Posted on 11/07/2012 12:17:52 PM PST by jjsheridan5
I apologize for the vanity, and, moderator, please move if appropriate.
When my father was dying, I stubbornly held on to hope, seeking out any possible cure, convincing myself that maybe he would be alright, and things could go back to the way they were. Even as he wasted away to nothing, I would seek out any sign that things weren't as bad as they were, and cling to it. When he finally passed, what I felt was unexpected -- liberation. Sad and empty, yes, but also free. I didn't have to fight anymore. I didn't have to avoid what I knew deep down to be true. I could now move on.
Last night, America died. For 20+ years I have been fighting a battle that I was destined to lose. I just didn't want to admit it. People much smarter than me saw it coming, but I kept believing that somehow, we would prevail. I can no longer maintain that illusion, we are simply outnumbered, held in contempt by a majority that will continue to grow, and will continue to believe that we are at fault.
And I feel liberated. We can give up the ghost. The America that I cherish -- a land of freedom loving people, a sunny place in a difficult world, a giving and charitable people, a place where goodness can thrive, and where evil is not tolerated -- is gone. It is a memory, nothing more. Our fight has been in vain, because we have been fighting the tides of history. The takers are too numerous, the brainwashing factories too effective, and the melting pot has displaced us.
I hear people blaming others, that if we had only nominated someone else, or pursued a different strategy, we could have won. This rings hollow to me. The left was palpably disinterested and dispirited, yet they still outnumbered us. A manifest failure, a childish and petulant incompetent, should have gotten only a handful of votes. Yet the politics of revenge, contempt, stereotyping, and divisiveness is all they needed. Maybe we could have done better, but the fact that so many people voted for Obama, even without enthusiasm, tells me all I need to know. We can never win at the ballot box, not if we hold true to our vision of America.
I also hear a lot of people trying to find a path forward. This strikes me as swinging wildly in the dark, while avoiding the underlying problem. The media, the schools and universities, the culture -- it is too much to compete with. We cannot stand and fight, because there is no-one to fight against. You cannot win hearts and minds when those hearts and minds hold you in contempt. They don't want to discuss economic theories, or political philosophy, or social problems. They reject what we say out of hand, and the easily led now believe that we are the evil ones.
My hope is just that. That there will be something that comes along in which I can place my hope. Whether it is the result of economic collapse, mass migration, infighting among our enemies. Somewhere, as long as I read the writing on the wall without rose colored glasses, I will be able to see where we can make our stand. Right now, we have no such place. But no matter how dark the world gets, it will appear.
Our body politic will continue to talk as though nothing has changed. But it has. Four years ago, we could write off the results as a mistake born out of ignorance. But now we have to say that their vision of America -- a weak place, full of anger and bitterness, a place where prosperity is reserved for the elite, a European place -- has been embraced. And we can no more change that than Romans could turn a decaying empire back to its days of glory.
There are 10s of millions of good people in this country. People who have not been blinded, and who still believe in the values that created this once-great nation. Somehow, in some way, we will bind together. But we cannot *make* it happen. Choosing the right candidates, political strategy, reaching out to this or that -- none of these things have any chance of success. We have to ride this out, and wait for our opportunity.
For myself, this is now all about preserving what can be preserved. Remembering what my father taught me -- how he immigrated to the country for three things: opportunity, self-reliance, and freedom. Those things are part of me now. The hope I got when my father died was that an echo of him remained in me and my siblings.
America, as we once knew it, is gone forever. But the things that made this country a beacon of hope, for so long, still remains. In us. The 60 million people who were not fooled. The 60 million people who recognize the enemy for what it is. The 60 million people who were so palpably enthusiastic, not for Mitt Romney or any single person, but for the ideals upon which this nation was founded.
I don't know where this leads. Nobody does. But I do know that hope will rise again, because of us.
Thank you for sharing. Thoughtful and thought-provoking vanity..Two thumbs up.
BUMP
I think your vanity is great and you express exactly the way I feel today.
We have almost no chance of changing what American has become. We can hope for tomorrow, that we could vote these people out, but I think we see now that we are outnumbered. We've lost control of our schools, media, and now our government.
I remember in 2008 we all thought that with the elections in 2010 we would rise back up and right the course ... didn't happen. We said the same thing in 2012, and again, the same result.
We can keep kicking the can down the road and pretend that we will prevail with our votes, but, let's face it, that isn't going to happen.
I am not being a defeatist, I am being realistic, we got complacent and now we are in the minority and getting smaller every day.
Any ideas ... how do we change this?
Denial is the first stage of grief as they say. And there are many in the conservative establishment - the same folks who assured us that Romney would win - who are going to try spin tales of a better future.
You are correct. America as we knew it cannot be saved. A nation is a fragile thing and we are no longer one nation. This has tremendous implications for the future, the parameters of which we cannot yet fathom.
The tides of history-—yeas
The tides that tell us that once a country discovers they can vote themselves free money that country dies.
That is what we were fighting and we lost.
I tried hard I spoke to many people, friends and acquaintenances, but if they refused to listen to their Church and voted for murder of innocents, why would they listen to me? If they refuse to recognise that queers are sick how can I argue with that? If they think we can borrow our way out of debt, they don’t have a brain to begin with.
Here’s an idea, maybe the nature of things has been set to the period of England’s history where the religious pilgrims set out to find a new place to call there own. These pilgrimages have happened through out history. Maybe it’s time for the next great pilgrimage. Maybe we could start a colony on the ocean, the tech exists to make it work. No ones going to the moon anymore, maybe it’s time to build an off shore corporation to lead the new great migration to the moon. Or maybe it’s time to build the next great comunications array like the matrix, cut the government out all together. Hope springs eternal.
Does any one know of places that one can live, free in the world today. Can 2 million American men move in by force and take it over. We did it when we came here, we pushed out the indigenous people’s and took over, I see know reason why it couldn’t be done again!
Hey I’ve seen the electoral map, all the undesirables live in giant american cities. Maybe we can let Obama weaken us so much that our enemies will nuke them for us, problem solved!
The migration idea has been bandied about a lot. The problem is that in order to work, it would take a large number of people. People’s natural instinct during difficult times is to hunker down. I can’t see such a migration occurring, in sufficient numbers, to create some kind of new America. More likely, you would end up with isolated pockets of expats. The same problem makes secession so unlikely. People are now concerned about survival, about retaining some standard of living. Unfortunately, we are going to have to accept that we can only control those things around us, and wait it out through a very grim period, until things get intolerably bad.
As far as migrating into one of those isolated pockets of expats, I am very wary. As the global economy continues its decay, we may find that being glaringly white in a non-white area may become quite dangerous, even in areas that are currently pro-American.
I only see two choices: emigration to another country or a movement of secession.
The first is an individual choice, the latter a risky political move.
The Cato Institute publishes a list of countries ranked by economic freedom. About a decade ago, we were third behind Hong Kong and Singapore. Today we are something like 18th. So there are a raft of countries to consider moving to, but that would entail a huge lifestyle adjustment. If you’re young, unmarried, and willing to try something new, you could go to New Zealand or Switzerland, both of which are small, prosperous stable countries, with no demographic problems, and higher in economic freedom than the U.S.
If the US declines economically or there is some other triggering event, then the idea of secession may take hold. There are all sorts of secessionist movements afoot in Europe right now.
If we had a truly federal country, as the founders established, with sovereign states, then it would matter much less who the president was and you could have a wide variation in policies between states. But with the leviathan federal government of today, that’s just not an option.
You have it right. What we are facing is what the Jews faced in Germany a growing hatred. Hatred for Conservatives and republicans, I hear us called Rethuglicans, I hear people say things like you White conservatives are a dying breed. It is scary the level of hatred for us. Then you have Obamas buddy saying in the passed that 25000000 dead americans would be a good number dead if they did not follow the revolution. This is getting serious.
I meant Past. To much on my mind today. Thank god there are no grammer police on Freerepublic.
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