Hold Your Breath For Another Year

Given that Democrats are engaging in a primary over two center-left politicians whose record doesn't have a lot of variance, it's important to recognize that we're one year away from the end of the Bush regime, and anyone - ANYONE - will be a major improvement. The Bush years have been such an embarrassment, created such a culture of lawlessness, that it's driving this record turnout you're seeing all over the country. People are absolutely more engaged with their democracy, though still not at the level of civic engagement that there needs to be. So that's a good by-product of the Bush regime? Not exactly. But it's significant.

Unfortunately, the opportunity created by this criminal enterprise may be missed. We may still be in Iraq; we may be saddled with a Bush-made recession that will be blamed by the conservative noise machine and a compliant media on the Democrats; we may still not be able to overcome Republican obstructionism. It's a moment as hopeful as it is anxious. But it is not a moment for despondency. And this speech, from someone who provides as much anxiety to me as hope, is an example of why we don't need to be despondent, but why we have to put ourselves to work.

For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.

And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.

We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.

Every day, our politics fuels and exploits this kind of division across all races and regions; across gender and party. It is played out on television. It is sensationalized by the media. And last week, it even crept into the campaign for President, with charges and counter-charges that served to obscure the issues instead of illuminating the critical choices we face as a nation.

So let us say that on this day of all days, each of us carries with us the task of changing our hearts and minds. The division, the stereotypes, the scape-goating, the ease with which we blame our plight on others - all of this distracts us from the common challenges we face - war and poverty; injustice and inequality. We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing someone else down. We can no longer afford to traffic in lies or fear or hate. It is the poison that we must purge from our politics; the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late.

If we have the courage to practice what we preach, there is a moment to really repudiate the historic error of modern conservatism and create a working progressive majority. And there's a moment to become better citizens and better humans in the process.