Who we are is who we were

Please watch this scene from Steven Spielberg’s “Amistad” – especially from point 7:25 on forward:

In this scene where John Quincy Adams defended Cinque the Mende leader (brilliantly potrayed by Anthony Hopkins and Djimon Honsou), he reminds the Supreme Court that who we are as a people is who we were, and that Cinque was a man who is fighting for his right to exist as a free person just like our Founding Fathers (and Mothers!) fought for their right to exist as a free nation. 

This rings true today with regards to our situation as PUMAs.  Who we are today is who we were.  Forged from a principle of equality and Democracy, we are a nation of fighters, people that believed in the common good that everyone should have the right to cast a vote, be represented in goverment by elected officials who win the majority of their constituents’ votes and the right to protest.  The right to vote is the only leveling ground which makes everyone equal.  Doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, woman or man, gay or straight, healthy or sick, tall or short, white/black/brown/yellow/red/green with purple polka dots: we all have the right to vote and expect that vote to be cast and counted as it was intended.  Without that right, we become second class citizens, chattel, collateral damage  and lowly subjects to an imperialist society.

The line of “Convert to Obama or else” is drawn in the sand.  We are all on trial and the O-bots and the MSM are judge, jury and executioner.  Families, friendships, private property and jobs have suffered because of this ideological divide.  The Democratic primary caucuses, the RBC meeting and at the Democratic Convention were the signs of the widening rift.  On one side, Democrats who believe in  “one person = one vote” tenets of Democracy and on the other, Democrats who believe that having an African-American candidate trumps Democracy, despite him being the most inexperienced presidential candiadate in the history of the United States, and regardless if it means stealing votes for that candidate to ”win.”  

Having an African-American president has been one of my biggest dreams just like having a female president serve in my lifetime.  But I don’t want that president to come to office if he/she had to steal votes to get there.   I would not feel a sense of pride in their presidency, in fact I’d feel the same way I feel about George W. Bush, that he/she was selected not elected and was illegitimately holding an office that was not chosen by the voting majority.  Current Democrats are acting as if the only way of becoming a millionaire is to rob a bank.  Of course this is not the only way to become a millionaire, but many in the Democratic Party have been infected with this ”ends justify the means” haka that desecrates our American ideals of respecting the sanctity of “one person = one vote.”

Not too long ago (but what seems an eternity) what filled me with pride as a Democrat was that we were on the “good guys” side.  We defended civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, voter rights, housing rights, etc.  As a liberal, I want everybody to have a good paying job , a decent place to live, a good public school to send your kids, have a good doctor, participate in the American dream of buying your own home and for everyone to live a prosperous happy life living under a government that is for the people, by the people.  While knowing that certain candidates did not have a full grasp to the needs of middle to lower income Americans, nor have the fighting spirit to defend them, I stood by my party for decades as they rolled out candidate after candidate who I voted for because I was a Democrat.  I stood by them because they earned the majority of our party’s votes and because they had Democratic principles (despite that some of them were a bit “right-of-center” to my more liberal views.)  I don’t feel that sense of pride anymore, I don’t feel that the Democrats are the “good guys” because the current Democratic Party morphed into the “enemy” and it’s eating its own just to win.  It’s become the blue-tinged version of the Neo-Con Republican Party with an “O” instead of a “W.” 

We are accosted and harassed with hundred-million dollar HAKAs through every media vehicle.  We face the “Convert to Obama or else” threats every waking second of every day.  We are force-fed misogyny and unbridled zeal to destroy, defame, denounce, decry anything that opposes Obama, even if that opposition has the evidence to  prove Obama’s lies and voter fraud.  Even the simplest “I don’t think he’s experienced” is met with accusatory and inflammatory charges of racism (even if you are a POC like me). 

But what keeps us strong here at The Confluence is that we understand that “who we are is who were were.”  Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers!), our great abolitionists, our heroic civil rights and women’s rights leaders all fought valiantly to defend our American right to cast a vote, be represented in government and to live productive and healthy lives as a free people.  Free people means that we can say what we want, do what we want, think what we want and vote how we want and to respect those that have a difference of opinion.   The MSM and O-bot bloggers don’t get that we follow “democratic principles” and not just “Democrats.”.  They think we are outcasts, the shrieking band of paranoid holdouts, the pariahs of the Democratic party because we are not falling in line with the current Democratic Party. 

I have a message for them: 

If you are voting for Obama, good for you!  But please, stop harassing me to vote for him.  This is not the Democratic Party I once knew and no one living in the United States should have their right to vote surpressed, like mine was.  By enabling such deeds, we cease to exist as a “free” nation and by supressing our protest and our votes, you are murdering the precious right of Democracy and of critical thinking.   Thomas Jefferson said:

“Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth; and I am sure…we both value too much the freedom of opinion sanctioned by our Constitution, not to cherish its exercise even where in opposition to ourselves.” –Thomas Jefferson to P. H. Wendover, 1815.

And:

“Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.” –Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787.

I, like many in this forum, have exercised our right to critical thought.   We’ve gathered the facts and decided a long time ago that Barack Obama is not going to have our vote due to the voter fraud in the Democratic primaries/caucuses/RBC/DNC Convention, rampant misogyny promoted by his surrogates and supporters, his glaring inexperience and his failure to win the popular vote in the Democratic Party.  If there is to be that Civil War in the Democratic Party, let it be so.  The current Democratic Party does not speak for me since they ceased being “Democratic”  during the 2008 primaries.  I could care less what anyone thinks of me at this point.  I care about this document that’s right here, which says:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

 

The more you push, the more I resist.  I follow Democratic principles, not people who call themselves “Democrats.”  So Don’t Tread on Me !

¡Que viva los PUMAs!

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