Helen Burleson, Ph.D
By Helen L. Burleson, Doctor of Public Administration
I am exhausted listening to people talking about their exhaustion defending the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. As I listened to the lady at the recent town hall meeting who said she was exhausted with trying to defend President Obama to others who are disenchanted, I became even more exhausted.
Not once did I hear her say that she was exhausted with the obstructionisms, the odious smears, innuendos and lies being told about our president. I also did not hear her say that she would do all she could to discourage the GOP from blocking and preventing most of the progressive, humane agenda that the president has laid out to benefit all of America’s citizens. What is so troubling to me is that Democrats are sitting back and allowing the tea party and the Republicans to dominate the conversation by perverting all the good the Obama Administration is doing. These detractors are deliberately twisting and distorting the truth. Their 24/7 attention to the constant repetition of lies has so numbed and confused the average person that they are accepting these lies as the truth.
I am exhausted listening to people criticizing and disrespecting our president.
I am exhausted listening to all the ranting and ravings of the tea partiers and ultra conservative Republicans, all designed to derail the Obama presidency.
I’m exhausted realizing how many stupid, non-thinking and easily manipulative people there are in the United States of America.
I’m exhausted witnessing how the American education system has deteriorated to the point that Americans are ready to embrace mediocrity, ignorance and prejudice. We have produced a nation of automatons and clones who are incapable of thinking and cannot make decisions that are in their own best interests.
I’m exhausted knowing that President Obama inherited the biggest and most chaotic and devastating situation ever to occur in American history.
Today, September 23, 2010, the Republicans came out with their manifesto which in essence will paralyze America. To return to the policies that put our country in the greatest financial crisis since the original Depression of 1929 is criminal. They openly admit that they will dismantle all the progressive programs advanced and passed by the Obama Administration.
Now if you want to see exhaustion, wait and do nothing and let the Republicans replay their scenario of man’s inhumanity to man, catering to the rich and powerful, decimating the middle class and totally dissolving the lower class until they become the underbelly of society.
Should the Democrats be negligent enough because of lack of fervor to allow a Republican takeover, then I want to hear that same lady who so eloquently dressed the President down for the millions of people all over the world to see and hear; I want her to speak out. Speak out if she has a voice left after bemoaning our country going to hell in a hand basket as they take us back to the conflagration that put us in the condition we are in now. Dante’s Inferno could be no worse.
You think you’ve got it bad now? Why? Is it because you are ungrateful for all this Administration has produced despite the obstreperousness of the right wingers? It will be worse than during the Bush Administration because we have not learned from history or psychology. Doing the same failed things over and over gets the same failed results.
It is time for Democrats to stop moaning and groaning and to knock on every door, open the white pages and call everyone in the telephone directory to save our country. We have a good team and it is getting better. We have made enormous strides and progress in less than two years. The jobs are coming and they will be created here in America to make products by Americans and for Americans so that we can all get above the flood waters that we have been drowning in because of the Bush years – eight to be exact. Painstakingly these were eight years of mismanagement, pandering to the rich and the elite, shipping our jobs overseas depriving American workers of the ability to sustain themselves, and running up overwhelming debt while borrowing money to fund two wars. We have destroyed lives and properties in two countries, simultaneously; and, now we are rebuilding what we have torn down. Our own infrastructure is outdated and seriously in need of repair or replacement. Let’s bring our money home to take care of home. We had an ill conceived education program which did nothing except further dumb down America’s children and turn them into drones for passing tests. It did not matter that they were not learning or gaining knowledge or being prepared as lifetime learners, as long as they could pass these arbitrary tests, they were passed along.
Is this what we want for our children, America? Is this what we want for ourselves? Haven’t we suffered enough, America? If you say yes, then do something about it. If you don’t have genuine enthusiasm, fake it until you make it. Don’t allow our country to become paralyzed again with ill prepared, ill informed tea partiers replacing knowledgeable, forward thinking Democrats. Let’s go forward! Let’s defeat the prognosticators! Let’s take our country back to the Clinton years, to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt years, to the good old days when a man and a woman who were willing to work were able to find a good paying job and then be able to circulate money within our country to stimulate our economy so we can again know the prosperity that wiser, humane Administrations created for us. This is our Democracy, let’s practice what is necessary to sustain a thriving Democracy by voting for the Democratic lawmen who really and truly practice, COUNTRY FIRST. It is time to EXHAUST all your energies and your resources to keep the bums out! We don’t need witchcraft or voodoo economics, we don’t need to be paralyzed. We need a functioning, thriving Democracy where all of her citizens are given an equal opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness. This is what we owe ourselves. This is what we owe our children and their children and their children’s children. This is America. We are Americans. Let’s start acting like Americans who have always heeded the call to treat the least of these as we would want to be treated ourselves. We are our brothers and sisters keepers. This is our manifest destiny!
Words We Speak 