We are who we are as a nation for a lot of big reasons to include events and epochs such as the War of Independence, Westward Ho, Pearl Harbor and (nearly) countless others. We have had national figures of every race, creed, color and gender speak to and for us in moments of crisis and import.
But we are who we are mostly because of whom each of is. Quiet or boisterous. Hard-working or hardly-working. Class brain or class clown. Lives, admittedly, of sometimes far more than quiet desperation, shared in communities of every size across this nation with friends and families much like and often very different from us.
Near the end of last week, before both houses of Congress went on a two month vacation break (I'll pause while you think about what you could do with 60 consecutive days of paid vacation) our elected representatives decided to NOT take action to support those men and women in our Armed Forces of further assistance and education for the day after they decide to leave our Armed Forces.
I'd be the first to concede the Republican Party lost its opportunity to capture this disillusioned Obama voters heart and mind by selecting an automaton as a candidate who, in turn, selected an unreconstructed Ayn Rand TEAliban as his running mate but in the weeks since that happened, the Grand Old Party hasn't been scoring any points in my neighborhood.
As it is, if my Mom were running for office as a Republican, I might have to skip Christmas dinner but to return for just a moment to the Potomac Pussyfooting last week....this nation owes its continued existence to the very men and women our elected leaders told to pound sand.
When the dollar signs have supplanted any other signs of life, if we can no longer overcome and rise above partisan (and often petty) political differences for the good of those the ruling class blithely assumes will continue to lay down their lives for this nation, you have to wonder if one revolution was enough.
-bill kenny
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