On this Halloween’s eve, in a country perched on the brink of salvation or of oblivion, as my brilliant daughter prepares to go home from a hard day’s work to have a Halloween party one day early with her college student friends—like too many full-time college students these days, her friends are all working tomorrow night—I breathe, steel myself and summon my resolve. We’re all doing the same here in America and on Earth; I can feel it in the air like when the wind gets sucked out of your lungs as the floor drops away in the fun-house centrifuge. Everyone’s inhaling, leaving a vacuum of breathless expectancy in America, and around the world. Never before has the whole planet been so keyed-in to a presidential race here. We all know why.

We’ve come a long way in my fifty years, we Americans, and we’ve improved some, but we’ve also allowed ourselves to take some gloriously wrong turns—wrong turns that our children, and theirs, will be paying for. We’ve allowed ourselves too much complacency when we regard what our leaders have been getting away with: The crimes against humanity and the international community just to line their pockets; the tampering with the Constitution, the politicizing of the High Court, and of the Department of Justice. This complacency is not what Americans are revered for; this is not the American public—Right nor Left—that I was raised to be so proud of, though I’m still proud of America.

And I say, enough.

Evil is what happens when good people do nothing. America has plenty of good people… a vast majority, in fact. So let’s unite, already, and do something.

I’ve always attached a reasonably high regard to the Baby Boomers; we accomplished so much in the 1960’s for civil rights. We elevated the mean level of public awareness—for a year or two—and changed the whole current of American thought. We hit the streets and voiced outrage, not apathy, and shat out Nixon and his goons like the disease-carrying turds that they were. We also brought about a musical revolution and pioneered lots of cool technical stuff; ideas upon the shoulders of which we all now build other, further, loftier ideas, everywhere on Earth, and will for all generations to come.

On this eve, though, nearing an election more fraught than any before it with the potential for victory or failure to save the future of not only America but of the planet that America tends to lead, I’m reminded of all that we’ve screwed up. Reminded of all that we’ll leave as a twisted, dangerous legacy to our children if we fail to unify America, and bring about a fundamental change in Her direction.

Republican, Democrat, Green, Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, whatever your race, religion, orientation, level of education or level of health, listen to me: THIS IS OUR CHANCE. Please join with me in saying, “ENOUGH!”

That we’ve allowed ourselves to lay in a burning house for too long HAS to be something that we all are aware of; it has to be. We all knew, every one of us, that we’d arrive here in wars over oil if we didn’t change the road we’re on. We knew this decades ago. Hell, even I knew it in the early seventies, and I was just a kid. We knew of the need for other, more sustainable and less poisonous sources of energy. Every one of us has always known that. Yet we’ve allowed ourselves collectively, as a nation, to repeatedly buy into the oil-in-charge-of-Washington model that got us here, where we all knew we’d end up. Well, we got what we asked for: WE’RE HERE.

ENOUGH, ALREADY!

That we cannot afford to stay on this road should be obvious to all… it’s obvious to our children, and they’re just kids. It’s their future, not ours. Their country, not ours. Their expense, not ours. Their health, not ours. Their planet—and not, going forward—ours.

We owe some accountability to our children in choosing a leader based on cold hard facts, for once. Based upon realism, pragmatism and upon the issues… not on the outrageous BS machine of the US corporate news agencies, nor along party lines, nor race lines, nor simply out of a lack of awareness of these issues… nor from simple apathy, nor a failure to believe in the electoral process. It is, after all, what We The People make of it. I hope our children know that too.

We owe it to our children to choose our president according to who will put us upon the road WE ALL KNOW we need to be taking.

We owe it to our children and their world to not be ignorant, but to be researched. We owe it to them to not stay on this road with yet another four years of money-hungry, oil-crony administration. To not dig ourselves deeper into debt with China (an anti-human rights, anti-environment country), to buy oil from Middle-Eastern countries. We owe it to our kids, not just ourselves, to believe that change, REAL CHANGE, is truly possible, and that more war is not the answer. We owe it to the next generation of us to vote as if the emergency is NOW, because it is.

This is the fork in the road, everyone: RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. Now is the time for all Americans to stand up and say, “ENOUGH!”

As Americans, we don’t all have the same ideals, nor the same beliefs… but we all have the same interests and needs. We need better schools, not more ignorance. We need to lead the alternative fuel technology revolution, not follow it. We need to resume our role as the world’s conscience, not her bullies. We need to focus our military on Bin Laden and Al Qaida, et al—not another war in Iran or another hundred years in Iraq. We all need to create a better future for our children, not a bleak landscape of smoldering shreds of what was the American Constitution.

Redneck, Bleeding Heart Liberal, Veteran, Evangelist, Black, Latino, Native, Blue Collar, Doctorate, Artist, Educator, Fisherman, Dog-Trainer, Scientist, Preacher and Trucker: We ALL need ALL of these things; our common interests vastly outweigh our differences. So please, let us all join together in the name of shared interests and needs, in the name of our children’s future, and as one-time moral leaders among nations on planet Earth… say it with me:

“ENOUGH!!!”

I’ll say it again: We owe it to our children to choose our president according to who will put us upon the road WE ALL KNOW we need to be taking.

Don’t make this another wrong turn, America.

Unite, and vote for Barack.

Thank you.

A fellow patriot

PS: Take a moment, and watch this video… it has nothing to do with Barack, but it has everything to do with everything. It’ll put your heart in the right place, whoever you are.