J. R. Nova

[On the thirtieth of August, 2012, Clint Eastwood stood before the Republican National Convention and gave a speech. I write this at 1:30 in the morning on the thirty-first. I'm tired. I'm not all here. I'll probably read this tomorrow and wonder why I wrote certain parts, and I may regret some of it, but on the flip side you are getting raw and uncut me. Yeah, I edited for typos and I took out some of the bad words, and I rewrote the last paragraph once, but I'm letting the rest of this ride. I think I'm going to need some luck...but I'm not going to be afraid of taking a risk.]


Clint Eastwood stands up, shows us how old he is, tells some funny jokes, then basically says fuck politicians (you know, all those lawyers). This belongs to us.

Democrats call him names.
Republicans clap because they think he's not talking about them.

Then everyone goes out to vote, merrily, merrily, merrily falling off a cliff.

Clint Eastwood is my hero. He's too good to have had to stand up at a GOP rally. They don't deserve him. I don't know what kind of America would be good enough for a man like Clint Eastwood, but it's not the one we have, and it's not the one we're going to have with either of the two identical choices we have coming down the pipeline.

We had Obama, and it's time to try something new, but Romney isn't new. Romney is another champion of the same corporations who fund both parties. They don't care about us, they want us to fight each other, because the more we fight each other, and the longer we're not Americans but are Democrats and Republicans, the longer we'll have to mortgage a nation that belongs to the people, to us.

Clint gets it. The politically inclined don't see it because they're too busy painting the world in colors of "us" and "them" to stop and think that he may have been speaking of the WHOLE system.

I know the kind of America I want. It's not going to be gotten through the political system, through voting, through calling each other names just because we idolize an elephant or a donkey.

The kind of America I want can only be had through compassion, through helping others, through caring about something that doesn't involve tearing someone else down.

Sooner or later the moderates of America are going to have to stand up and tell the extremists to sit down and shut up. While the Left and Right pull us apart, we have families to raise, jobs to work, dreams to reach, pain to suffer. We don't have time for the games the news media, politicians, and their corporations play.

We have to live for ourselves, we have to take care of each other. There is no one else to help us, because we are all there is. You, me, our neighbors, our families, our friends, our co-workers. Even our bosses, and the CEOs of those corporations, and the lawyers and the politicians. Everyone, rich and poor, good and bad, legal and illegal.

How long can we live under the delusion that government will save us? That through government we can have what we want from life?

We are it. We are life. It's the people. Not the institution. It's the people. Not the conflict. It's the people. Not the parade that marches through town every four years to distract us from the real world.

Clint understood this, even as he had to pander to the establishment, to say a few nice things about the businessman running for office so he could use his national stage to say what HE wanted to say, not to the people standing, cheering him on, but to the people watching at home, the people who, instead of going to their Florida hotel rooms, would be waking up and going to work, or waking up and feeding their children and rushing them off to school, or waking up and trying to figure out a way to get their lives back on track.

What can we possibly do?

We can realize and accept that no matter what we do, we have the potential to impact others in profound ways. For better and for worse, everything we say and do, or even think, creates huge waves in life. When we open a door for someone, we change them. When we yell at someone, we change them. We can change someone forever with a simple kind word, or a harsh remark. We can instill in them hope, or we can reinforce their pessimism. It doesn't matter if it's in the real world or on a social network. If it's in person or anonymous.

What we human beings can do to and for each other should never be taken for granted. But as long as we look to man-made institutions for guidance, for help, and not to people themselves, we're never going to get what we want out of life.

We're never going to have security, because we'll always be divided. We'll never have wealth, because we'll never appreciate what we have. We'll never reach our dreams, because we'll only live for ourselves.

When November comes around, please, go and vote. It shows that you care. It shows that you have passion for this country, for this entire world. It doesn't matter which candidate you vote for, or why.

If you don't want to vote, if neither candidate is enough for you, you still show this same passion, you only express it differently.

But no matter what you do in November, don't let that be all you do. Say hello to strangers. Hold doors for people. Answer your telephone politely. Talk about what you love, not just of what you hate.Volunteer if you can. Donate to your favorite causes if you can. Support something, anything, it doesn't even matter what. Share something, give something, be something for someone else.

If enough people do these things, in four years our candidates will be better. In eight years they'll be better still. If we get going and don't stop, we'll change our political system. We'll change our entire government. Not by bashing each other with hateful rhetoric, but by setting positive examples.

Right now we're getting exactly what we have earned. The leaders of our nation reflect the people of our nation. Live in a way that would suggest we deserve more. Be the person you expect your leader to be.

How can you, I, or anyone else expect anything less from ourselves?

We're human beings, after all. We're creative and capable. Why keep playing the same old tired game, with all of the same unfair rules, when we can invent any game we want?