This entry was posted on 11/13/2008 2:12 PM and is filed under uncategorized.
"History's verdict is all we have left. And when tomorrow calls today to account, some of us want to be able to say we stood up. We called out. We were not silent. "
When I first read these words in an op-ed by Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Baltimore Sun back in 2006, I was so deeply affected by them that I put them at the top of my blog.
I had just begun to speak out against the war in Iraq, something I had held off doing because my son was active-duty Marine Corps at the time, and I didn't want anything I said online to wind up in the e-mail Inbox of some sergeant or other and get him into trouble.
But when he gave me this computer during a post-deployment leave after serving in Iraq, he said with a shrug, "I don't care what they do to me."
In fact, he later bought me a T-shirt while on a visit to Tombstone, Arizona, with the following words from the iconic movie printed on it:
"You brought down the thunder. Now you got it. Tell 'em I'm comin', and hell's comin' with me."
Dustin said, "Bush brought down the thunder when he started this war. Now you go after him. And don't be nice. This is war."
So, with his and my husband's and daughter's blessing, I started speaking out everywhere I could find listeners, pouring every ounce of energy I had into doing my part to stop that war and, eventually, to put Sen. Barack Obama in the White House so that HE could stop the war.
My blog was just cranking up when I read Mr. Pitt's op-ed. At the time, he was referring to the president's warrantless wiretapping program, but the piece was an indictment on so much more:
So it has come to this. The president's apologists rationalize even his most obvious and egregious illegalities, mendacities and bungling with straight faces and earnest demeanor and the rest of us are left posturing for history, trying to make certain that when the official record is written, we are not indicted by our silence.
Your humble correspondent, by the by, doesn't mean to cast aspersions when he talks about folks posturing for history. He's been doing the same thing.
People - conservatives, the occasional liberal - sometimes ask me why I bother. Another column on the sins of George W. Bush? What's the point? What will change? The people who disagree with him already know. And there's not enough evidence in the world to convince his believers - the word is appropriate - that he does not, in fact, walk on water.
Still...You cannot be a student of history without ruminating on some of the more dubious episodes of the American past and wondering how in the world such things were allowed to happen.
Was the whole country napping when Joseph R. McCarthy's bullying, innuendoes and lies cast a pall on this nation and made a mockery of the Constitution? Didn't anybody speak out when Franklin Roosevelt sent Americans to concentration camps? Where were the good people when Americans of African descent were being lynched in horrific numbers and the president and the Congress stood by and did nothing?
You read about these failures of will, of courage, of spirit and you keep asking ... how? How could that which is so obviously wrong now have been so quietly accepted then?
From that question, it is only a short hop to another, more pressing one: What will tomorrow say about today?
When I decided to speak out, my voice joined a growing chorus of voices raised in protest over not just the war, but the travesty that was the George W. Bush administration, and the desperate need to do what we could to stand in the way of his imperial presidency as it attempted to dismantle our governmental protections, wage war without our consent, strip us of our civil liberties, and subvert the Constitution.
Talking Points Memo, HuffingtonPost.com, the Daily Kos, and other websites were powerful public squares for the voices to be raised.
Although so many who did not take the Internet seriously scoffed at bloggers, I took what we do seriously. I thought it no different from what Thomas Paine and so many like him did in the days leading up to the Revolution, when they met clandestinely around printing presses, and churned out pamphlets and tracts protesting British rule, that were hand-distributed to friend and foe alike.
There is a reason that the very first ammendment to the Constitution is one guaranteeing us the freedom to speak out.
When Barack Obama recognized this growing power, and harnessed it to energize, empower, and fund his campaign, he was stepping up to a moment in the destiny of this country's history, a moment when The People took back their government and their rights, and in so doing, brought an unjust war to an end and began the slow painful rollback of so many Bush disasters.
This new incoming administration also recognizes the impact that the Internet can have on transparency and accountability in government (more about that later, when I have time to provide links), and has indicated a willingness to provide that kind of access. Working across the aisle as senator, Obama has already passed one law that provides Internet access to government funding--where it goes, who gets it, and how much. (Again, links later.)
The blogging community made up their minds, both individually and collectively, that when history's verdict came in, when tomorrow called today into account, we would be the ones who would be able to say:
WE STOOD UP. WE CALLED OUT. WE WERE NOT SILENT.
*cross-posted at TPM Cafe:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/deanie_mills/2008/11/historys-verdict-is-all-we-hav.php
