... What the American People Want...

Can I rant a minute?  Would that be okay with you?  At first glance this might just look like one more political statement but I promise it is not.  If you were to ask me who is going to get my vote for president this year, you would meet a man with a thousand yard stare because it boggles my mind to think of how far from anything resembling reality we have come to be.  There is one thing, though... something very tangible and ugly in American national politics that just must stop.

“... What the American People want...”

How many times have you heard that statement lately?  It comes from the yap of every Republican, Democrat, and independent in national public office.  Every time a microphone is slipped in front of a politicians’ face and the “on air” light is illuminated, that person at some point is going to say... 

“... what the American people want...”  

When you say that, I want to jump right through the television, stick my index finger in your faces and let you know that any time you say 

“...what the American people want...,” 

you are doing nothing other than proving how disconnected you are with the very people who, for some reason, put you in office.

We are gay, straight, and celibate.  We are black, white, Hispanic, Asian and a million combinations of a thousand shades of brown that make us beautiful together.  We are married parents and single parents and we are no parents at all.  We are the richest people in the world and people living in cardboard boxes under bridges on cold, rainy nights.  We eat caviar at $1,000 per ounce and we eat scraps from garbage dumpsters behind fast food restaurants.  We are big, strong 20 something men who wear Super Bowl Rings and numbers on our backs.  We are scared children who don’t even know how to spell “Leukemia.”

We live in mansions and pay people to mow our lawns and we mow lawns for people who live in mansions.  We are pro-life and we are young women raped who desperately seek answers to complicated questions.  We “just say no” and we want to legalize cannabis for medicinal purposes.  We are Roman Catholics and Protestants, Atheists, Agnostics and Muslims and Jews.  Our favorite color cannot be contained in a million rainbows.

We are NRA members who want gun control and pro-war hawks singing “Give Peace a Chance” to scratchy recordings of John Lennon.  We don’t want to pay taxes but we want our welfare checks to come in on time..  We use Macs and PCs and we don’t even know how to turn them on.  We drive pickups to honkey tonks and and BMWs to to country clubs.  We walk to our university classes and take golf carts to the back nine.  And you, Mr. Politician, want to stare out of my television screen and tell me...

“... what the American people want...?”  

We are unique and diverse and we are incredibly beautiful because of our differences.  We are divided in our opinions even with our closest neighbors.  We sit in churches and give hugs to our brothers and sisters with whom we disagree because we are all Americans and we love one another.  Or at least we used to.  That is before all you stuffed shirts in Washington D.C. started telling us...

“... what the American people want...” 

We are a country divided on the issues.  We all know that.  Look at any national poll on any issue and look how close the number is to 50% in any column.  We may not always remember that the media, both liberal and conservative, stand to make millions by keeping us divided and that’s why I am going to tell you exactly...

“... what the American people want...”  

What we want is leadership.  What we want is people who work for us in our government to sit down with one another and work with our differences. What we are tired of seeing is those who lead this country play this game where differences are supposed to be a bad thing with which you beat your opponent over the head.  What we want is not a bunch of people in suits talking about a Christian nation.  We’d rather see you, just once, love your enemies and pray for them as Jesus taught or turn the other cheek in a political argument.  We don’t expect you to agree on everything but we do expect you to have enough respect for your electorate to know that we cannot be made in your cookie cutter image because we were already created by God in God’s image... and that image is as diverse as the many faces who turn toward 50 stars and 13 stripes and pledge our allegiance with covered hearts to the states...

UNITED!