In
the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the ACA this week, I’ve been seeing a
lot of chatter. Some are decrying it as the end of freedom in America. I’d like
to take a moment to share my thoughts.
Hur-fucking-ray.
Where
some people see eroding liberty, I see advancing progress. We are evolving into
a better society. True, some folks have to be dragged along kicking and
screaming (I’m looking at you, congressional Republicans), but we are evolving.
Because to do otherwise is to lose our special place in the world. Do you know
why America is a great nation? It’s not because of our public schools, or our
kick-ass military, or even our Constitution. It’s because we keep looking
forward. We keep reaching for the next step on the ladder—in exploration, in
technology, and in social equality. The same energy that freed the Africans
from bondage funneled into the women’s suffrage movement; it led to the civil
rights era of Martin Luther King; and today it fuels the LGBT movement. That’s
freedom. That’s fucking freedom you can believe in and be proud of.
By
2012 I thought we’d have flying cars and vacations on the moon, and enough
goddamned sense to treat each other with basic respect. I thought that Blacks,
Asians, Hispanics, Whites, Gays and Straights, would all be working and living
together like we saw in the old Star Trek series, boldly going where no man has
gone before. Instead, we bicker over whether people should have access to
healthcare and contraceptives so that they might pursue a little happiness in
this life. We wage wars over oil and religion without blinking an eye, but if
you have the gall to suggest we actually put some resources toward erasing
poverty here in America you’d better be ready to defend yourself. We have
people—some successful, some just lucky to have popped out of the right
vagina—who possess enough wealth to purchase medium-sized nations; and some of
them use their fantastic fortunes to buy politicians so they can get special
favors. We have citizens who can’t deal with the idea that a Black man sits in
the Oval Office, or that – oh no! – gay people want to get married and be
treated like normal human beings. It pisses me off that there are men in this
country who still think of women as property, to be told what to do with their
uteruses, to be impregnated at will and kept on a short leash.
Why
is this allowed to go on? Kindly turn your attention to the angry people on the
radio and television who bleat about how the government is trampling on their
freedoms. It’s a lie, a vicious lie born of greed and desperation. The
government has exactly as much power as we – you and I – give it, and not one
whit more. President Obama isn’t the death of freedom; he’s the next step on a
journey that began in 1776 when a handful of people signed a little declaration
against tyranny. That Declaration and the Constitution were meant to be the
beginning of the American conversation, not the end. The Founding Fathers weren’t
looking back to the old ways; they were looking forward to new opportunities.
You,
today’s generation, are less restricted by the shackles of bigotry and misogyny
and tribal labels than your ancestors. Or at least you should be. And if you’re
not, if you long for those good old days when women only spoke when spoken to,
and non-whites were relegated to the back of the bus, and poor people just
suffered quietly in their shacks down by the river, then fuck you. You don’t
get the benefit of the doubt. This is the twenty-first century. Grow up or shut
up, but either way this country is progressing forward.
