This week was a kick in the gut.
Boston. West, TX. Boston again. Other events that didn't get so much publicity. I lost sleep and had my heart repeatedly broken all week long. It's hard being a news junkie.
And I didn't have anyplace to put my frustration, my ache, my anger. Then I remembered this old place, and so here I am. I know I'm a fail for letting it go five months without posting, but I've been kind of busy writing elsewhere.
In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, speculation ran wild on the type of perpetrators who may have done this evil. Various media asshats showed their true colors this week. This is the one that finally sent my rage nuclear.
Andrew Breitbart's book isn't titled "Righteous Indignation" for nothing. He was livid that the good, decent, hard-working Americans who embraced tea party values were maligned time and again. It infuriated him that people like us were blamed, vilified, lied about, and marginalized in the mainstream media, all with the aim to defeat our efforts to make this country better. His mission was to take on the mainstream media, call them out, expose them, and rob them of their power to define us. He encouraged us to become citizen journalists, citizen ombudsmen, citizen activists. And people are answering the call.
I just wish it were more.
Every day I fear that there aren't enough of us doing enough to fight back at everything they're throwing at us. I already know there's never going to be a day when this fight is over, not in my lifetime. I'll never retire from this, not really. And I am not saddled with a full-time job around which I have to work my activism, so I'm able to absorb more than a lot of people.
My heart is broken for all those people lost this week, and their families and friends. But at the same time (and I don't think it diminishes anything the victims are going through) my heart is also battered and weary over the uphill battle the rest of us face. We shouldn't have to fight so hard just to keep a good name, but we do, and there's no amount of wishing that will change it.
Saul Alinsky was a pretty awful bastard, but I do find this quote helpful:
As an organizer I start where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be. That we accept the world as it is does not in any sense weaken our desire to change it into what we believe it should be — it is necessary to begin where the world is if we are going to change it to what we think it should be.
So that's where I think my head is going to be for the next few weeks. I need to think about the stark reality we face. I need to come to terms with exactly what the situation is on the ground in America. And then, God willing, I'll be able to start thinking of ways to change it.
