“Sick And Tired Of Being Sick And Tired?”

Every day I encounter people filled with so much anxiety and disgust about the future of America that many of them have lost all hope of ever turning this country back in the right direction. Many are worried about their personal safety and survival and concerned about the future of their children in a country which seems to have become more openly divisive since the advent of Tea Party politics and the presidency of Donald Trump.

“The spirit of the country has changed for the worse,” said one man. “We are just too occupied and distracted by the President’s tweets, threats, insults and true lies. Republican silence is even more alarming and deafening.”

While Jeff Flake directly called the president and Republicans out for helping to create the current political culture in his book Conscience of a Conservative, many Republicans and some Democrats have remained silent about the poisonous reality of political destructiveness now belittling and besetting the nation.

A feverish paralysis of hate-“an insane root”- has taken even greater hold of this country and many people wonder how long American democracy can exist with the indifference, incompetence and ignorance of some politicians in Washington and in other states who seem to be recklessly running amok.

The truth is that many Americas are fed up with all the ugly attempts by self-serving politicians, oligarchs, plutocrats, autocrats and other people to undermine and destroy the American political system by Gerry rigging democracy and hurting middle, working class and poor people by taking everything of value from them.

Americans are “sick and tired of being sick and tired, in the famous words of the late great Fannie Lou Hamer in an interview many years ago. They are tired of being beaten down, threatened, berated and bullied by dastardly politicians and bigots who have no more compassion for the people than the stone statues of the Confederacy.

Americans are also tired of the culture wars, the denigration and persecution of women, the wrongful deportation of immigrants and Muslims, the deprecation of working class and middle class people; blacks, browns, Latinos, Hispanics, Chicano’s, people of Middle Eastern descent, Indigenous and First Nations Peoples, Arabs, Jews, poor rural and working class white people, gay people, fat people, bald people, the elderly, disabled, youths, lesbian and transgender people who just want to live with dignity and peace and enjoy their full rights as American citizens.

Even some wealthy people are sick and tired of being wrongfully accused of being selfish and greedy when they are doing their part and paying more than their fare share.

One woman said, “I just can’t understand how so many people who have everything they want and need are so bent on taking everything away from people who don’t have.”

“They have everything but a soul, compassion and good will for others,” said a bystander.

The truth is Americans want to be just left alone to live in peace. They want to raise their families, make a living and help their neighbors. They want to serve their country by protecting it from all enemies foreign and domestic. They want their elected representatives to respect their vote and address their needs with meaningful legislation that will protect their interests and not give everything away to the wealthy. They want to coexist as freethinking Americans possessing a “free swinging stride,” in the words of Adlai Stevenson.

Moreover, they are tired of the unmitigated forms of physical and structural violence heaped on them from the Big House to the White House, from the State House to the School House. They are tired of those harsh, terrible and dispassionate words self-righteously flung at them by so called religious folks claiming to be true spokespersons for God and the Church House- the “holier than thou sanctimonious would-be sinners-always launching into semi-sermonettes on the evils of “liberalism, democracy, interracial marriage and ho-moes.” These people have done more harm than good in their bitter attacks on people who are different and other and by dividing our country with their dichotomous saints and sinners soliloquies.  Such persons represent neither the ministry or the person or work of the Jesus of history or the Christ of faith. We are all sinners in need of God’s grace!

Many Americans are weary; tired of all the ill-will and hate talk; the endless demeaning of persons and their character; the racial epithets; the homophobia, xenophobia; the cold, jaundiced stares; the warnings written in feces on the walls of sacred places and other cherished institutions. Americans have had their fill of menacing taunts and threats to leave America and go home.

America is my home! America is our Home!

They are fatigued by innocent men, women and children gunned down in cold blood in their neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, churches, theaters, concerts, tribal lands, Mosques, Synagogues and other places of life and worship and refuge in our country.

Yes, they are exhausted by all the mayhem of having their bread confiscated, their land desecrated, their air dissipated and their water violated and then told to grin and bear it or like it or leave America!

They are worn-out from the scornful lies of an Emperor with no clothes who tweets taunts at them; hurls perilous invectives like a glib Gantryesque (Elmer Gantry) snake oil evangelist peddles hallelujah hatred.

They are drained from all the accusations and recriminations, the political reprisals and fiscal refusals; the hatred and speakeasy double speak; the Orwellian lies and more lies and other lies from the Father of Lies and propagandists normalizing this terrible political culture of lies.

“Heaven is hell. War is peace. Love is hate. Good is Evil. Freedom is slavery. Rape is consensual. True News is Fake News!”

They are dog-tired of politicians dismantling and destroying our government while vowing to protect and uphold our government and tired of watching the same people torch into mass conflagration our republic and blow up the greatest democracy on earth with the “top-of-the world,” agonizing, demented, let’s go nuclear fury of a Cody Jarrett (White Heat).

Americans have had enough time to watch this process of destruction painstakingly unfold and they are tired of it all.

Americans are exhausted by the disrespect people have toward their fellow Americans and America in general and their allies abroad; tired of wasted talent and potential, tired of political destructiveness and “procedural injustice”; the gridlock, the stalemate and checkmate of progressive democracy; they are “tired, tired, tired of living in a memory gone by” in the words of the great John Lee Hooker.

Is the plan is to take away everything good for middle class, every day and poor Americans and strip away the last vestiges of hope for a better life for our children and their children?

Is the plan to destroy government and give it over to the Transnational Corporations?

Is the plan to demolish America and finally turn the keys to the kingdom over to the kooks, klepto-cats and the toga draped maniacs?

Is the plan to run everybody out of the country but the milquetoasts?

The American people are tired of being tired, but not so tired that they couldn’t vote in Virginia and in other parts of the country to take their country back last Tuesday November 7th.

They are not so tired  that they could not protest the massive rip off of their health care at the offices of their turn coat Representatives.

Americans may be tired but not so tired that they will passively watch their country slip slide away to fools running errands in a fool’s paradise.

They are not so tired that they are going to look the other way, give up hope and stop working to build America while others tear this country all the way down to the ground so that nothing is left but the skeletal remains of our constitutional republic.

No we will not stay tired, for it is end of the beginning and the beginning of the end of tiredness. Maybe we need some “blessed tiredness” or “I don’t feel no ways tired” in saving our nation and building it up again.”

It’s time to get active and engaged to preserve our freedoms.

“Ignore your rights and they will go away.”

“Eternal Vigilance is the price of liberty.”

“Politics is too important to leave only to the politicians.”

It’s time to get involved like many are doing. It’s time to not be so tired.

In the words of Thom Hartmann, “Democracy is not a spectator sport. Tag, you’re it.”

In the words of Joe Madison, “What are you going to do about it?”

Time to get to work. Time to vote the bums out of office. Time to take America back for all the people so we are not feeling so tired and anxious all the time.

“Time to organize so we no longer have to agonize.”

I’d rather be tired by overwork from rebuilding the spiritual, intellectual and physical infrastructure of America, making America more prosperous for all, and leaving something of America to the next seven generations like the Iroquois Elders do for their children and their children and their children’s children, children’s children’s children.

We will not be tired from sitting or quitting. So let us get untired because we are doing our part to help America and to give America back to all of America’s people.

We will not quit and we will not give up. We will keep working.

So let us keep to the work and let others get to the work to make America what it was meant to be; a good and better and greater country for all.

“Anonymous: How can justice be secured in Athens?

Solon: If those who are not injured feel as indignant as those who are.”

FDRC2