Since becoming aware as a child I have often wondered if had I lived along the Boston-Concord Highway in Massachusetts roughly 239 years ago… whether I would have taken up my gun and head to Lexington? Or if I would sit and let others do it for me…

Pondering this as an idealistic youngster, I would certainly have gone and fought.  But as a mature, responsible individual I have questioned that automatic reaction….. It appears ones level of action depends on what one has to lose.  Being young, there is no lost investment one puts at risk. Being older, there is.

Today when we sit back, we know how that history played out.  That clouds our judgment: “Oh sure” we’d say, “I’d have grabbed my gun and stood in that square.” but we say that knowing full well how the British lost and the Royalists were run off to Canada… However, to those at that time, there appeared a greater chance for the opposite to occur.  Back then, Britain was the United States of today….

How could some dirt farmers overwhelm the world’s greatest army?  Fortunately for us today, they didn’t think like that or didn’t care, and in that there is the lesson for today.

As George Washington was hounded, as was Andrew Jackson, as was Abraham Lincoln, we living today have systematically against all facts and evidence to the contrary, been repeatedly told our current leader is an incredible disaster waiting to happen.  We have waited 6 years with the same repeating messages and yet so far things keep improving, getting better and better.

It is time we fire the messengers.  The lying messengers.

Like those Massachusetts’ farmers we too have two choices to make.  We can stay with what has been broken, and cling to the fact that it is not yet as broken as it could be, or…. we can throw our hearts behind the possibility of achieving real change,  betterment for our children, and a future brighter than our dreams can imagine upon looking through the reality of today…

Every lie so far told, each intended to scare us away from not achieving that dream we hold for ourselves (instead to accept theirs), has so far been false. Health care CAN be effectively controlled.  We CAN get Osama Bin Ladin. We CAN rebuild America’s auto industry. We CAN negotiate with Russia, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Israel, China and not have to go on a national alert as does North Korea does every time it faces an internal domestic crises.  We CAN stop Ebola from spreading here.  We didn’t have a crises in Benghazi. We didn’t have malpractice in the IRS.  We CAN raise taxes on our top earners and grow jobs faster than we could with tax cuts.  We CAN have gas prices at $2.84 a gallon for unleaded.  We CAN have people in love with each other, marry for life without the world caving in. WE CAN grow jobs at rates over 200,000 per month.  We CAN have the stock market earn rates over 30% per year….

Compare that to their alternative?  We could take 25 million Americans off  their health insurance. We could shut down our government, costing America another $25 billion of lost economic activity. We could again tax the middle class with user fees to pay for the tax cuts the top 1% can simply get for asking. We could make seniors pay more for their medical care and hospital visits,  and cut Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals. We could make Social Security pay half of what seniors currently receive.  We could legalize paying less, not more to employees.  We could privatize education by firing all teachers and rehiring them at reduced wages, making teaching a minimum wage job. What gets done to teachers then gets continued throughout the entire middle class.

We can stay with what has been torn down and remained broken since Republicans took over in 2000….. OR we can throw our hearts behind at least the possibility of change…. One party does absolutely nothing, except pass tax cuts for the one percent.  The other party vetoes those tax cuts, and tries to negotiate and offer compromises that at least push necessary legislation forward…

These House Republicans have created the least productive Congress ever across the history of the United States of America.  Even the cantankerous Senate has responded responsibly in bipartisan fashion to pass and send important critical issues into the House… only to see them languish, never to even be voted up or down… because if they were,  the votes are there to pass them.

So are you going to vote this year? Are you actually going to get up off your ass, head to the poll, wait in line to cast a vote for a better future, knowing full well that if you don’t, things will continue to get worse?  Or, …are you going to say… “it doesn’t matter whether I vote or not. The powerful will always get their way anyway. ”

You see?  You’ve been put in the exact same position as those boys and young men 239 years ago… Whatever level of action you decide to take, mirrors the level they had to ponder and decide, and will be talked about long after you are dead, like that shot heard around the world… THIS election, not 2012, is the one that REALLY matters.  THIS one decides Congress… We’ve seen it for six years; no president can do anything constructive without at least, a functioning Congress ….  Whereas in the past, Congress has sometimes led and the President has been delegated to either sign or veto, this current Republican House is so dysfunctional it can’t even do that.  Therefore this is a do or die election… Whether you always vote in every election, or you hardly ever vote at all…  this is the one your grandchildren will be asking you about…. This one unequivocally decides their future.  Like those boys or men along the Boston-Concord road 239 years ago….the call has gone out;  it is now in your hands.. Do you fight?  Or just let them win.  What will you do?