The religious
right is reeling following the
reelection of Barack Obama, the
election of an openly gay US
Senator and House
Representatives, and the four
state vote for same sex
marriage. They remain
committed to their message of
"traditional values" but wonder
how all the millions spent went
straight down the toilet.
They are "reevaluating" not what
they want to say, but how to say
it. Sad. The fact is
that Americans are just plain
sick of hate mongering.
Americans are disgusted with the
bullshit of negative lies.
We are Not a nation of stupid
sheep!
The massive
attempts to prevent minorities
from being able to vote enraged
and motivated millions of
Americans to stand lined up for
hours in snow and cold and
darkness to vote for those who
respect the rights of all
Americans.
On matters of
morality, imposing laws on who
should give birth, who should be
able to marry, who should be
able to sing God Bless America
(written by an immigrant),
voting Americans made their own
individual personal message
clear en masse: "DON'T Tell Me
What to Do!" Personal
individual freedom was what this
nation was founded on. The
theologically totalitarian,
intolerant, right wing seems to
have forgotten what country we
live in.
And then
there's the matter of the money.
Billionaires who stole
American's homes and sent our
jobs to China, told us, "Trust
me." And with their votes
Americans answered back, "Are
you CRAZY! How
stupid do you think we are!"
So, now
what? Unfortunately, we still
have a divided government.
A slight majority of
constituencies had the temerity
to elect a bunch of Neanderthal
minded neighborhood bullies to
the House, more interested in
personal wealth, grudges, and
pusillanimous prejudice than in
the good of the nation.
Sad. They are likely
to continue to block
national integrity and progress
for the next two years.
The result,
among other things, will be a
continuation of unequal service
members. Patriots may now
serve in pride, regardless of
race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and
sexual orientation. But,
that bunch of elected bigots
have singled out the last group
for arbitrary discriminatory
denial of benefits.
Patriotic active duty service
members legally married to same
sex spouses don't get any of the
family benefits that
heterosexual married service
members do. Imagine if
they said that such benefits
should only apply to those of a
particular race and religion. Maybe I
shouldn't give them any ideas.
The guy who wrote God Bless
America, Irving Berlin, was a
Russian Jewish refugee and
American veteran. He
enlisted in the US Army Infantry
during World War I and left as a
Sergeant. Would they have
denied him equal benefits
because his religion was not
theirs and or because he was
foreign born?
Once one starts picking and
choosing, based on personal
prejudice, there's no end to it.
What will be
our American historical legacy
of this dawn of the twenty first
century? Will we be
remembered for having elected
ignorant primitive people
clinging to past false concepts
of separatism, denial of
equality, and privilege for
themselves; or for having chosen
to elect those who hold
democracy and equality as their
highest ideals? In this
past election, Americans chose
progress and rejected hate.
But we cannot sit back now and
wait to see what happens next.
Citizenship is a full time job
requiring us to constantly
remind those we elected exactly
what we expect of them.
Denny Meyer,
former SFC USAR