I am old and I am afraid, have been for a long time now. I have watched as we have, as a people, slide towards fascism and we are sliding faster than ever now. We have let a few violently hateful people get a grip on our national discourse with the help of our advances in communication technology. I don’t see a way to avoid the abyss we are headed for. But fear is a call to action not capitulation. Fear of loss will lead us to the same result as loss. Fear is loss. Courage is not the absence of fear but doing what must be done in spite of it. Fear is the mind killer.
Why are we here? This is a free country and all opinions are allowed here, even the ones that would destroy us. It is the nature of Democracy to allow free and open debate. It is in the battle of ideas that defines who we are and who we want to be. Running away from this is admitting defeat. We must stand by our principles and be as loud or louder than those who would defeat us. We are on the side of freedom and liberty. Those ideals cannot be defeated only those who refuse to defend it.
I know this is a lot to take in because our lives have been made more difficult every year by those who would take away that freedom from us and use us for their own ends. We have grown soft and fell for their siren song of consumption and diversions. We are a comfrotable society but that comfort has bred us into complacency. What is happening right now has been taking place for decades but we have let it go in fear of disrupting our standards of living. Like the frog in the pot we have been clinging to the idea that if we just stay low we won’t lose what we have been losing steadily over the last 80 years. The American spirit. Truth, Justice and the American way. Don’t give up the ship. United we stand, divided we fall. Vote you conscience.