The religious right is reeling following the reelection of Barack Obama, the election of an openly gay US Senator and House Representatives, and the four state vote for same sex marriage. They remain committed to their message of "traditional values" but wonder how all the millions spent went straight down the toilet. They are "reevaluating" not what they want to say, but how to say it. Sad. The fact is that Americans are just plain sick of hate mongering. Americans are disgusted with the bullshit of negative lies. We are Not a nation of stupid sheep!
The massive attempts to prevent minorities from being able to vote enraged and motivated millions of Americans to stand lined up for hours in snow and cold and darkness to vote for those who respect the rights of all Americans.
On matters of morality, imposing laws on who should give birth, who should be able to marry, who should be able to sing God Bless America (written by an immigrant), voting Americans made their own individual personal message clear en masse: "DON'T Tell Me What to Do!" Personal individual freedom was what this nation was founded on. The theologically totalitarian, intolerant, right wing seems to have forgotten what country we live in.
And then there's the matter of the money. Billionaires who stole American's homes and sent our jobs to China, told us, "Trust me." And with their votes Americans answered back, "Are you CRAZY! How stupid do you think we are!"
So, now what? Unfortunately, we still have a divided government. A slight majority of constituencies had the temerity to elect a bunch of Neanderthal minded neighborhood bullies to the House, more interested in personal wealth, grudges, and pusillanimous prejudice than in the good of the nation. Sad. They are likely to continue to block national integrity and progress for the next two years.
The result, among other things, will be a continuation of unequal service members. Patriots may now serve in pride, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. But, that bunch of elected bigots have singled out the last group for arbitrary discriminatory denial of benefits. Patriotic active duty service members legally married to same sex spouses don't get any of the family benefits that heterosexual married service members do. Imagine if they said that such benefits should only apply to those of a particular race and religion. Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas. The guy who wrote God Bless America, Irving Berlin, was a Russian Jewish refugee and American veteran. He enlisted in the US Army Infantry during World War I and left as a Sergeant. Would they have denied him equal benefits because his religion was not theirs and or because he was foreign born? Once one starts picking and choosing, based on personal prejudice, there's no end to it.
What will be our American historical legacy of this dawn of the twenty first century? Will we be remembered for having elected ignorant primitive people clinging to past false concepts of separatism, denial of equality, and privilege for themselves; or for having chosen to elect those who hold democracy and equality as their highest ideals? In this past election, Americans chose progress and rejected hate. But we cannot sit back now and wait to see what happens next. Citizenship is a full time job requiring us to constantly remind those we elected exactly what we expect of them.
Denny Meyer, former SFC USAR
