The fight for democracy

 

It’s been a minute since I’ve written anything about politics.  Honestly, I didn’t really want to write anything about the subject because I realized that I didn’t want to contribute to the us vs them mentality that has swept our nation up in its fragile arms.

I could spend this entire article writing about what our system of governance has deteriorated into.  We used to stand for the illusion of fairness, equality, and honesty.  But we all know that our system of policies is not fairly applied to everyone.  We know that equality is present in name only and honesty is something that has been thrown out of the window.

What is in its place is fairness…but only if it favors the well-to-do.  Equality for some feels like oppression and therefore needs to be treated as something that needs to be attacked if our governmental system attempts to apply it to mean something for everyone.  And honesty…well, that seems to have gone the way of the dinosaurs, and in its place is open racial discord, oppression of people seeking asylum at our borders and an over whelming lust for power as well as the greed that comes along with it.

We used to be the beacon on the hill.  Now, we aren’t even a twinkle in the night.  Indeed, we have become a laughingstock to the world.  We are a spectacle.  We’re fighting the good fight but the people whose voices stand for good aren’t loud enough.  At least not as loud as the voices that want to cling to money and power.

I wish that I could say we were going to get better…that the voices that defend the indefensible will diminish over time.  Sadly, I don’t think it will because we are living in an era where greed and self-servitude takes precedence over what is good, right, and fair.

 We are witnessing presidential hopefuls that have no interest in governing for all but instead will play to their base.  And it is now apparent that there is 1/3 of the country that subscribes to the ideology that our misguided government officials believe.   The belief is that they feel as if they have somehow been wronged and/or left behind by the same government that that will not govern for their betterment.  Instead, this same group of people believe in the repression of citizens that they have deemed as “other” to support a mindset that they are somehow better, more deserving and entitled to the first fruits of this land.

We have forgotten that we are our brother’s keeper.  We have forsaken our morality for taking something that was never ours to take.  We have taken the idea of white supremacy and somehow indoctrinated it into the narrative that this ideology is normal and right when in fact the idea of repressing one group of people for the sake of another means that no one is really free.  It just appears that way…almost as if this is status quo.

I wrote an entry on “Twitter” that we cannot afford to have another racist in the White House.  We simply can’t because an avowed racist will not govern for the betterment of all people of this country. 

Our main issue seems to be the division that has inflicted our nation.  Politics has infiltrated the way we think on a daily basis.  Hatred has also become the norm.  Blaming someone else or a group of people for our problems isn’t a realistic response to our woes.  Foreigners are not going to take the jobs that you have no interest in doing.  Your financial struggles are not because of the social programs that are in place to help the poor.  Equality for some may feel like oppression to others when, you will be no less rich simply because someone else has the same things that you have.

Sadly, we are living in an era where our rights are under siege.  Some are trying to banish books to keep us from learning about the history of this country, not realizing that black history is a vital part of the history of this nation.  CRT (Critical Race Theory) and the terminology of “Woke” is being banned in areas where it isn’t being taught.  The definition of “Woke” means being alert to racial prejudice and discrimination.  We are constantly being told that a group of us are under siege when in reality others are simply fighting to not be persecuted in the streets by law enforcement.

We know that racism is real.  We know that anti-Semitism is also real.  We also know that embracing or waving the American flag does not make you a patriot.  Being a patriot means supporting your entire nation and lifting up it’s people.  Being a patriot means protecting all people of this land including the stranger.

What does being a patriot mean to you?

~ J.L. Whitehead