by Taylor

Politicians lie, but we can’t afford to lie to ourselves. Quit thinking that someone else will vote in your place: In today’s political climate, complacency equals death.

I’ve been lying to myself, and my loved ones, for the past year or more. In search of a life with less stress, a life without anger, I have denied its presence, completely. This was a grave mistake, and a huge misunderstanding of self, on my part. Instead of channeling that emotion into a useful conduit, I have locked it away and allowed it to fester. And it has, to the point that it is now boiling over and taking control at rather inopportune moments.

Perhaps it’s the election year (with all its smear campaigns and attendant bull) that we find ourselves in. Maybe it’s some of the pseudo-political rhetoric surrounding women’s reproductive rights. Or just maybe, it’s the Religious Right (which is neither), and their attempts to legislate morality, and (il)logically argue these proposed laws’ place in a society that once prided itself on a separation of Church and State.

As a matter of fact, I know that my anger is directly related to the state of politics in our illustrious nation, now. In the Land of the Free, the only ones truly free, in spite of numerous protests, are the Top 1% and their Pet Corporations. Money talks, and the poor and downtrodden that were once upheld and represented, are no longer. Now the impoverished are blamed for their very poorness, called lazy and irresponsible…by the very people that aided in putting them in their compromising position. And yet, through knee-jerk politics and this idea that if one votes Republican, one will magically gain the riches and decadent lifestyle of the Top 1%, many of that same subset of people, are convinced to sign their rights away for a “brighter future”. Propaganda never fails to amaze and dismay me.

Yes, somehow, the state of the economy is related to my right — or lack thereof — to marry the woman I’ve been with for five years. Eat your heart out, Kim Kardashian. And speaking of, how is it we are still falling for the bread and circuses tactic of lusting after the celebrity and the glamorous? What are we doing? Why are we still so distracted? Perhaps it’s a coping mechanism, on the part of the greater populace. It still ticks me off; by the time we all wake up, we’ll likely find ourselves so enchained, that we will be unable to reach for the key we hid in our socks. In other words, should we really give a damn about who wore what to the flipping Academy Awards, when there are children starving in our own streets, when there are women and men trying to raise their children on a shoestring, when women’s rights to control the only space that is theirs, are diminishing? I think not.

Politicians lie. For many of us, this is not news. But I cannot, CANNOT understand how we, the American people, could be falling for the bait-and-switch of, “Obama failed, so just turn the keys over to the GOP for a while — losing your rights to corporations will hurt a little, but I promise ya, baby, only for a minute, and we’ll fix the economy.” I mean, are we really that stupid? How much power over the economy (banks) do we really think any one politician, or group of politicians, has? And how can we think that the current battle we are embroiled in, is anything other than a big, fat, corporate temper-tantrum? Poor baby wants more? Sorry, it’s clearly past your bedtime, and I cannot condone the growing corpulence of a fat, lying rat, over the starvation of real people.

What further fuels my anger is the attitude I’ve been hearing from a number of my liberal friends. Things like, “Romney/Ryan are too out there to win.” Complacency? Really? Just this once, I think that a little paranoia is a good thing. Quit thinking that someone else can or will vote in your place! People protested and, in some cases, died for the right to vote that so many of us so casually cast aside. We owe it to those that came before, to make our voices heard, and make sure that those rights are retained. To do anything less, is to lie down and take it, is to dishonor our forebears, is to accept political death.

If you’re as angry as I am, and have been hiding it behind a veneer of “good people don’t get angry,” then you need to use it, before we sign away the last of our freedoms, as a nation. Get out there. Organize. So the Republicans have school buses and voting shuttles? Let’s carpool our friends to the polling places. Complacency will LOSE this battle for us. Don’t think it can’t happen, because that’s how we ended up with eight years of Bush, and half of the financial mess we find ourselves in, now. I repeat, you are not required to be The Buddha, in order to be a good and politically effective person; all you have to do is channel your anger to a place that is useful, and ensure that it doesn’t harm others.

Lessons learned: Anger is not necessarily a counterproductive emotion, unless one allows it to be. Lying to yourself about your anger doesn’t make it go away, and is unacceptable — unless you’re a politician. Complacency equals death.