|
I was born on October 20, 1965. And I have seen a lot of things over the years.
I had planned on a long post breaking up my life into decades, but thought better of boring you all.
I have seen and felt many things these years, a ton of pain in the last few years to be sure, but also I have seen joy.
And when it comes to politics - well the first president I remember was Nixon. I remember the first home computers, I remember getting something called cable, I remember to this day our first color television, and our first VCR. I recall the day my dad showed me something at work called a microwave oven (had a dial on it) and he cooked a hot dog in it for me.
I remember births, but the things that leave scars are the deaths - for some odd reason births are not as ingrained in our emotions as deaths are, but we do celebrate the day upon which people came into this world of ours.
And through it all, I have seen a cycle in life people tend to follow. At some point, we get bored and/or fed up with whomever is in power and we toss their asses to the street and get someone new. Because they all promise to fix all our problems, and never really quite do so. Progress can be made of course, but it just seems to be so slow we don't always notice it.
In my 42 years of life our country has come a long way. Abortion is legal, gays are out of the closet, and the list could go on all night (feel free to chime in).
And yet - we still don't have health coverage for all people, there are still homeless people on our streets, college is still just a dream to many, racism is still with us, we are not at peace with the world, and again the list can go on all night.
Some things have changed - but the big problems are still here. 42 years on this planet and in this country and still education and so many things are broken.
But we fight, as we always have. And if you look back, you can see progress. Slow but sure. And when the genie is out of the bottle, it ain't going back in if we stand together and stop it.
Sure it gets tiresome, sure we get discouraged and upset. If we didn't I would worry about us.
Too many have given too much in this war of progression for us to give up - and that is why we get so pissed off at candidates who don't seem to want to progress as much as we want them to. They play it safe, for their own reasons - and yet so many in the fight have given so much, some even gave their lives, and it damn well pisses me off when I see people on our side of the aisle not willing to fight when we elected them to do just that.
We have a dream, and if you are not willing to fight as others have for that dream then step aside.
We the people want progress, and I am tired of seeing it crawl along while the lives of our citizens are ruined. They are waiting for you to step up and fix the problems, to make a stand and make a case. If you back down, you lose and we lose.
Stand for something, and then fight like hell for it.
|