While passing out Obama volunteer forms and mail-in ballot applications at the Colorado State Fair grounds a few months back, I was stunned by the number of people who, in grass roots support, had already volunteered. And yet, despite that, I personally got dozens more to volunteer! I've not seen such rampant enthusiasm since the Viet Nam era. Apathy, I'm heartened to announce, seems at last to be dead!
Everything, however, inevitably, points back to George Bush, both senior and younger!
Inextricably bound up in this nation's attitudes, fear inordinately presents itself: frightened at losing house and health; at falling between the cracks of our health care system. We say we have the greatest health care in the world, yet why then do wealthy Americans go to Europe and India for the latest surgical procedures? The sorry answer is that we merely have the most expensive of health care in the world - not the best! We are enslaved by pharmaceutical conglomerates and physicians so fearful of socialization that we turn to the internet and Canada for drugs at reasonable cost!
The very fabric of our nation unravels. Like in the fairy tale, we seek to follow some thread or trail of crumbs back to our origins to find our bearings. They are to be found if we look, of course, but only in a re-reading of our sacred Constitution, as also in the speeches of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg and in his second inaugural address. Seek, and ye shall find!
Check out the Federalist Papers from your local library, and find what our founding fathers had to say in debating the formation of our union! They worried then, as do we now, about rights, votes, and their apportionment. Jefferson held slaves. John Adams and he debated in letters until their death, a mere hour apart. And it's now proven by genetics that Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson had children together.
When I visited Monticello I was struck by the inscription upon Jefferson's gravestone. Not "author of the declaration of Independence, etc., " but simply "Founder of the University of Virginia." And at that university, so overtaken was I by the beauty of the dome he designed and I stood beneath, that I had to sit down lest I faint! But now, if we are to heal, we cannot do so by being of faint heart!
Enough ruminations about the current Bush! Let him burn with his ill messages deep into our brain like the bush of the Bible did for Abraham.
It is time that , like Moses, we announce to the world: "Let my people go!" More than this: let them grow!
And, even more to the original point, let them - at last - heal!
Charles L. Riccillo
October 18, 2008
Pueblo, CO
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