Let's Roll!

Last night on late night talk radio, I heard perhaps the most chilling statement I've ever heard uttered in public.  

After having had a chance to digest that statement, reflect on it, and consider its implications, I have come to a sobering realization:  No matter which candidate you support, no matter who runs in November and no matter who wins, every American who believes at all in the reasons our nation was founded owes an immense, almost incalculable debt of gratitude to Sen. Barack Obama.

I'm a teacher.  Midnight last night was the deadline for getting third-quarter grades entered into the computer grading system.  Like many of you, I've been wasting spending way too much time on election-related matters these past few months, so I was working almost down to the wire to complete my grading.  It was not until about 10:30 PM that I started my 35-minute commute home.

Unlike many of you, I've experienced a recent re-awakening of my inner political junkie, after nearly a decade of dormancy.  So it is only very recently -- having succumbed to the general infatuation with Rachel Maddow and wanting to hear more of her -- that I discovered Air America, NovaM and progressive talk radio in general.  

That was a delightful discovery not only because I could listen to Rachel more often, but because it gives me a way to avoid experiencing withdrawal symptoms when I am in the car and therefore cannot be simultaneously in front of the TV and here on the computer in DKos land, my usual pastimes while I'm at home.  Thankfully I am single and childless (if you don't count my 135 seventh-grade math students), so the only one who suffers from my obsession is myself due to lack of sleep.

Anyway, I have enjoyed listening to Rachel and Randi and Stephanie Miller, and have gotten used to the fact that that voice blaring out during early afternoon actually isn't Rush Limbaugh but Ed Schultz. I have a little more trouble embracing Mike Malloy; he seems to embody some of the things I dislike about right-wing talk radio, but at 10:30 at night he's better than nothing.

So as I was driving home last night, I tuned in to Mike and was pleased to discover that his screed about the Nazi pedophile Pope had apparently run its course.  At one point he had a caller on whom I would view as not necessarily the most astute observer of American politics, although he did have some awareness.  He rambled for quite a few minutes about topics that I can't even recall.  Then Mike asked him, "OK, what's the bottom line?  What do you want to see happen in the November election?"

The man's response was, "I don't think there will be an election in November."  Huh???????  WTF?  He said, "I don't think they will let the election take place."  Wow.  Then Mike said (paraphrased) "I thought that for a while, and I'm still not sure you're wrong.  And obviously the excuse that would be given is national security because of a domestic terrorist attack that occurs before Novermber."

At this point, I've gone from thinking "lunatic lunatic lunatic" to "Well, Terri, look what they've been doing to the Constitution for 7 years.  Is it impossible that they would do this, too?"  And I had to acknowledge that no, it isn't impossible.  

One of the internal struggles I've had over the past couple of years is to remember that just because the America I grew up in was not Nazi Germany doesn't mean that history couldn't repeat itself here. The story of the frog in the test tube in which the temperature is gradually raised to the boiling point is an important cautionary tale about the universality of human nature and the danger of the right incubation conditions for very wrong and dangerous ideas.  My natural tendency is to dismiss dire predictions like the one expressed by the caller as crazy, but I've been tempering that with continual reminders to myself that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

So as much as I wanted to scoff at the idea that the President of the United States -- and even more so some of his henchmen -- could actually decide to block a presidential election in America, the Shining City on the Hill, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, God Bless her, I had to admit in that small part of my mind that was able to overcome the trepidation, that yes, the evidence suggests this could potentially happen.

Oh, my.

So then I started wondering, "Could they pull it off?  Would we let them?"  I didn't hear much more of the radio broadcast, as I spent the rest of the ride home contemplating this question.

And here's where Obama comes in.

I thought about the millions of people who have rallied to his words.  Yes, we can.  We are the change we have been waiting for.  Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.  Not this time.

I thought about the stories of people who have been affected by his campaign.  The retired military officer who stated, in a comment here on DKos, "I would take a bullet for that man."  The lawyer who, after consulting with the Kossack community, decided to quit his job, drive to the Obama campaign headquarters in another state, and try to find his niche in the campaign.  The college student who is eating Ramen for a month so he can increase his donation to Obama's campaign by $20.  The millions like me who, for the first time in our lives, have gotten off our collective asses and become true participants in our political system -- whether through donating, caucusing, phonebanking, GOTV, writing letters to the editor.

Finally, I thought about Todd Beamer.  I imagined the collective might of the American people, confronted with an unthinkable threat to the very foundations of liberty that this country was founded on, raising a cry, millions strong:  "Let's roll!"

And that's when I knew that, whatever happens in November, I have had the unimaginable privilege of being witness to the birth of a new day in America.  I knew that, in the words of Senator Clinton, "Whatever happens, we'll be fine."