The Urban Elf

The midterm election is over. Some ugly things have happened. And, I rejoice that my state maintained a modicum of sanity even as I lament that the House was lost. That said, as much as it chagrins me, I have to admit my own party must own a portion of their own failure on the national level. Even before the previous administration left office the Democrats were given control of Congress, a mandate from the people. They failed to deliver. As much as I love John Stewart and his call for reasonableness and moderation… we are playing a rough game. Those who would appear to represent the left have failed for the same reason they always fail… despite the viciousness of the playing field they tried to play nice. Nice guys are sometimes exonerated by history, they sometimes win wars, but they rarely win battles without stealing a page or two from the bad guys’ playbooks. Let this setback be a wakeup call. Let this loss be a call to arms. The Left must rise; roar; cry to heaven. We must be mindful of civil and lucid discourse, mindful of common ground and where it can be found but we must also free ourselves from the compulsion to be nice. There will be a time for “nice; it is not now. Now, now we need to use whatever tools may be at our disposal to champion what we know to be important, imperative, crucial to the progress and survival of this people, this nation, this Great American Experiment. We must shed our shared discomfort with, if not outright aversion to, conflict and fight. Will we be saints in heaven and martyrs in history while the legacy of our inaction is a hell on earth? As Massachusetts is a beacon for the nation the United Sates of America is a beacon for the world. If that beacon were extinguished or even dimmed by corruption of the focus and color or its lens then we should fear for the future of all humanity regardless of the continent on which or the borders within which it lives. We have been charged, whether by a divine power or history or simply inescapable reason, to lead the way out of the hidebound past of monarchies and theocracies of classist hierarchies and racist empires. True, we have more miles to go before fulfilling that charge than perhaps years humanity has stood on this earth, but that is only more reason to not fall back or fall down now when all the world is watching. They watch and they hope. Hoping with us, for us, for themselves… for the future. Isn’t that worth a little discomfort as we chose the cause of our convictions over the ease of our social grace?