Getting Involved

SARTRE24
invited writer

The rationale for getting involved in political action is so simple when we look at the issues we face and compare them to the misdirection oozing from the halls of governance and the White House itself. Republicans would have you and I believe that they are the everyman party and they represent the values and issues faced by common, everyday Americans and that my dear friends is their most disturbing lie. They want us to believe that as Democrats, liberals, and the like that we have no values and that we have no sense of the moral issues our country faces but they are working under the very public assumption that the abortion and human sexuality are the only moral issues. This may be a result of the right-wing religious fanatics own the party but that is another discussion for another time. As a Democrat, I hope to convey to people that we face wider-reaching and very real moral dilemmas in this country. The education of our children is a moral issue, making sure our citizens have health care is a moral issue, not forcing our elderly citizens to choose between eating and taking vital prescription drugs is a moral issue, promoting real and inclusive constitutional and civil rights is a moral issue and it is high time that those of us who aren't conservative Republicans start explaining to people that we too believe in advancing some important moral issues. Republicanism has become synonymous with big business and allowing the wind to follow whatever direction the corporate lobbyists are blowing. I am not suggesting that all Republicans are alike but they are a party that knows how to follow the leader and the leaders has duped this country into believing that he cares about real issues when in reality he has no concept of what problems we commoners face on a day-to-day basis. We on the other side have sat silent as our troops were sent to die for reasons that at best were misleading and ill-founded. We have been bullied and attacked and called un-American because we promote global responsibility and try to view our political structure as an extension of our character and we have yet to stand up as a group and counterattack.
To my fellow gay and lesbian citizens I say that this should be even more important to us because this President and this party won the 2004 election on our backs. In a campaign of divisive hatred they brought conservatives to the polls to vote not for a president but against the advancement of civil rights in this country. By attacking the validity of our relationships they were able to gather a viscious momentum that gave our president his second term. Getting involved is a moral issue for us now more than ever.
You need to get involved because your country has been hijacked, because our reputation in the world is at stake, and because the people in charge DO NOT care about you no matter how many heartfelt homeland tales they tell. Government should be an extension of what is best about its people, not the product of a corrupt and unjust campaign of fear, hatred, and dishonesty. Our elections cannot continue to be the result of whose smear campaign was most successful. What does it say about us that our political discourse has degenerated to the verbal equivalent of beating each other with clubs.
When the government is failing its people it is because the people are failing to govern. You and I have a responsibility to ourselves and our country to get involved, we owe ourselves a place in the conversation.