, and picking up a phone, getting out into my neighborhood and into the wilds of redder Virginia. I’m going to work for Obama, because it’s not just change I can believe in, it’s change that is desperately needed. It’s not much, it's not nearly enough, but it’s what I can do.
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison,
Where the executioner's face is always well hidden,
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten,
Where black is the color, where none is the number,
It's all I can do, but it won't be enough.
What can you do?
What will you do?
What will we do?
And most of all, what will we do, what will America do, what will the world do, if we lose?
Then I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin',
But I'll know my song well before I start singin',
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.