Imaginary Political Speech

It doesn’t have to be this way, always. It doesn’t always have to end in cyclical defeat and half-measures and this feeling of having lost something precious, which is hope. The ideal — the thing we’re striving for — doesn’t always have to leak away into pragmatism: the code word for despair. The powerless — who are the real majority — do not always have to believe the narrative written the powerful: the money and media on the left, right, and center who tell us what to believe. Everyone hopes for a spontaneous revolution in the sentiments of everyday people: we who wake up early for work and go to bed late keeping our lives in order; we who secretly hope that maybe we could do things differently this time — change our vote at the last moment, and for once, just once, vote not out of fear, lethargy, idiocy, greed, but, rather, in the interest of our own inner-hearts: the interest of the community spirit we have lost and are always losing. Just once. Every American secretly dreams that the polls are radically wrong; every American dreams that the pundits shut up, that the advertisements that aim to control our thinking dry up, disappear. The dream is to be left alone with our courageous will-to-change, to successfully resist corporate manipulation and embrace our own capacity for self-reliant, honest politics. It is possible only once we admit it is possible; it is possible only once working people begin to advocate for themselves; it is possible only once the meritocracy, the lottery winners of our society, and those with inherited wealth, the mega-lottery winners, stop pretending like…