Writer's Block: Do-over!

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If I had a do-over card, I'd be tempted to give it to someone who got what I would consider a poor hand to play with in life. I can think of a number of people I'd like to see get a fair shake. On the other hand, I might be ripping them off... who knows but that their trials and challenges - regardless of how awful they seem to me - might be just what they need to help them achieve their eternal potential.

It's not as simple as all that.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."
-- Author Unknown

Yes, it's a good quote. I wish I knew the author. And, it's more complicated than a nation choosing a rampant socialist hell-bent on dragging the country down to captivity and mediocrity.

I belong to the confederacy. I voted for the man, but only because the thought of having Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency scared me even worse. I rue my choice based on results, but still don't think I chose poorly.

Despite caucuses and grassroots political efforts, those who rise to the top of the governmental septic tank usually end up being the big chunks - people who seem harmless or easy to manipulate in the eyes of the moneyed king-makers. Those who have the decency and integrity to make good leaders usually decline to run, and we end up, every four years, voting for the evil of two lessers.

Obama and his mantra of "Change!" (not unique, by the way - it's a recurring theme in almost every campaign) was embraced by a nation tired of eight years of the abuses of power by the Bush administration, led in everything but title by Cheney and his Halliburton star-chamber, or reasonable fac-similes. We hoped for something better, and instead got another kind of emperor, yet one equally unclad.

Despite the human failings of the founding fathers, they envisioned a nation built on the principles of justice for all, honesty, diligence, hard work, fairness, and looking to a higher power for strength. Despite the fact that it took men like Lincoln and Martin Luther King to extend the dream to the previously unemancipated, the writers of our constitution formed a confederacy of men of faith and men of humanism, striving to create a place where all people would have opportunity, and be free from oppression.

The only change that will really count is the change that people of good will can effect within themselves, their families, and their neighborhoods - people working together to build a world that works for everyone, with no one left out.

I will not give up hope that this is yet possible.