Feeling Grateful

While giving thanks can be practiced whether it is truly felt or not, gratefulness cannot. Being thankful is not the same as feeling grateful. The experience of gratefulness is rarely a choice, but is, instead, more often a serendipitous result. We can desire gratefulness with all our hearts and minds and souls, and desire it for others as for ourselves, and it still eludes us. We can try to choose gratefulness, but moving from despair to gratitude during hard times goes against our humanness. Look at the prevalence of mourning, depression, and suicide in a world that yearns for contentedness and gratefulness. We can be surrounded by love, realize a long-held goal, or be financially secure, and not experience gratefulness.

The feeling of gratitude cannot be pretended or forced, often showing up in the middle of tragic suffering. Most people express thanks for a kindness extended, but some people have known terrible cruelty and feel deep gratefulness just for having lived through it. Some people experience thankfulness for good health, but there are those who experience gratitude even though their bodies and minds are wracked with illness. We are thankful for our homes and the food we eat, but some people have a grateful spirit although they are hungry and unsheltered. How can this be? Because gratitude is the human response to the kindnesses, relationships, and greater spirituality experienced during a time of suffering.

Perhaps gratitude is more about finding hope in the face of hopelessness. Many who face death will tell you stories of gratitude for the sheer miracle of a new day. Those who have lost someone say that even though they wish they had appreciated their beloved more deeply, they are grateful for the time they had with their loved one. Those who have been hungry know that bread and milk and rice are sacred manna. The eyes of those we love, a bite of food and a safe home take on new meaning when it is elusive.

It is in response to the elusiveness of gratitude that some people say that gratitude is a gift. But there are those who, despite their best efforts, do not receive this “gift” and live their entire lives in despair. Such a characterization might suggest that God refuses not only their efforts but answers their despair with indifference. At one time I believed God to be indifferent to my own circumstance – visualizing my prayers hitting the ceiling, falling to the floor, and not being heard. In spite of the good intentions of doctors, the downward spiral of my own health eventually required me to stop teaching. This began an inner struggle with guilt because I had to walk away from my career, leaving much undone. Angry with God, family, and friends whom I perceived to have abandoned me, I struggled through a deep depression. But I eventually surrendered to and became grateful for the quiet solitude of my days. As I started to relax, my creative skills returned to me – talents long ago abandoned for the whirl of a busy career. In the new stillness of my days, in my acceptance of my circumstance, I have been able to reconnect to God and to myself. One door closed, many others opened, a sense of gratefulness filled my heart, and I have found a sense of peace even in the midst of adversity.

When so much of our lives is affected by strife, hatred, violence, pain, and suffering, gratefulness sets us free to love wholeheartedly and to discover a fullness of life not found in the material world. The feeling of deep gratefulness allows one to recognize the small gifts that most people take for granted... the profusion of color in a flower garden, with perhaps an emerald green hummingbird dining on nectar... the wonder and splendor of a blue sky speckled with billowy white clouds... the sound of birds greeting the dawn... the sun and shadows dancing on the lawn... the spirit of God, who dwells in the depth of every human heart, whispering in "a still, small voice."

The inner contentment that survives the roller coaster ride of life has its roots deep within ourselves. The source comes from finding and embracing who we are as a person, and accepting circumstances that cannot be changed. Acceptance and peace leads to a sense of gratefulness, which, in turn leads to fullness in life.

Fullness in life follows gratefulness. And there's no reversing the order.

Drop the sour grapes and do a reality check

In trying to explain why Republicans lost the election, John Ziegler, a regular on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes and an outspoken critic of Barack Obama, created a web site, How Obama Got Elected, that says the Democratic senator’s victory was made possible by the news media because it failed to inform voters of Obama’s shortcomings. A survey done by Zogby International and paid for by Zeigler was meant to bolster his argument and be used in his upcoming documentary called “Media Malpractice...How Obama Got Elected.”

Zogby, on a book tour when the contract was reached and the survey conducted, has said he would not have approved the poll in the form it took because the questions were skewed to reflect Zeigler’s prejudices and only Democrats were polled (no Republicans). Nor would Zogby have approved the press release posted on his Web site. “This was not Zogby International’s finest hour,” he said. “Something, somehow, fell through the cracks.”

The theory of conservative Republicans as to why they lost the election is blinded by their prejudices. Anyone can skew questions and twist data to prove their own theories. Republicans like John Ziegler are desperately looking for anyone or anything to blame except for their own failed policies or their sleazy campaign tactics.

The Ayers issue, Palin’s personal issues, McCain’s personal issues, and Obama’s steely political record in Illinois Democratic politics played a small part but were not the main reason why conservatives lost. This election centered on the fundamental direction the U.S. should be taking, both in domestic politics, and in the international arena. The voters voted for the Democratic Party concepts and against the tried, but failed, Republican policies, which McCain/Palin defended.

During the two previous elections the media signed on with Karl Rove and the mightily financed Swift Boater groups causing the Democrats to lose. This time around, the public was once again bombarded with right-wing Swiftboating against Obama. The Republican campaign spent its entirety trying to justify calling Obama a Socialist, Elitist, Celebrity, Terrorist, Muslim, Britney Spears and at one point tried to imply that the Illinois Senator was a danger to children. When McCain was called on some of these ads he cited Obama’s refusal to have more than three debates as justification for slander. The fact of the matter is that Republicans are accustomed to the tactics of Karl Rove being rewarded by success. The American people didn’t fall for the Swiftboating this time, so now they want to blame their loss on the media.

Republicans seem to not be able to honestly own up to the fact that the cultural issues took a back burner because issues of substance such health care, jobs, regulating the financial industry, and ending the Iraq war were more important to the voters. They are so accustomed to their character-assassination obscenities, such as “baby-killer” and “Marxist,” working that they are stunned it did not work this time.

If Ziegler really wants to help the GOP, he needs to abandon this nonsense and start dealing with the issues, the demographics of this lost election, and how the party must change and reform to meet the electability test for a majority of voters in the future. See, for example, the article on this theme by Republican columnist Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post:

“It isn't that culture doesn't matter. It does. But preaching to the choir produces no converts. And shifting demographics suggest that the Republican Party — and conservatism with it — eventually will die out unless religion is returned to the privacy of one's heart where it belongs. Religious conservatives become defensive at any suggestion that they've had something to do with the GOP's erosion. And, though the recent Democratic sweep can be attributed in large part to a referendum on Bush and the failing economy, three long-term trends identified by Emory University's Alan Abramowitz have been devastating to the Republican Party: increasing racial diversity, declining marriage rates and changes in religious beliefs. Suffice it to say, the Republican Party is largely composed of white, married Christians. Anyone watching the two conventions last summer can't have missed the stark differences: One party was brimming with energy, youth, and diversity; the other felt like an annual Depends sales meeting. With the exception of Miss Alaska, of course.”

Republicans should drop the sour grapes and do a reality check.

Hanging up the stethoscope

Why does a doctor hang up her stethoscope and quit? I am not speaking of a doctor who reaches her 60s or 70s and wants to retire. My doctor is in her late 40s, in her prime, who not long ago spent countless hours and large sums of money learning her craft. One who is exceptionally intelligent, has a wonderful manner, and who had a potentially bright career ahead.

This question is on my mind because my family doctor has decided to close her practice. Dr. McKelvy is one of the best doctors I have ever known. She subscribes to the idea that the patient knows her own body better than anyone else, listens carefully as the problem is described, and is not intimidated by a patient who has research in hand. You can see the wheels turning as she carefully thinks over a patient’s problem. Using a holistic approach, she will often prescribe alternative medicines along with traditional.

It took me eight years to find her after my previous doctor of 30 years retired. Having gone through about eight doctors who were only average and did not listen well, I thought I had finally found an excellent doctor who would be available for at least the next 20 years. But she is closing her practice – just at the time when, due to worsening chronic health problems, I really need a very good doctor who can think outside the box because I do not fit neatly in anything learned from a textbook. It will not be easy to find another doctor who listens as well as she does and is so good at getting the diagnosis right the first time. I will greatly miss her.

Why is Dr. McKelvy quitting? She has been practicing medicine for 25 years. When insurance companies turned to the PPO and HMO models, she found herself having to spend more time on paperwork than on patients, trying to run a small business instead of a practice. There was less and less time for individual patients as federal reimbursement cuts force most doctors to pack in more patients during each day. Dr. McKelvy refused to do this, never booking more than one patient per time slot, continuing to spend as much time as necessary for each patient, and refusing to pad her bills with unnecessary charges. (One can see why she would not easily fit into a group practice.)

As she continued her struggle to practice medicine on her own, Dr. McKelvy found she was not making enough money to keep her office open. She is frustrated by how difficult insurance companies have become – overriding her decisions for treatment and substituting a cheaper medicine for the one that, in her professional opinion, was best for a patient. Her training did not include how to run a small business, how to deal with insurance companies or how to cope with the red tape and paperwork generated by government agencies. Since she can no longer make a decent living being the kind of old-fashioned, caring doctor that patients love, she has chosen to walk away.

According to news sources, these days many family doctors are leaving medical practice causing a shortage of primary care doctors. More and more family doctors are abandoning their role as the glue of health care, with fewer young doctors replacing them, and choosing to go into higher paying specialties.

As the costs of running a practice continue to rise, insurance payments for many routine procedures continue to decrease, thanks in a large part to the decreasing payouts from Medicare and Medicaid whose payment structure private insurance companies often emulate. In fact, Medicare and Medicaid are becoming such money losers for physicians that over a third have closed their practices to Medicaid patients and 12 percent have closed their practices to Medicare patients. If we are already short on primary care doctors and a many of those still practicing are declining Medicare and Medicaid, how will we get enough primary care physicians to provide for families without raising payouts to entice and retain these doctors? And if we raise payouts so that doctors can stay in business, the overall costs associated with the healthcare system will increase.

Any new healthcare system that the Obama administration puts in place has to make primary care a reasonable and profitable option for physicians, or our shortfall of family care providers will become massive. In any new plan, even if everyone has some type of insurance, it will do little good if they cannot find a doctor.

Just take a look at the disheartening results from a survey from the Physicians’ Foundation. The study confirmed that there are not enough primary care physicians in the U.S., even though there are plenty of specialty doctors. Here are some of the disturbing findings from 11,950 doctors who responded to the survey:

*94% said the time they’ve devote to non-clinical paperwork in the past three years has increased – with 63% saying the paperwork has meant they spend less time per patient.

*82% said their practices would be “unsustainable” if the new proposed Medicare pay cuts were made law.

*78% believe there is a shortage of primary care docs in the U.S.

*60% would not recommend medicine as a career to young people.

*49% said that over the next three years they plan to reduce the number of patients they see or stop practicing entirely.

*42% said professional morale is either “poor” or “very low.”

Walker Ray, MD, Vice President of The Physicians' Foundation put the results of the survey into context: "At a time when the new Administration and new Congress are talking about ways to expand access to healthcare, the harsh reality is that there might not be enough doctors to handle the increased number of people who might want to see them if they get health insurance. It's as if we're talking about expanding access to higher education without having enough professors to handle the influx of students."

I wish Dr. McKelvy luck. I hope she has not permanently hung up her stethoscope and will find a way to practice medicine again. If she does not, it’s our loss.

The ebbing tide

Economic inequality is growing in the United States, jeopardizing the American Dream of social mobility just as the world enters a recession, said a 30-nation report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released on October 21, 2008. The United States has the third highest inequality and poverty rates in the OECD, after Mexico and Turkey, and the gap has increased rapidly since 2000, the report said. Coincidentally, that is the year that the Bush administration began to govern.

George Bush and the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican party have a unyielding belief in trickle-down economics and therefore did all they could to remove taxes and regulations for the wealthy corporations, including the financial sector. At the same time, they did very little for all other citizens, except for a couple of "stimulus" packages which gave the average family around $600 to $1200 – a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the billions raked in by the CEOs of oil, financial, and pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, the “rising tide” did not lift all boats as promised by Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush. Remember: although the wealthy love trickle-down economics, President George H.W. Bush called it “voodoo economics.”

And just how well did “voodoo economics” work? Rich households in America have become much richer, leaving both middle and poorer income groups behind. This has happened in many countries, but nowhere has this trend been so stark as in the United States. The average income of the richest 10% is $93,000 in purchasing power, the highest level in the OECD. However, the poorest 10% of U.S. citizens have a purchasing power of $5,800 per year – about 20% lower than the average for OECD countries.

The main reason for widening inequality in America is that the distribution of earnings between rich and poor in the United States has widened by 20% since the mid-1980s, more than in most other OECD countries. This is partly because the level of spending on social benefits, such as unemployment benefits, and family benefits, like Medicare, is very low – equivalent to just 9% of household incomes, while the OECD average is 22% of household incomes.

This widening inequality causes a low level of social mobility in the United States. Children of poor parents to be less likely to become rich, much less middle class, than children of rich parents. Wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% control some about 33% of total money in the U.S. The top 10% hold 71% of the wealth. This is just the opposite in countries such as Denmark, Sweden and Australia where social mobility is high due to a low inequality level.

In nearly all countries studied, the gap between rich and everyone else has widened over the last 20 years, even as trade and technological advances have spurred rapid growth in their economies. In a 20-year study of its member countries, the OECD found inequality had increased in 27 of its 30 members as top earners' incomes soared while others' stagnated. Rising inequality threatens social mobility: Children will have great difficulty doing better than their parents; the poor will no longer improve their lot through hard work – in fact, hard work will barely keep their heads above water, if at all.

Why is the gap between rich and poor growing? Wages have been improving for those people who were already well paid, while employment rates have been dropping among less educated people. Also, there are more single-adult and single-family households than ever before.

Who is most affected? Statisticians and economists assess poverty in relation to average incomes. Poverty among young adults and families with children has increased. On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty. In the U.S., the trend is exactly the opposite: Child poverty – that is, children in a household with less than half the median income – has fallen since 1985, from 25% to 20% but poverty rates among the elderly increased from 20 to 23%.

What can be done? In some cases, government policies of taxation and redistribution of income through programs such as Medicare and Social Security have helped to counteract widening inequalities, but this cannot be their only response. Governments must also improve their policies in other areas. Active employment policies are needed to help unemployed people find work. Access to paid employment is key to reducing the risk of poverty, but getting a job does not necessarily mean you are in the clear. The OECD found that over half of all households in poverty have income from work. Therefore, education policies should aim to equip people with the skills they need to find better paying jobs in today’s labor market.

What will happen if the next decade is not one of world growth but of world recession? The widening gap between wealthy households and all other income earners in countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Germany, has potentially ominous consequences if the global financial crisis sparks a long recession. With job losses and home foreclosures skyrocketing, many of these countries now face a deep recession that could last as long as five to ten years.

Oxford University economist Anthony Atkinson said it well:

"If a rising tide didn't lift all boats, how will they be affected by an ebbing tide?"

Bitter fruit

On November 4, an electoral landslide wiped out many of the few remaining Republican moderates in Congress, widening the ideological divisions that have contributed to partisanship and gridlock on Capitol Hill. According to Pew Research, the Grand Old Party’s (GOP) national membership has shrunk to about 27% of the population.

So, what happened? Why did the Republicans lose? There are many reasons, but to name a few: racially tinged character-assassination ads that the majority of the nation saw through, lack of a real plan to help the middle class, different and conflicting messages every day or so, and the Sarah Palin pick. Once Palin was added to the ticket, Christian right leaders climbed on the band wagon and swung into action. They pursued a culture-war strategy focused on hot-button issues such as abortion and gay marriage. To mobilize their base, they also engaged in an ad campaign that played upon intense anger and fear in relation to Obama.

When the Republicans signed off on tactics used by Karl Rove and company, who led them into a harsh “either you’re with us or against us” far-right mindset, there was a lack of compromise, a lack of inclusion, and a lack of tolerance. The Republican base had already subscribed to the belief that government should reflect the views of “real America” which was code for white, Anglo-Saxon, evangelical protestant. Today, although a majority of Americans live in big metropolitan areas, Republicans espouse the belief that “real America” is small-town or rural and, above all, white and aim their election strategy toward that group. It’s called the Southern Strategy.

The Southern Strategy was crafted by Richard Nixon in the hopes of luring the southern white working class away from the Democratic party. He used anti-civil rights rhetoric and racist imagery to achieve this. The 1968 presidential campaign offered the GOP the first opportunity to run the "Southern Strategy." The Southern Strategy worked so well that it has been in continual use by the Republicans since then.

This crisis in the GOP has been building for over 40 years. It goes back to when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Johnson knew that the vestiges of segregation was so entrenched in the South that white southern voters would change to the Republican party once it became clear the Democrats favored black civil rights. He said that the law would cause a generation of Southerners to move to the Republicans. Ever since then, the party has depended upon the Southern strategy of racist rhetoric and fear to stay in power. Subsequent elections proved Johnson right: the South turned Republican.

Since the mid-1990s the GOP became completely dominated by Southerners. In 1994, Newt Gingrich of Georgia ushered in his "Revolution." By 2000, Southern Republicans controlled the House of Representatives with an iron hand under Tom DeLay. From 2000 to 2006 Southern Republican rule was complete: DeLay in the House, Frist in the Senate, and Bush 43 in the driver's seat. Just before the 2006 Congressional election, Republican corruption and connections to Abramoff, a high powered lobbyist, was made public. This allowed the Democrats to win a simple majority in Congress in 2006 – although not enough to be veto-proof or filibuster-proof.

It appears that the Republican party will now become more extreme – leaning ever further to the right. The spectacle of the McCain campaign drove out many Republican moderates and intellectuals -- people like Andrew Sullivan, George Will, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley. This will pose a dilemma for any moderate conservatives that might remain. These moderates had spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them tried to maintain that denial through this election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics grew ever uglier. Now, moderates’ eyes are wide open and they are leaving the party in droves. The number of voters who call themselves Republicans is at a 28-year low of just 27%.

The GOP has exploited race and hot-button social issues for so long that it has whittled away its numbers to the point of becoming a regional party. After losing the presidential election, what remains of the Republican party will become so heavily identified with social and cultural stands -- and so thoroughly right-wing evangelical -- that it will be on the losing side of the demographic changes that are taking place in this country. They will continue to look backwards to what was, instead of embracing the country’s diverse future. They refuse to admit that the nation is becoming more diverse, more tolerant, and more reflective of a 21st Century multicultural society.

The Democrats’ landslide was not only brought about by the Republican use of the Southern Strategy, but also by a majority of the American electorate finally realizing that Republican policies had run the country into the ground. Bush and his gang of neo-cons, who in their zeal to set up a democracy in the Middle East, engineered a foreign policy that so strained the military it undermined America’s ability to finish the war in Afghanistan or be prepared for any other crisis. But the nail in the GOP’s coffin was the total collapse of the tenets of supply-side, trickle-down economics that are at the core of conservative ideology. Wall Street loved the laissez-faire atmosphere that the Republicans in charge of the Securities and Exchange Commission gave them. Wall Street ended up crashing and then begging Congress to shore up their losses with an infusion of hefty amounts of taxpayer cash. The financial system has collapsed to the point that even Alan Greenspan, the preeminent deregulator, now believes the government should stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector through better regulation.

Even with the handwriting so obviously on the wall, the GOP base is in denial, refusing to believe that average Americans would reject their cause. A recent poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that McCain lost “because the mainstream media is biased” and the economic collapse, not because the nation grew weary under the burden of neoconservative policies.

The GOP’s long transformation into the party of the way-too-far right seems likely to accelerate as a result of the McCain defeat. The "values" wing of the Republican party will continue to dominate the Republican primaries so that any future GOP presidential candidate will have to pass the evangelical litmus test. It's a recipe for the party to nominate one Sarah Palin after another – and continue losing – just like in Oregon where the party moved to the right in recent years, nominating cultural conservatives, and losing badly for offices at all levels.

With the Obama campaign turning Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada to the Democratic column, the Republican party is in danger of becoming a permanent minority. Their cultural ideology will keep them relegated to the Deep South and parts of the Mountain West. There are now no Republican congressmen left representing New England and much of the Northeast. In the Northwest, their numbers are shrinking. For a second straight election cycle, not one single incumbent Democratic senator lost his seat in Congress.

Here’s the reality: an Election Day poll by the Center for American Progress and the Campaign for America's Future asked whether Republicans had lost because they were too conservative or not conservative enough. By a 20 point margin, voters chose “too conservative.” Seven out of ten said they wanted the Republicans to work with Obama and “help him achieve his plans.”

What happened in this election was, in the eyes of many political analysts, an inevitable backlash after a decade of Republican rule in Congress, during which many of the leaders came from Southern states, and GOP policies were designed to appeal to the party's extremely conservative elements. What remains of the Republican party will be the hard right subculture that attends rallies where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” while harboring frightening fantasies about Barack Obama’s socialist or Marxist or Islamic roots. It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” These remaining Republican ideologues lean so far to the right that they are unable to abandon their cultural war and move to the middle where they need to be to win elections.

The Southern Strategy has finally born its bitter fruit.

We are one nation

America eventually comes back around to and lives up to its ideals. It is so thrilling to be alive to witness one of those moments. This election was a referendum on the neoconservatism that has guided American politics since the age of Reagan. Indeed, future historians may well view Barack Obama's victory as the end of the age of Reagan and the beginning of something new.

America can justifiably claim that the election outcome was a clear repudiation of conservative economic ideas and absurd claims that a more egalitarian* approach to growth constitutes "socialism." This rejection of far right ideology, the failures of the Bush administration, the shifts in public views on the economy, and the Iraq war have led to this watershed moment.

Unlike Ronald Reagan in 1980, though, Obama didn't run on an ideologically distinct platform. His victory is not a mandate for a new era of neoliberalism. Obama ran on tax cuts. Although he will end our presence in Iraq, he did not campaign on taking U.S. foreign policy in a dramatic new direction – he has been as hawkish as John McCain on Afghanistan. He did not advocate bold new social initiatives. He did not propose a leftist philosophical approach to governing, unless, after living eight years under the Bush philosophy, you consider competence to be revolutionary.

Obama’s win does not represent an embrace of neoliberalism, but rather a repudiation of the Republican Party’s harsh, far-right leaning conservatism. The far right neoconservative rulers and their wealthy friends have been sidelined. Obama will strive to govern from the middle and be everyone’s president.

The president-elect magnanimously reached out to bruised and battered conservatives in his victory address, quoting Abraham Lincoln, "We are not enemies, but friends." If Republicans will accept his extended hand of friendship, we now have an opportunity to rebuild a government tuned to the people – all the people, not just a selected few.

“… this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Abraham Lincoln

We are one nation, under God. We are not enemies. Let’s end the division and work together.

Yes, we can!


*Egalitarian: affirming, promoting, or characterized by belief in equal political, economic, social, and civil rights for all people.

Holding my breath

Our nation is just one day away from the most historic election in our history. It appears that we are about to elect someone who represents everything that the next generation believes in – a more equitable and caring society – and, no, I do not mean socialism. Tomorrow we will find out if America is truly ready to choose a better destiny. Will we stand up and say ‘we can do better’ and provide opportunity for all citizens, not just the wealthy? It appears that the answer is yes. According to the polls, we will wake up on Wednesday with Barack Obama as President-elect of the United States.

And yet, I am holding my breath.

It’s skepticism: a realization that those Republicans who have held power during the last decade or so, have done so by dishonest means such as voter suppression or ‘fixed’ voter software programs on the Diebold machines. It’s a fear that they will somehow steal the election once again; that Obama doesn’t really have a chance. He will have to win by a larger margin than what is being predicted in order to overcome the disenfranchisement of thousands of voters. I fear that the better tomorrow, the tomorrow that Obama promises – a country where all citizens are given access to healthcare, where all students can afford to go to college, where energy independence and cleaning up the environment is not only talked about, but acted on, and where the middle class is given the support they have needed for so long – will be snatched away.

It’s the fear that things will not change – cannot change. Perhaps I am holding my breath because, for those of us who are not wealthy, things have been so difficult for such a long time. It’s the knowledge that the GOP does not care about all citizens, but only those with money – the more money you have, the more they care about you. The rest of us are unimportant except for our taxes that help finance wars and shore up banks. It’s because I know that I pay more taxes, percentage-wise, than my very wealthy friends and family members who have tax shelters and lots of other “deductions.” It’s the fear that an unfair tax system that gives huge breaks to the wealthy and places a heavy burden on the middle class can never be changed.

Maybe it’s the awful pictures of death and abandonment of those too poor to own cars and drive away from Katrina. Maybe it is the recent stories of people losing their homes because they were duped by mortgage brokers who told them they could afford the bigger house, or others who have lost everything because someone in the family got very sick and insurance didn’t pay for much of it, or those who have lost loved ones in an unnecessary war. It is the pain of these failures, and more, that shows just how important tomorrow’s election really is. Maybe this is why I am holding my breath.

But it’s more than that. There is something even more ominous that has me scared. To remain silent would mean to pretend that this is not on the minds of millions of Americans everywhere. In the past there were people like Bobby Kennedy, and his brother, John, who stood for a more caring and equal society, who stood for change, and had their opportunity taken away from them prematurely. There were others, too, like Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, who tried to create a better society, who believed that we are all responsible for our brothers, but paid the price with their lives. I cannot shake this fear that even if Obama wins the election, that something will happen to him. Because he represents change for this country, and a loss of power to the right wing, I am terrified Obama’s chance of leading America to a better place will be taken from him – that several of the haters will get together and take his life, and, in doing so, crush the newly hopeful spirit of this country.

Like John F. Kennedy, Obama will ask our nation to do great things because he believes we can. Given the chance, he will cause many to roll up their sleeves and go to work on rebuilding our infrastructure, designing new ways to meet our energy needs, and creating a more equitable society. Given the chance, he will stand up for the poor and help the middle class get back on its feet. Given the chance, he will stand up for equal rights for all, not because he is a Democrat, but because he is an American, and as Americans we should want nothing less. Given the chance, he will lead us to being a better people. Given the chance, Obama can lead our nation into one of the greatest chapters in its history.

I am holding my breath because Obama’s opportunity to be the leader we so desperately need may be snatched from him and from us.

May God protect him.