When did idealism and our country die?

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2016-02-17T17_28_33-08_00

Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore.

The Republican sadists have been controlling the conversation for so long even the word liberal has been replaced with the less offensive word progressive.

“The land of the free and the home of the brave” means zip unless you bear arms and aren’t afraid to use them.
To be idealistic these days is to be seen as naïve and weak and why are so many people against pie and the prospect of it floating in the sky?

The “powers that be” talk about reaching across the aisle when what they really mean is their way or the highway.

I remember friends I had when I was a child who if they didn’t get their way would hold their breath until they were catered to like drug lords or Supreme Court Justices.

I felt then the same way I do now let them turn blue and pass out because if everyone cannot have a seat at the table then why are we pretending civility exists at all?

Go your own way and I’ll go mine because meeting in the middle nowadays means standing in the center and leaning right and I’m sorry but that’s no way to run a country unless you want to continually run it into the burning ground.

I was frozen on the outskirts of town when I looked up and spied Lady Liberty looking quite bereft like she’d just lost her best friend. When I asked her what was wrong she choked back green tears as she talked about our country having died a premature death. She said it had everything to do with the truly ignorant holding onto their conservative and austere agendas and that “what's good for the goose is good for the gander” even and especially when the gander is drunk on power and hiding behind God’s skirt tails.

I have been standing in place for so long I couldn’t tell you which way the wind is blowing or if the wind is blowing at all.

We all suck if we’re just going to throw up our hands and say “It's what they're going to do. It's what they've always done.”

I know in my red, white and blue heart it has always been the American way to push back against tyrants and that’s exactly what we must do now. Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore and if we want that to change anytime soon we must be the ones who affect that change otherwise it’s all for naught and the American exceptionalism we like to talk about is one big fat lie.

Charles Cicirella

2/14/16