Welcome Back, America

With the Democrats firmly in control of the House once again, and a close Senate race that I am hopeful will end in favor of the Democrats, the first in a series of strategic victories have been accomplished. However, it is not enough to be complacent with these victories. Instead, we must all take steps to ensure that the lessons of the past 6 years of negligence are learned, and learned well.

Periods of crisis tend to cast a harsh light on the mechanisms of governance that gave rise to them. It is by this light that the true failings of that mechanism can be seen. During the OJ Simpson trial, for instance, the politicization of the justice system and issues of race were clearly the culprits in a broken criminal justice process. Similarly, the past 6 years have been plagued by a number of crises, each with a lesson for us to learn.

The Iraq war was sold to an unwilling public on false grounds. The intelligence leading up to the invasion was incomplete, the planning was insufficient, and the public was fed complete lies as to it's execution. Originally sold as a war that would merely take a couple weeks, despite clear projections to the contrary, we are now looking at, by some estimations, 655,000 dead and, by all estimations, a political quagmire that has greatly tarnished the image of America throughout the world. Never again can we allow ourselves to take lightly the notion of going to war with another nation, nor can we give our political leaders a free pass to blatantly lie, manipulate us with fear, and commit criminal acts without being held accountable.

As scientific progress has again and again come into jeopardy due to the politicization of such issues as the teaching of evolution and stem-cell research, we clearly saw the way a decision-making body with less than even a rudimentary understanding of the field of study at stake was able to hinder scientific development. We must police ourselves to ensure that the roles of religion and political propaganda are kept separate from the scientific research that will fuel industry decades down the line, and that the proper education of our children is protected, ensuring that future generations of Americans will be prepared to compete in the world economy.

Finally, as voting scandals, smear campaigns, and bald-faced fraud have been commited in the past few elections, we as American citizens must make one thing very, very clear to the government that we allow to make decisions for us. Regardless of which side of the issue you fall on, the mechanisms of democracy are never an acceptable loss in advancing your own agenda. We've seen corporations such as Diebold provide grossly insecure voting systems, throwing the entire election process into disarray. We've seen Fox News mislabel unpopular Republicans as Democrats. There have been caging campaigns, disenfranchisement of voters in Democratic districts, and robo-calling campaigns to trick Democratic voters into thinking their own party leaders have been calling them over and over again in the middle of the night. These factors need to be removed from the equation. Corporate interests cannot be allowed to disassemble what we have worked so hard to build throughout our history. Blatant fraud cannot be allowed. The lies cannot go unexposed any longer.

In the coming years, we must not allow partisan politics to see these crises as anything other than what they truly are, horrific negligence. History must remember the Iraq war, the 2000 and 2004 elections, and the "Intelligent Design" campaign as examples of things that have gone horribly wrong in our society. We cannot forget these lessons. Changing our government to ensure that these problems do not happen again will not be easy, but the crises we have faced have thrown light onto them, and by examining those crises in profile, the solutions will present themselves. We must be free and democratic in acknowledging and repairing our own failures. I want to be proud to be an American once more.

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