Sitting down to coffee and a glance at my friends near and far online, I see so many posts about our grand nation, the heritage, our freedom. My face contorts into a scowl, disgusted. Then my angel side kicks in, smacking me for my intensity, “Come now, child. There’s a greater Divine force at work here and people mean well.” But I find the inner roar much louder, smacking back at what I sense as a spiritual tide of people begging for angels to whisk us all up into great clouds of denial and “om om” bliss-ninny nonsense anesthetizing us against truth and hard work, the kind requiring sweat and brains and risk-taking. That tide washes us all in a sleep surreal as we consume our store-bought comfort at a discount price, clueless of what it takes to make a nation great.
We should be screaming in the streets right now. The loss, the bleeding out, the carnage posing “security” and the untouchable corruption in our government would send our forefathers into a valid rampage.
I’ve found it difficult to speak of it, pondering the “heritage” of a nation whose highlights include stamping out indigenous peoples and enslaving others in order to eventually form a more perfect union. Our great heritage? A perfect union?
But William Rivers Pitt brings me back to a truth worth grasping regardless of it all:
“The idea behind and beneath ‘We the People’ is worth fighting for. The idea that made the ability to speak your mind the law of the land, the idea that says you are an integral, absolutely necessary part of this nation despite your race or sex or religion, the idea that royalty (whether it be derived from lineage or wealth) shall not rule here, are all ideas not to be abandoned, no matter how difficult it is to keep that faith in the face of all the gruesome offenses committed against your will.” (Related Link Here)
We’ve lost a grip on the Voting Rights Act as we progress in other areas and slip even further behind while Texas rallies a revolution against the womb … in the name of life and a kid is imprisoned with a $500,000 bond set. Why? A Facebook post wherein he unwittingly joked in poor taste. It put some folks in an uproar. So, he’s in jail for making people uncomfortable with his words – they were truly unfortunate, the words of a teen. But to imprison someone for his words? We call that tyranny. And that’s just Texas. I live in North. Carolina. where local governments emulate the worst of our “heritage” and smile as they set off the fireworks, wave their patriotic ideals and their flags with sick notions of “freedom” passing legislature to oppress.
With a mixture of rage and disgust, I have greeted this day, wavering somewhat in my conviction of what is salvageable of our nation. But the truth need not be clouded by the noxious fumes of the sleeping masses. As a child, I believed in the U.S. and for all the best reasons. I just didn’t realize it. The idea of “We the People” was the rallying inspirational force for me then and it need not die, regardless of how sullied our heritage or how human our sleep. But it is past time we awaken, hone our critical thinking and recognize the need to keep the eyes wide open and the heart ready to speak truth to power gone grossly off course.
J. Ruth Kelly 
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