Speaking to a fellow Cuban Democrat today he stopped and
said I can’t talk about politics, my family is Republican and its useless and
they get very angry. I wondered to myself since when do Democrats have a
gag-order placed upon their mouths? Since when did intelligent debate become a bad thing?
Our country was founded upon democratic principles from
ancient Greece where the beauty of debate at the Agora was a revered expression of
intelligence and catalyst for progress. To debate calmly and intelligently
using facts, only served to progress a society. False assumptions can be
dispelled, incorrect facts can be clarified as lies. When we stop debating we
cage our ideas however right or wrong, inside our minds and Democracy is as a
result, degraded. When we don’t speak up they win, when we don’t call them out
on their lies they win in rewriting reality to fit their version of it. So the
next time a Republican starts to huff and puff and spew their lies forcing you
to roll your eyes into acquiescence, stand up to their rants, debate
intelligently (www.factcheck.org is a good place to start) and calmly no matter how
loud they scream out their fabrications. The fact of the matter is, they and
their policies have never been so wrong in our country’s history. Their party
irresponsibly dug us into this huge deficit, trickle-down economics don’t work
and never have, deregulation of Wall Street and getting us into two expensive
wars we should’ve never gotten into caused this great recession, they are NOT
fiscally conservative especially when it comes to military spending, our
country was founded by separation of Church and State, gay rights are human
rights, banning abortion doesn’t stop abortions any more than prohibition
stopped alcohol use, ignoring the need for universal health care only adds to
our deficit by requiring coverage of uninsured through Medicare and bankrupts
our citizens, we cannot continue to ignore the 12 million undocumented workers
living in this country, nor can we deport them all.
Our president elect has been incredibly effective, more
effective than any other president in my adult life. He stopped us from falling
into a “depression” that by all accounts we were inevitably crashing into. Our
recovery is happening and however shaky, things are better, even though the
obstructionists have tried their hardest for him to fail. If you don’t believe
it, look at Europe which is still reeling from and falling back into a
recession.
It should never be just about Democrat or Republican, it
should be about who has the best ideas and most intelligent vision of moving
our country forward and right now, it happens to be a Democrat. When our
country wins, we all win. If we are not united in that goal we all fail. So the
next time a Republican tries to bully you into silence, stand up and say
"You really don't have a leg to stand on, you voted for George Bush
twice!"
It’s no longer about two different ways of dealing with our
country’s issues, it’s about whether or not we move forward or go back to the
same old ways that weren’t working and were definitely unsustainable.
And for the Cubans in Miami still loyal to the Republican
party because of the Bay Of Pigs fracas, please move on..it was a long time ago
and it was never America’s responsibility to free Cuba! The Republican led
embargo has done absolutely nothing to foment change for over 50 years and it’s
high time for a “change” on how we look at Cuba. The “change” we need in this
country is not going to come from any one leader as much as the “change” in how
active we are with the state of our affairs.
In the words of President Obama- "Change will not come
if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been
waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
