Reclaiming Our Country
Published on Sunday, November 7, 2004 by CommonDreams.org
Reclaiming Our Country
by Ruani Seneviratne Freeman
"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over,
their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore
their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we
are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long
oppressions of enormous public debt...If the game runs sometimes against us
at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity
of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles
are at stake."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1798, after the passage of the Sedition Act.
November 2, 2004 is finished. For the first time in the history of this country which prides itself as being the beacon of democracy, we had international monitors from Haiti to Sri Lanka overseeing the process. Now, in the aftermath, we are no longer sickened by election-related media coverage; we are sickened by the result. Millions of Kerry-volunteers who braved ridicule and ostracism, not to mention the long-arm of the Patriot Act, have gone home.
All around the streets of my city, I see American flags flying at half-mast to mourn the loss of democracy and the coronation of a tyrant in the grip of evangelical zeal. In Washington, Democratic Ranking Members on the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Congressman Robert Wexler of Florida, John Conyers, Jr., and Jerrold Nadler have submitted a petition to the Comptroller General calling for an investigation into the widespread fraud that took place last Tuesday.
Meanwhile, we look up from our insulated world filled with progressives to look across streets, bus-aisles, and church pews to realize that our neighbors envision a different America.
Who are these people? Are they mad, misguided evil-doers? Are they people who believe that it is good and right that a man who has never served in the military should so casually dispatch 232,284 Americans to their doom in Iraq? Do they really think that their own unions are threatened by how the couple next door might like to consummate theirs? Can it be that they feel we should summarily condemn victims of incest or rape to bare the scars of their abusers? Do they truly respect a man who refers to Canadian drugs as originating from ‘a third world’ in a presidential debate?
John Kerry, in his final speech at Faneuil Hall said that we wake up together as Americans and that “we must join in common effort without remorse or recrimination.” My loyalty to the candidate I supported remains intact, but I beg to disagree with the Senator. I take deep umbrage at the world according to George Bush. His supporters do not. We wake up as Americans, but we do not wake up to the same America. The future that I imagine for my children is not the one that is imagined by those who supported Bush for theirs.
The Democratic Party is being told by Republicans, that it must re-adjust its radical left-wing stance. What radical left-wing stance? The Republican party has moved itself so far to the fanatical fundamental right that the barely centrist, mostly conservative party that is the legacy of Clinton, appears positively rabid in comparison. And yet, there are already murmurs of ceasefire, hand-holding and unity.
Mainstream media is awash with the emotive gush of post-election reconciliation. Spare me, please. This is not the time to white-wash the outcome of an election scarred with foul-play, systematic disenfranchisement, and enough campaign money to end poverty in the entire world. There were disputes between us and they remain. There was outrage in our hearts at the policies of this administration and we are still furious. There was a groundswell of energy to mobilize the people and that energy is still strong.
We are a country that believes in the voice of the majority. If we set aside all the abuses of power that took place before November 2, and the irregularities that occurred on November 2, we can say that the majority has spoken. 59,247,194 votes for the incumbent against 55,710,895 for Kerry. So what does the almost-majority do? We should resist the attempt to lull us into the somnambulant stupor of misguided goodwill.
It is with good reason that the philosopher John Stewart Mill writing on liberty, argued in 1854 against the effort of society to proscribe the choices of individuals. He wrote, that if society wrongfully mandates “in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”
Which brings us back precisely to the belief-system subscribed to by the other half of the country. If a choice was made by my neighbor based on sermons that exclude the vast majority of my friends, what kind of compromise is possible? What do we discuss? My god vs. theirs? No. Their ideals and their truths are not mine. Our differences are irreconcilable.
I listened to a comedian joke that we should hold on to our rage and our fury. And so we should. We are told that the difference of votes, legitimate or not, in Ohio was 136,483. That by no means is a mandate for the policies of this administration or his party. But if we believe that democracy is the will of the majority, then the majority has spoken, albeit – and contrary to the spin - in a voice that is barely audible above ours. If we want this country and the world to embody the values we subscribe to, then we must be that majority in 2008. The electoral process does not begin and end on a single day. Our effort to create the world we almost saw four years and again, two days ago, begins now. We are more than equal to the task.
If we must speak in the language of faith, then I will say it in the words of Jeremiah, 31.15-17: “Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work…there is hope for your future: your children shall come back to their own country.”
Ruani Seneviratne Freeman (rfreeman@colby.edu) is a Sri Lankan-American writer, dancer and activist, with a Masters degree studying women in the Middle East, residing at present in Maine. She is a freelance columnist for the Morning Sentinel, part of the Seattle Times Company syndicate, and a foreign columnist for The Island newspaper in Sri Lanka for which I write on issues of international affairs and American domestic and foreign policy.
Copyright © 2004, Ruani Seneviratne Freeman. All rights reserved.