Nancy Gregg: Get Over It

(Dedicated to the family, friends, enemies, and strangers, who insisted I just "get over it")

Get Over It
Nancy Gregg
My Town (posted by Harlan Bennett)

An Excerpt:

I am an American. I will not be dismissed, minimalized or marginalized, especially by hypocrites like Scalia et al, who persist in throwing rocks at my patriotism from inside their glass houses.

I will not be preached to by warmongering pseudo-Christians; I will not be reminded of the importance of family values by people who have no values at all. I will not be lied to, stolen from, manipulated. I will not be assuaged by meaningless rhetoric; I will not be lectured on the topic of honesty by people who wouldn't recognize the truth if it walked up to them on the street and bit them in the
ass.

I will not be condescended to by people who are as immoral as they are greedy and self-serving. I will not be shooed away from the adult dinner table like an ignorant child, while the alleged grown-ups plot the destruction of my own nation, or the nations of others. I will not be told to remain silent in the face of wrongdoing. I will not relinquish a single freedom that is my birthright as an American.

And no, I WILL NOT GET OVER IT.

When my fellow citizens are suffering, I will speak out for them, and stand with them. When disaster strikes, I will not GET OVER IT by going shopping, or attending a birthday party, or catching a ballgame. REAL AMERICANS don't do things like that - and besides, it seems pretty obvious that those jobs are already taken.

REAL AMERICANS do not need to be told how to act, or how to react. We know what needs to be done, and we do it every time. Within minutes of the 9/11 attack, firefighters, police officers, and emergency workers were on the scene. They risked their lives to save others without hesitation. Not one of them walked away in an attempt to GET OVER IT. And dare I say it? Not one of them found it necessary to stop and read The Pet Goat in its entirety before springing into action.

REAL AMERICANS don't condone torture, secret prisons, or rendition. REAL AMERICANS don't look at photographs from Abu Ghraib and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't watch footage of dead Iraqi children on the nightly news and GET OVER IT. REAL AMERICANS don't read about their soldiers being wounded and killed in an ill-disguised attempt to put MONEY into the pockets of the rich and the powerful and GET OVER IT.

This Administration, and the elected officials who support it, have brazenly picked a fight with myself and my fellow citizens. Wrong move, wrong crowd. They obviously don't know who they're up against. You see, real Americans don't GET OVER IT when it's their own country under siege. They don't kneel, they don't bow, they don't yield.

The American people are now standing knee-deep in a foul-smelling liquid. They know what it looks like, what it smells like; they KNOW what it is. So stop telling us it's raining. Stop trotting yourselves out into the public square with your half-truths and your spin. We all know the emperor has no clothes; don't insult our intelligence with grandiose descriptions of his wardrobe.

Entire Rant ;)