It Is Here We Must Begin

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama liked to say that one voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it can change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world.

Progressive bloggers already knew that.  We spoke out against the criminal administration of Bush and Cheney when no one else would, because we’ve known all along how important one voice can be. That’s why we started blogging.  We knew an entire nation had lost its way, we knew the corporate media was a wasteland of lies, but we knew one voice can make a difference, we knew that the voice of justice must be heard, so we became the voice of justice.  We would not be silent while a war was unleashed for oil and profit, while war crimes were committed and elections were stolen and justice was crucified on a cross of gold.

We knew that one voice can change the lives of everyone who hears it, that one voice of compassion can touch a million hearts, that one voice of reason can change a million minds, that one voice can become many voices and echo through history for all generations to hear.  We knew that if enough people stood up and spoke out together, our future would be in our hands.  We believed in justice, we didn’t give up, and now a few solo voices on a few blogs calling for justice in 2003 and 2004 has become a nationwide chorus of voices calling for justice.  

When human beings were being subjected to horrific forms of torture in Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo, and in secret CIA prisons, there weren’t very many voices calling for the investigation and prosecution of torture.  When the voice of justice was first heard on progressive blogs, cable television political programs were a BushCo propaganda spectacle, no liberals or progressives had their own shows, there weren’t very many voices speaking out against RePug warmongering, corruption, hypocrisy, deceit, and torture.

But there are now.  

As Buhdy noted . . .        

calls for investigating and prosecuting BushCo officials for torture is front page news around the country, it is leading the news casts.  Matthews destroyed John Ensign (R-Denial) for still insisting that “the US did not torture.”  Nancy F’in Pelosi has called for a Committee.  Debbie Wasserman-Schultz says we should absolutely prosecute Bush and Cheney if the evidence is there.  And the list goes on and on.

Keith Olbermann is still on the front lines of this fight for justice . . .

And now Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz have their own programs, they reach a nationwide audience very night, and there will be more shows like theirs.  Other cable and network hosts are no longer tolerating the Stone Age bullshit of RePug politicians and “strategists” and “conservative authors”. They can no longer go on television and lie with impunity, hardly a day goes by now without one of them being dismantled and reduced to babbling incoherence for the whole world to see.  They’re still defending torture, they’re still proclaiming they kept us safe by torturing human beings, but their empty words and empty eyes just expose their moral bankruptcy.  

We’ve been told that prosecuting torture is a legal issue, we’ve been told it’s a political issue, we’ve been told it’s complicated.  We’ve been told a lot of things since those network and cable news clusterfucks started noticing that this issue wasn’t going to go away.  But if we want to focus on what this is really about, all we need to do is heed the words of Pablo Casals: “We must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”  

A nation that refuses to prosecute torture is not worthy of its children.  

They are what this is about.    

Like the music of the mountains,

And the colors of the rainbow,

They’re a promise of the future,

And a blessing for today.

America’s children deserve better than to grow up in a nation that tortured human beings, then turned its back on justice so Barack Obama could look forward.  This isn’t about Barack Obama, it never has been.  It’s about us.  It’s about our children.  It’s about who we are as a nation, it’s about what we believe in and what we stand for, it’s about giving our children a new and better world.    

For eight long years, we spoke of sadness, and the coming of the winter.  The sun was slowly fading, and it was colder than the sea.  The fear that was within us then, it seemed to never end.  And the dreams that had escaped us, and the hope that we’d forgotten, made us reach out for a friend.  And we found each other on progressive blogs, we found friendship, we found empowerment, we spoke out for justice, we became the voice of justice, and we are being heard.

BushCo torturers must be prosecuted, every one of them, though our cities start to crumble and the towers fall around us.  We must reject complicity and seek redemption, we must be worthy of our children.  

It is written from the desert,

To the mountains they shall lead us,

By the hand and by the heart,

So we can finally see

In their innocence and trusting,

They can teach us to be free . . .

Free from all the hypocrisy, free from all the lies, free to finally reach for our destiny, free to finally become what America was meant to be.  It is here we must begin, in this spring of so much promise, here at the crossroads between complicity and redemption, to seek the wisdom of the children, to reclaim the idealism we once had as a nation.  Let them come and stand beside us, let us be worthy of the faith they have in us, and together we can find a better way . . .