By Matthew Silvan via American News X:
Liberals have been collectively labeled ‘elitist’ for their insistence on letting their hifalutin college degrees and reliance on academic principles guide them in their decision making. We’ve reached a point in society where higher education is suspect, where the collective consensus of scientists is scoffed at, and where finding solutions for problems is considered unrealistic and to be obstructed as much as possible. Progressing to cleaner energy solutions is an impediment to making cash, so it must be a silly liberal idea. The climate change phenomena is all a ploy to suit an agenda, rather than something to be looked at head-on and confronted. The ideas that corporations and wealthy Americans have got the country in a choke-hold are just socialist propaganda, in the minds of conservatives.
Yet we can’t place the majority of the blame on conservatives for our current state. We all have an equal say in what the government becomes, unless we happen to be denied the right to vote. There are many who haven’t got that right, and would very much like it. So when liberals stay at home, the result is they have given our very real approval to the conservatives to do with the country as they please, however disastrous that is. We liberals seem to have forgotten something very critical: We have forgotten that to remain in a country where we are free to pursue or liberties, we have to remember we are in a state of constant battle. Though it’s not a bloody bayonet we have to wield in a remote field somewhere, we are still in a cold war nevertheless, and we are failing to recognize that we have to keep up the fight or wave the white flag to our ideological enemies. The worst part is that all we have to do is suffer the relatively trivial inconvenience of standing in line at a voting place. That so many don’t do so is proof enough that we have gotten way too comfortable and complacent, and we’ve forgotten that the struggle hasn’t ended and it never will. We’ve forgotten we have to take up arms in a symbolic way if we want to live in a place that represents us as citizens.
Though we did our duty in a big way by electing Obama twice, we didn’t carry through and show up for the mid-terms. Turnout was the lowest in 72 years, at just 36.4 percent of eligible voters for the 2014 midterms. It was the lowest since World War II, and allowed Republicans to control the House and Senate, effectively rendering our government an ineffective and a contentious place where progress went to die a slow and painful death. Some would call it the “presidential penalty,” a way that voters unhappy with who is elected President can curb his efforts. Well it certainly worked this time, as Republicans only duty was to obstruct, obstruct, obstruct, and to blame Obama, as is now immortalized by the “Thanks, Obama!” meme proliferation on the internet, whereby anything and everything could be seen as Obama’s fault, to comedic effect. The effect in reality was shameful, and resulted in the pathetic low approval rating for congress of 11% in November, 2015. It has somehow gone up to 13% as of March 9, 2016, but clearly people are not happy with politics as usual.
Maybe if more Americans, and especially liberals, were regularly reminded of the fact that our struggle and our duty hasn’t disappeared, that our battles are still very real, and that we have been lulled into a sense of being able to rest on our collective laurels, we would show up at the polls when it counts? During America’s beginnings, about 4,435 people died brutally in the American Revolution, and 2,260 died in the War of 1812. 140,414 Union soldiers, and 74,524 Confederate soldiers died in the Civil War. Approximately 1,190,085 Americans have died in various battles, and 1,430,290 people have been wounded to make the country what it is today -and that’s just up to the year of 1991.
Today, however, we have become so comfortable in the relative security of our everyday lives, that we’ve quite forgotten any sense of what it even means to have to fight. We’ve forgotten the very reason why we might have to do so. The Tea Party ‘patriots’ seem to revel in this idea of bringing back the gunfire, but that’s fortunately not the battle we presently need to concern ourselves with, as if their stockpiles of guns would shield them form the world’s largest military anyway. The second amendment was written in a time that was totally different, and not in world of drones, thought that is a topic I’m not going to indulge further today.
To conclude, fellow liberals, remember that the battlefront we face today relies on warriors willing to respond. Most of us very thankfully have the luxury of not facing bloody warfare in our nice little cozy homes. We owe a debt of gratitude to the millions of people who have paved the way and given their lives for that sense of security, but it’s actually a false sense of security when we’ve forgotten that we have to carry the torch. We have to remember what is worth fighting for, and that our votes are critical in the political process. We have the power to change the leadership of the country, which allows us to be a small part of leading on the world stage.
We owe it to ourselves and to our friends, family, and descendants, to keep the fires burning. We don’t get to wave the white flag, and to sit in the house watching the television and wondering why an Oligarchy has quite taken over. The revolution that Bernie Sanders talks about is for real. It’s not a bloody battle, except figuratively. If it helps you to think of it that way, and that causes you to take up your sword, then by all means, head into battle at the polls my friends! Maybe, you are the warriors of the rainbow that the Native Americans prophesied. Get off your Democratic asses and lead the charge! See yourselves as the heroes of our time, only the fight has transformed into something a whole lot more manageable, yet still just as vital as ever.
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