EditorialJoe.com | A Hack You Know and Love

You’ve managed to take the house. You’ve managed to take the senate. Let’s just get one thing crystal clear:

You will not be going to the US Capitol because we love and trust you. You will not be going because we have 100% faith that everything is going to solve itself simply because you all have a (D) next to your name. You will not be going to the Capitol to have a nice big blue ribbon party.

You’re going to come to power in January because a cross-section of Republicans decided they were going to pull the wool over America’s eyes. And indeed, they succeeded in the task. I say a cross-section of Republicans because there are still Republicans out there that remember that, once upon a time, being Republican meant spending LESS. Being Republican meant tasting one’s own bile when the degradation of individual liberties was at hand. Being Republican once meant a WEAKER centralized government. Being Republican once meant DEFENDING the constitution.

Bigoted as Pat Buchanan is, the man understood the moment his former party became a swirling mass of idiocy–a playpen for children wielding military power and forked tongues.

So did I.

Make no mistake, I am not a Democrat. Sadly, nor can I call myself a Republican.

Like Joe Leibermann, the fence-sitting weasel who changed his tune to fit whatever it was the big band was playing, I call myself an independent now. But I digress.

You are not in power to listen in our hollowed halls to the echoes of your own victory. You are in power because we believe that you are frightened enough now at the state of our Nation to begin healing us. We believe that you’ve seen the real terror in this country, the terror that echoes back half a century to the age of McCarthy.

We do not trust you; we simply abhor what we’ve become under the alternative.

So now, restore our faith. Restore the promise of this country. Restore, under our guidance, the brilliance that Alexis de Tocqueville once saw when he wrote about this nation over 150 years ago.

De Tocqueville’s insinuation in Democracy in America was that after our empire grew–after we became the kings of the economy and the princes of world affairs–we would languish in our victories, becoming fat, sedate, and indifferent. That prophecy has been fulfilled.

But we can heal. We can restore ourselves to the good of our people. We can recreate ourselves, not to leading the world under fear and greed, but to becoming the example of tolerance and goodwill in the developed world.

The odds, it seems, are stacked against you. We lean on the brink of a quagmire more dangerous than economic strife, abuse of military power, or corruption. This is the quagmire of public disinterest, of short-sightedness amongst the people who lifted you up to defend our rights.

Lead us. Restore us. Help us see that we can make a difference with our minds, hands and hearts. If the vision of democracy should fail now, at this most significant of turning points in the history of our culture, we may as well turn ourselves over to an Orwellian horror far worse than the one dipicted in any dystopian nightmare.

Prove your strength under this difficult time, and you may win a victory greater than any election.

You hold my hopes and prayers. Do well, and you may yet hold the hearts of every true American.