The stench of racism, hatred, death, fear and weak-kneed politicians is in the air.  We must breathe and so we do.  But when we do breathe, we breathe in all of this rancid stuff and so must determine whether we will retain all or some of these shameful elements.

But it does us no good to determine whether we will retain all, none, or some of them if we have no filter under our control with which to separate and segregate each one.  Once we have done that, we can open the drain valve to those chambers that we want to empty and keep the valves closed on those chambers that contain the things that we want to hold on to or that we simply find too hard to let go of.

Then – when our democratic duty demands it, we can recycle those things that, for whatever reason, we have retained and have reasonable discourse with those who have a different perspective of them and are not likeminded cohorts of the rationale and/or ideals that they embody for us.  This is the way that a democratic society, with all of its flaws, functions; or, at least, it should function this way.

In order for it to even stand a reasonable chance of functioning as it should it must be led by its elected officials.  Herein lies the problem: instead of having strong leaders in place in Washington, we have far too many weak-kneed politicians to whom the word lead is more like kryptonite to their bodies rather than a fire burning in their gut to fulfill their oath and make America the best that she can possibly be.

When challenges arise, they run to the nearest corner seeking a place to hide until things calm down politically.  Then when things do calm down, they slowly and cautiously emerge while making sure that when they do they are in full pander mode.  Just because they say that “this is the way that this town (Washington) is” does not mean that we as voters have to accept this cowardly approach to how they serve their constituencies.

I would not go so far as to say that we are just as much to blame as they are but without doubt we share the blame because we have the ability to do something about how these politicians conduct themselves and yet too many of us do nothing.  We do nothing by way of our failure to register and vote.  If we get registered and regularly vote we can apply pressure to those politicians who we elected to represent us but who instead have become no more than professional panderers.

It is likely that all of us harbor some or all of those things that I mentioned at the opening of this article.  And as members of this democracy we must be willing to hold reasonable discussions about them and make an effort to fix what is broken.  Our elected officials in Washington and at the local and state levels should be initiating and leading these discussions.  We must demand that they do this and hold them accountable if they refuse to step up to the challenge.

The slaughter of the nine innocent people that recently took place while they worshiped in a church in Charleston, South Carolina is completely unacceptable in a civilized society.  This same kind of thing has happened far too many times before and each time, we have simply winked at them.  Although there has been a great outcry from a large majority of Americans regarding these incidents, politicians have played politics, sidestepped the challenge and fallen back on the same old worn out “that’s the way this town is” excuse.  And, as always, we buy into it and allow them to shirk their responsibility.

Enough already!  No excuse exists for politicians and the rest of America to refuse to act now to address this problem.  The sad and unfortunate thing is that this is not going to happen…at least not now.  There will probably be a lot of publicity for a long time about what happened in South Carolina and legislation to begin to correct the problem will be introduced but it will be defeated and we will go right back to what too many of us have come to accept as normal.

But there are too many Americans who have been heartbroken by all of the previously mentioned catastrophes; and each time that these issues have been winked at and efforts to address and correct them have been ignored, the foundation of those who are determined to address and correct them has become larger and stronger.

Although change will not come soon, it will come!  And as Americans we must continue to fight for it.  We must resolve ourselves to realize and accept that we might not live to see the change.  But we must also always continue to be motivated by the fact that it will be our combined efforts down through the generations that will ultimately help to bring it about.  Without us, this change will not happen.  So to assure that it does happen, let’s make sure that we fight for it…beyond our last breath.

Eulus Dennis