Left, Right, and Centered

Taking A Stand August 31, 2011

It’s something most of us on the left wish Obama would do, but most of us have stopped holding our collective breath.  He may yet be forced to take some kind of stand and draw some kind of line in the sand, but if the president is wary of going too far out on that limb, there are others who aren’t.  Say what you will about Rick Perry, but he stands up for what he believes in.  He doesn’t retract and he doesn’t spin. When he says something stupid, scary, or truly reprehensible, be it seceding from the Union, telling Texans seriously to pray for rain, or calling the Fed Chairman “treasonous”, and he’s challenged, he doesn’t retract, retreat, or back down.  He doubles down.  I find it an admirable trait, in a perverse sort of way.

If the right-wing spin machine hasn’t voraciously jumped on it yet, the next talking point you’re bound to hear on FIX News is what’s going to be called an outrageous remark from Indianapolis’ very own Democratic representative in the House, Andre Carson.  He claimed yesterday in a forum of the Congressional Black Caucus that a lot of the new Tea Party members of Congress would like to see him and his fellow CBC members “hanging from a tree”.  The righties are almost certainly going to jump on this and make the expected, “We’re not the racists, the left are the racists” claim, but I think Carson makes a good point, and I hope he won’t back down either.  The individual members of the Tea Party may not be racist (although I believe a lot of them are), but the policies they advocate have a disproportionately adverse effect on the black and Hispanic communities.

The only way we’re ever going to see change in this country is if people of conscience finally do take a stand for what they believe in, whatever that may be, whether ending the wars, or providing health care, or caring for our children, our poor, and our elderly, or watching out for our planet.  Back in the sixties, the streets were filled with protesters, and a lot of them went to jail for what they believed in.  Arguably, the protests worked.  Vietnam was ended.  Protest today comes in the most unexpected places and from the most unexpected voices.  Yesterday Darryl Hannah proved that she could, in fact, “get arrested in this town”, after protesting the building of a new oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast outside the White House.

As an aside, does that SWAT guy look like the prototypical special forces/SWAT/Blackwater commando, or what?  But the point here is that there’s something to be said for standing up for that in which you believe, even if it costs you derision or criticism or even jail time.  It’s a lesson I wish our Commander In Chief could learn before it’s too late.

BW