I Get Inspired

I get inspired, sure—all the time. And I get new ideas, too. Plans and thoughts, even speeches to deliver to the UN Assembly or a letter to the President, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Yeah, but then these waves of fatigue, frustration, and despair wash over my thoughts. I can feel these embryonic mental constructions disintegrating beneath an assault of hopelessness and rage. My hands freeze above the keyboard, my eyes half-close with weariness, a small bantam-weight of idealism is held and pummeled by the negativity mafia that lives in my persona.

I wriggle like an eel, usually in vain. But, look here, I’ve won today by turning my impending defeat into subject matter. Writing has occurred! There is no defense like a positive offense.

And speaking of hopelessness and rage, let’s examine the reaction of all right-thinking citizens if the right-wingers’s Nero succeeds our present-day Caligula, leaving our black Spartacus with nothing but a mathematical majority, just like Gore. Obama will be disappointed, of course, but what about the rest of us? This third loss in a row may finally prove to us (and the world) that America’s idealism is dead, that this is a country of ignorant, lying people who have no intention of giving anything but lip service to our legacy of constitutional freedoms and protections.

Perhaps an exodus will result, like the Huguenots of 17th century France or the Jews of 20th century Germany. In both cases, those nations lost both the cream of their intelligentsia and the wars that followed those retreats. Nor should we overlook the advantages enjoyed by the receiving countries those disenfranchised pilgrims found more accommodating towards pluralism.

‘Twould be ironic indeed should the United States, having had the benefit of Albert Einstein & Co. during World War II, become a nation shunned by both the ethical and the educated. “Live Free Or Die” is being replaced by creeping evangelicalism; obstinate fundamentalism; the subversion of legislation toward corporate profit over individual rights; an elitism embraced as readily by the subjugated (who hope to become rich) as by the lordly (who already are). Modern America offers nothing but shame to its truly ‘conservative’ citizens—we who believe the United States is still, first and foremost, a beacon of individual freedom and individual justice.

While in many ways Obama is just another politician, he is still the only alternative to a candidate who is nothing more than a referendum on the last eight years of Republican rot.

Obama for President!