Time is Running Out
Norma Sherry
It's time my fellow Americans - for time is running out. It's time to turn off FOX-TV, MSNBC, CNN, and shun the pundits. It's time to take a good hard look at whom we are as a nation and how we are being led. It's time to investigate, to contemplate, and to deliberate the state of our union and the condition of our beloved country.
It is time my fellow Americans to question the questionable, to be unwilling to accept the double-speak, the non-language of commitment, and the avoidance of truth. We need to examine our destiny as a nation and envision our role as human-beings in a planet of other human-beings.
For these are the days, dear readers, that history will record as either the turning point when the populace stood up and made a conscientious decision to take back their country - or that they dropped the ball and allowed themselves to be led down the path of no return.
We need to change the tide of the abuses and the lies here, at home, as well as, how we are seen through the eyes of the world. We have much to make up for and we have many fences to repair. Regrettably, we are not the great emancipators; we are not the envy of the world, nor is it our way of life and our love of freedom that our enemies detest, as we have been told to believe.
Our history is quite to the contrary.
It is not always easy to go deep inside and see who we really are, but if we don't remove our rose-colored glasses, our click-your-heels-I'm-back- in-Kansas mentality, we are destined to repeat our sordid history. It is time for all citizens who love their country, who detest totalitarianism, who truly want to be the model for humanity to step up to the plate and become active participants in their democracy.
We're going to have to be willing to amend and mend our ways. Otherwise, how are we to be trusted in a world that has witnessed our lies - not just now in Iraq -- but in Viet Nam , in Afghanistan , in Kosovo, in Rwanda , in Bosnia , in Iran , in Iraq in years past? Our history, as a nation, does not always bode well. Too often we ignored the covert and overt actions of our country; the overthrowing of democratically-elected leaders to orchestrate the control of a corrupt puppet government.
We have too long turned a deaf ear and a blind eye. Our leaders have betrayed our innocence, our gullibility, our willingness to accept what we're told. We can no longer feign ignorance. Not knowing is no longer an option. It is time that we enacted our citizenship and acted upon it with meaningfulness.
We can no longer willingly be 'the dutiful, good little children'. It's time to stand up, stand tall, and speak out loud and let every voice be heard. We must face our wrongdoings and we must make up for the atrocities that have been allowed and ignored in our name. We need to take back our country.
We need to open our minds and put aside our individual preconceived notions. We need to read our history - not that of our history books, but that which is readily available. We need to take our heads out of the sand and examine who we are; we need to be willing to see the naked truth that will surely stare back at us.
We need to want peace more than war. We need to want to be true liberators' not oppressors. We need to want to help our fellow humankind not lord over. We need to learn humility and the true defining of justice and halt our sense of undeserved superiority. We have to acknowledge our role as a nation as a purveyor of violence, as a collaborator in injustices and brutal regimes, as a military strong-arm holding the world at ransom, as a selfish, gloating pre-eminence of extreme wealth and gluttony.
These are harsh words I know and many of my fellow citizens will balk and resort to calling me names: unpatriotic, traitor. For some, you will deem me un-American. There will be some of you who will write me and tell me 'to leave if you're not happy'. But I say, it is precisely because I do love my country and my fellow American's that my heart aches; that my eyes burn from the onslaught of tears from the truths I've come to learn.
It is from all I've come to know as true that I beg each and every one of you who graces these words with your eyes to take them to heart -- to examine the truth for yourselves. For the truth is out there pleading and imploring you to seek it for yourselves. Then, dear fellow Americans, we need to start exercising our rights as citizens of this rich, lush country of ours. We need to begin by voting.
Your vote, our votes can bring about a revolution of change. We began this war; it is up to us to put an end to the deaths, to the fighting. If we do not, --The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."1
We must raise every man, woman, and child to a life of dignity, of safety, of comfort, security, warmth, and end the pangs of hunger that growl in the tummy of the hungry. No longer can we ignore the well-being of others. Or as Dr. Martin Luther King so eloquently prophesied, "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Every American citizen must help to energize and educate their fellow man, woman, and child. Ignorance, dear friends, is not bliss. "If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight." 2
Together my fellow Americans' we can make a difference.
Footnotes: 1 & 2, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 1967
© Norma Sherry 2004
Bio: Norma Sherry norma@togetherforeverchanging.org is co-founder of Together Forever Changing, an organization devoted to educating, stimulating, and igniting personal responsibility particularly with regards to our diminishing civil liberties. She is also an award-winning writer/producer and host of upcoming television program, The Norma Sherry Show, on WQXT St. Augustine/Jacksonville, Fl.
