Your political careers

(11 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

–cross posted at Daily Kos

You, the 535 members of Congress – I’m talking to you.  You, President Obama, I’m talking to you too.  And you, the people who think the futures of you in Congress or you, President Obama, is so deathly important that you have to be defended to the death, I’m talking to you, as well.

Your political career is not more important than the Gulf.

Your political career is not more important than the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Your political career is not more important than the thousands or millions of people who will die between now and when Health Insurance Reform is supposed to clean up the country.  And your political career is not more important than a public option to ensure all people can get decent affordable Health Care.

The Insurance Companies are not your constituents.  The People are.

Your political career is not more important than those of the thousands of honorably serving GLB veterans serving in the military.

Your political career is supposed to be about the People.

There are people who care more about your political career than the species that will die in the Gulf.  There are people who care more about your political career than the lives lost and the livelihoods lost and to be lost because of the excrement smearing of a whole section of the planet by soulless people who don’t give a shit if the whole world dies, as long as they can have their creme brulee and if they can continue to party with bigwigs in Washington.

There is one word, and only one word, for those who care more about any one of you than any one of these things.

SHAME.

There are people who care more about your political career than the homeless.  There are people who care more about your political career, and the political implications of your victory and defeat, than the hundreds or thousands of people who will die based on your votes in Congress or your decisions as President.

I am not one of them.  And you have let their amorality blind you to your sacred obligation and any reason for your supposed “service” to this country.

Your political career is not more important than the GLBT youth who are brainwashed into killing themselves because they are told The Gay Can Be Cured.

Your political career is not more important than basic fairness.  Your political career is not more important than the First Amendment.  Your political career is not more important than separation of Church and State.

You were not elected to serve as Priests, or High Moral Arbiters for the rest of us great unwashed.  You were elected to serve as Politicians.

Every single one of your political careers, combined, is not more important than one job lost because of bigotry.  Every single one of your political careers, combined, is not more important than one unnecessary death due to bigotry driven by hate speech.

As far as I am concerned, you can all be tossed out on your ears, and you can be extraordinarily renditioned to Zimbabwe, for all I care, for letting one person die on your watch that did not have to because you listened to a corporate lobbyist or an arrogant person who insists this is a “Christian Nation” as opposed to a nation of many diverse people.

Your fundraising vacation is not more important than the millions of people whose jobs have been destroyed on your watch, and who are one step away from homelessness, that you could not be bothered to help because Congress Adjourns for Memorial Day.

Your political career is not more important than people’s whose homes have been swindled away from them by the banks.

Bankers are not who you were elected to represent.  Wall Street is not who you were elected to represent.  These people defend themselves adequately without your help, but the fact that they have your help as opposed to the people they have swindled, lied to, and left destitute, is a mark of great shame, to every one of you.

There are some 536 people who are largely responsible for making decisions that affect our nation, our people, and our planet.  I am speaking to you.  And to hundreds of thousands of others who have turned it into a Game watching your every move, every statement you make, to cast tea leaves and decide what the political makeup of this country will look like in 2011, or 2013.

Yet, between then and now, people will be tortured, people will, yes, quite literally die because you didn’t do enough to ensure they could have adequate healthcare, and people will die in the Middle East, including our own soldiers, because you were too afraid of How It Would Look to Chris Matthews.

Your political career is not more important than the raising temperature of the planet.

Your political career is not more important than people whose homes will be inundated by the sea.  Your political career is not more important than people who will lose their entire way of life because you could not be moved.

Your poll numbers are not more important than the Constitution.  Your poll numbers are not more important than habeus corpus.

People who talk as if your political career and your popularity is more important than those things may make you feel good, they are immoral, and it is shameful to care one ounce for your political career for those you could not be moved to help, for those whose accountability you could not be budged to see to, and in preference to those people who will die on your watch because you took a corporate donation and made a ridiculous vote and a fatuous speech on the floor of Congress instead of doing your job.

A career in the White House is just a job.

A career in Congress is just a job.

Every single one of your jobs, singularly or in the aggregate, is not more important to the country than even one of the hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been lost.

Whether your prospective unemployment this November or December results in someone “worse” is not the issue here.  The issue is whether you govern on behalf of the people and the planet and whether you honorably serve your country.

Honorably serving your country does not include giving waivers to Big Oil while BP continues to foul the gulf.

I don’t care whose fault it is.  You were elected to stop it.  You were elected to govern wisely.  You were elected by the People, not by corporations.

It is true, their are people who base their entire careers as well on yours — on whether or not you get elected again.  And, as far as I am concerned, they can lose their careers, too, if they have the shame and lack of ethics to put your political careers over the welfare of the country.

That people care more about YOU than they do about these other people — this is what is wrong with this Country.  But as far as I am concerned, you can all be fired  — every one of you, and I would not sleep badly.