Timing is everything

[Mythsaje]

I posted this last night, but thought it was worthy of a repost since it slid into obscurity so quickly.

Or am I wrong?

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"Playing for Keeps"

Life isn't a game. Or, shall we say, it isn't JUST a game. Just like Liberty isn't just a model of Jeep. And the pursuit of Happiness? Well, that's okay unless some asshole with a badge doesn't like your method of doing so. Pursuing happiness in an unapproved manner can get you a nice trip into a cage.

As Americans we have to decide what kind of future we want for our children and our children's children. Whether we want them to live in what amounts to an overheated wasteland, with miles and miles of concrete where forests once stood, with vast warehouses where farmland once stood, or in a world where the wonders of God's Creation (if you believe in such things) are revered rather than despised.

Do we want our children and our children's children to grow up in a world where clashing ideologies soak the earth in rivers of blood, or in a place where humanity trumps ideology and people who believe vastly different things can learn to recognize where they are similar rather than focusing only on where they are different?

America, sometimes known as the world's last remaining superpower, stands on the brink. It can either be a leader in a new kind of future, or the leader in a future in which all the things that matter in this world are driven under booted feet and the heavy treads of the machinery of war.

This isn't about whether some extremist islamic leaders want to spread their own brand of hatred and tyranny across the globe. I'm sure they do. As our own brand of extremists would like to do the same thing, starting here in the good ol' USA.

It's about how the rest of us are going to deal with the threat as it stands, whether we'll oppose it by utilizing our natural gifts of humanity, wisdom, and empathy, or lend it power by trying to oppose it with similar methods that will do nothing but aid it and lend it credence in the eyes and hearts of the undecided.

We can ill afford another crusade. We cannot harbor another war between the Christian Cross and the Moon and Sickle. This time the clash of cultures will not simply drag on for centuries and leave thousands dead, but instead threatens the whole of humanity. We have more pressing concerns. If it is a hundred and thirty in Iraq today, imagine what it will be like in fifty years, with the weight of climate change pressing down on those who live there. Will humans even be able to abide?

We need to seek new sources of energy. We need to reach out into the cosmos, to seek that which should rightfully be our heritage, out there in the Great Beyond. And we need to make our peace not only with ourselves, but with our planet, our Mother Earth.

We do not have the time or the resources to waste in spreading carnage across the globe in some brutal and fruitless war. If we are to survive as a species, we must find a way to bridge the gap, to reach out to those who would call themselves our enemies, and try to find common ground.

If we don't, everything we've gained, everything we have learned, will likely be wiped away and barbarism, the Long Night, will come upon us like the Wrath of God.

"There is no fate but the one we make."

A movie line, perhaps, but true nonetheless. We can, as a civilization, as a culture, choose to spend our energy hurling ourselves against another cultural leviathan, or we can seek another way, one that may give us the option of surviving and moving past our cultural folly into the bright dawn of a new future.

We cannot allow the darkness that exists within us to swallow our potential. We cannot let our savage past consume our future. We cannot sacrifice our children and our children's children to our ancestors.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, else matters. And the only question left is what we're willing to do to change the course of the future.

We MUST confront the bloody-handed villains who hold the reins of power in this country now, for they are nothing more than the ideological counterparts to those they claim to oppose. They are the same, and they are ALL our enemies.

This is not a game. But, yes, we are playing for keeps.