Tess found this posted on a Message Board and we felt this described so well how we felt.

A light snow fell last night and as I looked out over the landscape it occurred to me that I might be looking out over the coming winter of our continuing discontent. The remnants of the the fallen leaves were strewn around, memories of events that had come before. The life that might have been, the promise that was not fulfilled. I look to the faces of many in whom there is hope. But it is a cheap hope to me, false in the same way reality can never be fully captured on film by Hollywood. It is a counterfeit but one that serves to satiate the masses hungry for anything because substance is not available. We have lost our desire for anything real, we have given over the reins to not only our entertainment but our inspiration as well, to those who would seek to profit from what would have otherwise been a meaningful enterprise. In that emptiness, the hollow echo that sounds across the landscape, keeping hope alive never seemed so distant a possibility. A cheap victory, commemorated by trinkets on the the QVC channel; only $19.95 on networks that spin our dreams over the airwaves. We are without substance and at the mercy of those who see profit where we see our principles cast aside. It was always about something bigger. Bigger than we are in every way. Bigger than a person or a Party or a policy. But the ache that will not go away for me is that it, the grand machine that consumes everything in its way, has now become bigger than the Principle. And, the villain is no longer merely the ghost in the machine. Because that ghost has been made real and given life and visceral and is taking no prisoners. It is no longer a covert "them" because it became the people; out in the open and willing and complicit. They gave themselves over wholesale, not even to an idea but merely to the image of an idea. And for them it seems to be enough. There is no "them" or "there" anymore because it is here and now and in our homes. When I was growing up, I would sit in rapt attention as my parents kept us engaged with stories of their adventures. There was always a meaning to the telling and a sense of purpose in the accounts. It was always about having a place in history but it was the substance of the history that mattered. It was always about justice and right and wrong and where events fell within that metric. Some of the first stories I heard were about Brown v. the Board of Education and the question about whether or not separate could possibly be equal. But underlying all of the logic that those on both sides of the issue put forth, at the heart of all of their lessons to our eager minds was the unavoidable reasoning that had to imbue any argument one might make. And the foundation to all the reasoning was the fact that there was a humanity, a living breathing person who would be on the receiving end of whatever justice was dispensed. And that "might" never made a whit of difference when one was considering what was "right." Martin Luther King was my hero. I would listen to his fine baritone, sounding out across the upturned faces of hope in the crowds, the cadence, the humility, the heart and the soul. I knew I was in the presence of greatness, I knew I was hearing the truth for it shook me to my core and resonated in that place where I knew, where I found and recognized something pure. He called us all to the truth and to what was noble. It was always about the ideas and the people they affected. It was never about him. For it was in forgetting himself that he truly was cast into immortality. My favorite movie was "To Kill a Mockingbird". I could think of nothing finer than Gregory Peck, standing before a courtroom, holding aloft a sense of right and wrong and making the choice. His words struck a chord so deep within that there was no choice but to do the right thing. My father told me that worth was measured not in what you had but in what you gave. Not in what you were but in what you recognized in others and the possibilities that might be. Not in following the dictates of the petty but in honoring the principles that respected the dignity of everyone. I've carried these soul-stirring notions with me my whole life. They are my greatest treasure; something that can never be taken from me no matter how impoverished I am because they are a sense of right and wrong and purpose and connection to not merely justice but most importantly, to the people for whom it has been held out of reach. So, we come to a place now, where I see a great fraud, a great counterfeit having been committed using the very hopes and dreams of those for whom dignity and respect have been withheld. And it has been done while engaged in the destruction of the great other: The woman. And I again feel shame for those who have done it. A deep sense of shame for them that is so great, I can barely set my eyes upon them, for I know, that they know and they do not care. They are not thinking justice; they are thinking victory by any means. They are not thinking about what is right; they are thinking revenge at any cost. They are seeking the prize, without any accounting of the cost and the defiling of honor it cost to get there. So here in the winter of our discontent, as the days roll inexorably into more days and the wheels of justice move not at all or even backwards, I look back at the great injustice that occurred this year when no one noticed because it was just more of the same. Because it is unremarkable to destroy a woman's dream, it is unremarkable to hold woman to an impossible standard, it is unremarkable to demand justice for a black man while simultaneously calling a woman a cunt, hanging her effigy, ridiculing her mind and body, calling for her gang rape and having the audience laugh and laugh and laugh. And thus we teach our little girls, our daughters, to laugh and laugh and laugh along. As they see their own kind, themselves, their own hopes and dreams, defiled and denigrated. The only hopes of a hero they ever had, made a mockery and a joke; national pastime and a sport. I am ashamed. For I see a deep sickness in the hearts and minds of an entire nation that will use and abuse for their collective pleasure while simultaneously congratulating themselves for their great moral progress. It is such a betrayal of the truth to proclaim that we have achieved the ideals laid out in the documents of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution just because we elected Senator Obama while at the same time publicly treating the women who ran against him as objects of scorn and ridicule. The fact that he has been elected President is just as much of a testament that we have not achieved these ideals of equality than that we have, because so much injustice was committed in its pursuit and as the means to achieve it. I am undone by the deep wound that is in my soul for Martin Luther King's words still stir me and I know that a terrible illness still infects our nation. And it occurs to me that we are only just beginning to restore sight where we have always been blind. So blind, even our forefathers were not able to see. A vision even my hero, Martin Luther King could not see. For even in his world, the people who were held in the highest esteem and for whom the great fight for honor was fought were the brothers but not the sisters or the daughters or the mothers. They were not named in the fight, they were not named in the speeches. To be unnamed is to remain unknown. Women are not merely the shadow cast by the substance of man. They are not merely an echo of the words spoken by men. They are voices that have not been heard but they have much to say. There is no symphony without the violin and there is no great opera without the soprano. There is no justice without all the members of the family of man and woman equally sharing the ideals of freedom we claim define our nation.

http://hillarysvillage.net/showthread.php?t=2725
Thread by Freethinker 11/30/08
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