We missed the president's State of the Union
message. This year, the stench is just too strong.
Under normal
circumstances, we'd joined millions of other Americans in breaking the
January blues by watching the hoopla under the great dome in
Washington. While not what the founders had in mind when they
required the president, from time to time, to report on the State of the
Union, the spectacle has served to remind us that we are a democratic
republic with a grand, if checkered, history. It can be
good theatre with some remarkable props.
But when you
go to the well too many times, the water runs out. President Bush's
well is dry. He and his republican congress have screwed
up too many times. They've told too many lies for us to believe
anything that he or they might say now.
Bush has no
wiggle room to squirm back to respectability or even decency.
We believe that his presidency and the record of his Republican Congress
will be viewed as one of the most corrupt and blemished in more than two
centuries of our great experiment in self-government.
We've never
asked for perfection in our leaders. They are mortals. Just as
we hope to be allowed for a measure of understanding because of our
imperfections, we grant to same to others, even to the most high among
us.
But in all
human activity, there comes a time when the excuse of simple imperfection
must be balanced by the actualities of condition and intent. Bush's
past transactions in government are simply not up to our lenient standards
of respectability.
Candidly,
our Union, the Great Ship of State, is divided and in many ways, entirely dysfunctional.
We are unable to enact laws without huge transfers of money to and from
lawmakers and corporate interests. The latest give-away of note is
the prescription drug program, aka: Insurance industry profit guarantee
program.
We place
political hacks in important leadership positions and then pretend they're
doing a "heck of a job" while thousands are suffering as the
"whole world is watching."
We have no
energy policy. We no health care system. What we do have are
"market forces". Our educational policy is designed, by
repeated under funding, to destroy public education. Our
rights as a free people in a free country are under assault and even to
question these outrages is considered
suspect.
And while
the nation makes ready for another Super Bowl Sunday, more Americans will
languish and die in Iraq for reasons that were lies in March 2003 as they
are in January 2006.
We will not
watch the State of the Union address tonight.
Mr.
Bush, despite what you would have us believe, we know the State of the
Union. We've better things to do with our time.
Reflections
on 2005
It is a time of thinking, this
time of year. We celebrate and in our celebrations we also reflect on
what was and what is expected or awaited in the next twelve
months.
There is good news. We
see it every day. The shop keeper who gives interest free credit to
the single mother. The billionaire who works to end aids.
The lonely Senator who is at long last reminded of his courage by others.
There are billions of stories, some large but mostly small in the grand scheme
of things, that make this year not such a bad one and give one added hope
for the next year and the years to follow. (Here's one; our God
Daughter and her new brother are ding just fine.)
But we would be remiss to fail
to say, as we have far too many times this year, that all is not well with
our country and our world.
The specifics are numbing.
Global warming may be so bad already that polar bears are drowning.
(This was reported recently by the Wall Street Journal, of all places.)
Ten of thousands of people
will die this winter from the cold, illness and lack of food. They
will die, most needlessly, in Pakistan, Asia, South America, across huge
regions of Africa and her in the United States. They will die-yes,
right here in New England as well-because governments, at all levels, will
have given up on them and continued to adjust their priorities to serving
the wealthy and connected.
Greed is doing very well
indeed.
Our country is at war.
At least now we know from the president, if there were any real doubts
beforehand, that the reasons we were told we need to go to war were,
untrue. Remarkably, we're asked-no, we're urged with patriotic fervor-to
forget these old arguments and concentrate on all the "good" that
the war is bringing. Even more remarkably, some Americans are
actually buying this argument.
Many times we raised our right
hand while an Army officer administered an oath for enlistment and
reenlistment. We pledged to support and defend the Constitution of the
United States. We did so gladly because we understood that this was
the one document that made our nation great and different from all
others. Our Constitution and its Bill of Rights, is the reason for us.
But now we know, like the
reason for the war, that the rights and certainties we pledged to defend,
are much less certain. We've started to wonder, like the citizens of
other counties, if our phone is bugged, if our email is being read, if the
books we read are being noted and if our movements are being
watched.
And this is the greatest tragedy
of 2005. America is no longer special not only in the minds of tens of
millions living in other lands, but right here among ourselves. We
know that we've lost the great distinction between ourselves and the vast
stream of history. We've become just another bloated empire.
What should we do in 2006?
Let's start where we all
began. Let's go back to the ideas and ideals that made us, to
ourselves and to others, special.
Let's go back to the concept
that all men and women are created equal.
Let's remember that no one is
above the law and that we are a nation of laws based on unique principles of
human rights.
Let's ask hard questions of
our leaders and ourselves and demand honest answers.
Let's have the courage to put
our principles back into government and into our lives.
Let's be proud once again, to
be an American and a citizen of The Great Republic.
Peter J. Roberts
