Tomorrow,
no matter who's elected President of the United States, many of us will breathe
a sigh of relief. The negative, deceptive, vitriolic, contradictory campaigning
will be over. Billions will have been spent in an effort to influence our
decisions but Tuesday's vote boils down to one fundamental reality; each and
every one of us will be responsible for future tomorrows. In this great country
of ours-dictated as it may be by money, power and fear-we, the American people,
still have the power to determine the country's future.
This
has been a campaign of fear -- fear of a fractured economy, fear of massive unemployment;
of wars in faraway lands, fear that the "47 percent" will be punished by the powerful
"1 percent"; fear that the "American Dream" of past generations has been denied
those of us one paycheck away from poverty.
Tomorrow
we must decide if we will let our fears overrule good ole common sense and
shared values. Tomorrow, we must decide
if we will be a progressive country of fairness, benevolence, innovation and
true grit or if we will give in to the dark side of our greatest trepidations
and, once again, place the future of our country in the hands of those who
manipulate our fears and concerns.
The
GOP has done a magnificent job of convincing voters that the nation's deficit and
the Great Recession was not fueled by
the actions and inactions of a Republican Administration. With the aid of billions
from shadowy sources, they have effectively portrayed President Barack Obama as
the architect of our nation's woes. They have managed to rewrite a script of a bull-headed
Congress that was intent on holding Americans hostage in lieu of tax breaks for
the wealthy. They have created the phony argument that a massive mess created
in eight years was supposed to be magically cured in four.
With
great OZ-like power, the well-funded wizards behind the curtain have bamboozled
millions of broke, unprivileged, uninsured and underinsured Americans that the
biggest threat to our democracy is "Obamacare." A miraculous marketing coup has
been accomplished where economically oppressed voters believe their interests
are intertwined with those of fat-cat investors, oil men, insurance companies
and "big business." The Wall Street "bad
guys" of 2008 are now repositioned as America's saviors in 2012.
We must separate
fear from facts. Three irrefutable factors led this country down the deficit
highway and into a crushing recession; two unfunded wars, Bush-era tax cuts for
the wealthy and the mortgage crisis. Republican presidential
candidate, Mitt Romney-already a saber-rattler in regards to Middle Eastern
affairs, a staunch defender of continued tax breaks for the rich and a proponent
of big business "trickle-down" economics is a rerun of a selfish agenda that tolerates
expensive, life-snatching wars, that coddles the already rich and pampered and
punishes America's most vulnerable citizens.
The
GOP is convinced that fear will motivate us to vote while pinching our noses.
They are confident that our concerns about social security, access to college
for all, tending to the needs of the poor, homeless, elderly and the
generationally disenfranchised will be overshadowed by an illusion of a presidency
that failed in four years to right the wrongs created in eight.
I
totally get the frustration of those who expected a quick-fix. Obama has become
a victim of his own rhetoric. Many Americans bought into the mantra of "hope
and change" but ignored the president message that he could not do it alone. If
anything, Obama underestimated partisan pushback and the willingness of a pampered
society to sacrifice and boldly fight for the "change" he represented. Flaws in
delivery aside, his record and our common sense tells us that he has been and
will be dedicated to America's recovery and strength domestically and abroad. The
Romney/Ryan Administration, on the other hand, comes with an unspecified agenda
and specified linkages to the policies, privileged power plays and wrong-headed
thinking of the Bush Administration.
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