What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore -
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over -
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

-Langston Hughes

I listen just about every afternoon to AM radio, but also CB radio--that outdated earliest chat-room for big-rig truck drivers and for many nostalgic Midwesterners.  I would assert that you can learn more about where the average American is by hearing conversations on Channel 19 of a CB radio than you do on AM radio shock-jock air, or on blogs, or on a cable TV show.

Plus, truckers typically say whats really on there mind.

The other day, three or four truckers were passing through, and the discussion was about Obama.  One kept saying that Obama was only going to be a one term President; that he had lost white people, even those who months before had elected him--because he had shown true colors in recent months.  Using ACORN, the whole racial "Beer Summit" fiasco, and most of all--the proposed Health Care changes, the three drivers agreed that Obama was a Communist, a racist, and probably a Muslim. 

"He is worse than Hitler," said one driver, "and you know what should've happened there..." he said matter of factly.  The other driver chimed in, "Yep, that M----- F----- won't get no second term."  A new voice keyed up his mike and said, "If this Health Care thing passes, that N----- is as good as dead."  Two or three mikes quickly keyed up and agreed, one saying, "You know there are people in this country who won't stand for this.  They won't let him f--- this country up.  Alot of 'em military that served, they 'aint gonna let this country become like Russia.  They'd do the patriotic thing and just shoot the bastard."

This went on for awhile, not in quiet paranoid whispers, but in, as stated above, matter of fact confidence and acceptance.  No one that I could hear disagreed.  Usually the airwaves on the CB is a rowdy, uncivil and disorderly set of cursing, jokes, and local info, all stepping over each other.  But this day the channel was orderly, patient, and respectful.  No doubt many a Vigilance Committee a hundred years ago was such.

I couldn't take much more, and I shut the damn thing off.  I turned on my car radio, and "El Rushbo" was basically touching on a similar subject, albeit in hushed tones, and clothing the fiery thought in implicit words.

The other night, I wondered aloud whether something is going to happen, regarding the recent culture of anger in America, but involving the issue of terror.  I forgot in that discussion that the first real terrorists ito attack inside the United States were the Ku Klux Klan.

Tonight, I realize that it is not only racism that is confronting us, nor is it an act of terrorism that I fear most.

I must speak candidly on a subject I admittedly am loathe to discuss, or mention, or allude to.

Something happened in this country in the last 6 months.  I can't put my finger on it, but something has happened. 

The people who were once overjoyed, hopeful, wiping tears from their eyes in jubilation have disappeared.  The movement has wavered.  The brotherly love, as after 9/11, has dissipated.

The overwhelming feeling of overcoming some racial crossroads has largely left; the naive notion of bipartisanship has been denied.  Passion has been redefined.  A new path, a new momentum is taking shape.  

What has replaced it has become anger, fear, and most of all, zeal.  A zealot is someone committed so much to a cause or principle, that they become extremist, militant, fanatical.  Hitler, Stalin, Rasputin--the tyrants all are ascribed with these characteristics.

But just as true, John Wilkes Booth was such a person, as was John Brown, as were all American political assassins.  Such is the same with any terrorist, whether they be hatching evil in a cave in Pakistan, or sitting in a truckstop in Shreveport.  Their aims are the same; Righting some imaginary or real injustice, by any means necessary.

I hate to sound nonchalant, or reduce such a sensitive human issue with trivial data, but it must be said that statistically it is more likely that a political assassination happens sometime in the next two years in the United States than a Terrorist attack, a war, or--for that matter--another term for a black man as President.  There is no falseness in that statement; statistically, it is so. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_assassination_attempts

Whether we face it or not, assassination is a constant presence in our history. So why do we avoid this subject?  Why do we treat it as the elephant in the room, pretending if we never say it, it cannot happen? 

I wish no reality as such.  I would rather cut off my left hand than loose this President to a madman.  I take no pleasure in furthering this discourse.  It is a poor subject. 

But, it is there.  The chips are falling, and we all hear it every day, and if we do not hear it, we feel it.    

There are people in this country, our own countrymen, who want the first African-American dead.  And, some of them as stated above, openly say so. 

Because he is a black man.  Because he wants to change things.  Because he is so successful.  They fear what he represents. 

Norman Mailer had a theory that Lee Harvey Oswald--an avowed lefty--killed JFK, a man Oswald admired, not because he disagreed with him, hated him, nor feared the changes in freedom, civil rights, or peace that Kennedy represented.  Oswald despised instead the system, Capitalism, of the United States.  Since JFK--the head of the system--was so popular, so charming, so moral--he was therefore in the way for an evil system that had to self-destruct.  In other words, he was too good.  He was too effective.  As a result, he must be removed for proper evolution to take course; for Capitalism to fall.

Norman Mailer is a good author, but it is just a theory.  But what is curious is how it rings true today. 

This is exactly what is to be heard on both the CB radio on any given day, as well as on the EIB network, on FOX, and out of the mouths of Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity.  They realize the dilemma, and clothe their fiery thoughts in the way a poet does.  But people who listen, who feel--get the message.  If Obama too was seen too effective, too articulate, too successful--any opponent with an ounce of zeal would shed no tears if Obama went away.  Forever.  After all, He stands in the way of natural selection.  He wants to make himself King of America.  It is only fitting and proper for someone to right this wrong, so our country won't fail, so our nation won't fall.  

Such was said of Lincoln, by Booth.

Such excuses arent new.  John Brown said that "the crimes of this guilty land" would only be purged away with blood.  He did the equivalent of taking over a military base in 1859, and let his sons be killed for his cause.  He too was a zealot.  

Lincoln won the Civil War, thus--was too successful.  One side was happy.  Others were angry, fearful, hateful.  One man among them determined that the country owed all of it's troubles to Lincoln, and that he had then done the heroic thing and saved us Lincoln's tyranny.

I hear these movements echoed in the stream of voices of today.  I hear the cry of tyranny in every anti-Obama attack.  It is not racism alone.  It is not ignorance either.  It is the cry of "I want my country back!"  "Obama is a Communist!"  And, "Bury ObamaCare with Kennedy'

This whole topic of conversation here no doubt will be met with scorn, with a harsh "how dare you", as if I were the one printing large placards with Obama wearing Hitler's mustache.  As if I were the one showing up at town hall's where Obama is speaking with a gun.  As if I wanted to cleanse the country with blood.

I am not the one.

It is the ones who say "I want Obama to Fail."  That compare him to Socialists, Communists, Nazis, and Terrorists.  Well?  How have we dealt with those people?  These comparisons lead the person to see him as foreign, as tyrannical, as treasonous. 

"He won't make it to another term," they say--and not through some political process, but through some act of God.  It is they who propel my thoughts and words onto this horrifying prospect, and convince me, really convince me--that all it takes is one person who wants to be a hero. 

There is a climate of hate out there not unlike the one that on the morning of November 22, 1963 prompted someone to run a full page ad in the Dallas Morning News, showing a picture of JFK, with the words "WANTED FOR TREASON."  The man that took a rifle and shot him that morning did not put it there--but he felt the opportunity meet him, somehow.  He felt it necessary, somehow.  

If you are an Obama supporter, I ask you to pray, keep your eyes open, keep your eyes on the prize, and hold on. 

If you are an Obama opponent, tend to your own house.  The fires being lit all over this country stinks of familiar moments in our history; when one Senator from South Carolina took his cane and beat another abolitionist Senator nearly to death on the Senate Floor; of another Senator flaming hysteria and paranoia about the backgrounds and allegiance of other members of the government, and of men who rose to the highest office to change things, and were struck down for their vision. 

So this blog is not for the person whose first reaction is, "Joe, why talk about such a thing?"  (As if to say, "Why give them ideas?")

I am speaking to the people I have known all too well.  The people who are malcontent, angry, passionate, and zealous.  The militant, and the patriotic.  The ones who feel that voices and ballots are not sufficient.  The disgruntled.  The hopeless.  The people who feel they have lost their country.

Look around, and see and hear and feel the temperature.  Know the road and the direction that this tends.  It is not one of peaceful change nor common good.  Ask yourself, "Whither are we tending?" 

It is a climate that is felt, and though one cannot point to it and say, "therein it lie"--we know what world we live in, and what our history becomes in such a charged climate.  If we don't understand that much, my God, that is truly dangerous. 

The reality is this; that someone will try to defeat Obama.  One way or another.  If not politically, or personally, then there are other means, motives, and opportunities.  As if saying aloud, "Sic Semper Tyrannis."  "Thus always to Tyrants."  It was said after the election that he would not become President; I personally remember hearing the voices saying that a black man will not make it there alive.  It has already been said, promised, that if he succeeds with Health Care, there will be consequences.  I fear someone out there truly means it literally.  How many voices can we not overhear?  How many malcontents are there seeking meaning and purpose, and the will to act to get their country back?  We should have learned by now that all it takes is one.

If some forlorn individual seeks purpose, and belonging, and a cause--perhaps we need to do as Harvey Milk said, and recruit them.  People are, after all, worth saving.

Going back to Norman Mailer, he recounts a tale from a now grown man in Dallas, who was but a boy in November, 1963.  He remembers a day when he was playing outside with a neighbor, a nice man who he would see play with his new baby.  "Are you a good boy?," the man asked him.  He remembers saying no for some reason.  "Well, don't ever be so bad that you hurt someone," the nice man said to him.  He said that man was Lee Harvey Oswald.

It does not have to end like this.  Enough people in this country have fallen for a belief.  In politics, in war, and even in their own office buildings.  Each one of us has to make sure we help elevate the observance of decorum and respect, and assuage the passion and hopelessness and fear that exists, that truly exists, about our President Barack Hussein Obama.  This culture of vitriol must be turned around.  At a time such as this when we are out of work, unsecure, at war, and facing challenges abroad--we should pray for this man, whose responsibility is to preserve, protect, and defend our country and way of life, and all of us.  No one should wish him harm.

 I can remember, not too long ago, when the country faced just as hard times as we have been facing now.  I recall a fear, an anger, an outrage.  But I distinctly recall with fondness the spirit of the time, and the pride in taking part in supporting and healing those who lived through it.  I remember us all seeming to forget pettiness, being kinder, and rallying behind our leader to steer our country through such times.  We honored this event on September 11.

I pray that nothing untoward ever occurs, despite my estimation of the current weather.  I hope I am proven wrong.  It solves nothing to do violence.  We do not want to wake up one more morning--one unassuming day--and anguish over another national tragedy.  We do not want to ask, "My God, why did we let this fester."  "Why didn't I try to ramp down my passion."  "Why did I not speak up; challenge, counsel, alleviate?"  "Why was I ever a part in this?" 

Be aware of your world.  Participate in it.  Understand other points of view.  Speak out, and be part of solutions.  On Jackie Robinson's grave is written the inscription:

A Life Is Unimportant

Except In The Impact It Has

On Other Lives

Know you can make a difference.  

Stress the positive.

Focus on what is possible.

In these things are the antidote.