The best thing about living in Massachusetts was the hopefulness of it. We were this insular liberal haven audacious enough to believe that we had the right to do anything. Incite a revolution? Yeah, we did that. Harbor fugitive slaves and abolitionists? Did that, too. No other police force ever went on strike to enforce their right to unionize. No other state gave birth to the greatest and most radical educational experiments of the era. (Not the brag, but that IS what Hampshire is.) We provided the nation with its first Catholic president; we provided the country with its first permanent settlements and its first colleges. We were the first state to say no to marriage discrimination against gay couples, to give a more recent example of our aloofness.
It is our aloofness that gives us the ability to do these things -- the constant pressing forward to make life better for everyone. If our government has been corrupt, it has been in the name of the neighborhoods, not for the benefits of the wealthy elite. We don't even buy sports championships. And looking at our sports' teams is an interesting way of looking at our state, too. Everyone hates the Patriots because they were the best. Because Tom Brady was handsome and humble and the best, bravest quarterback of NFL history (so my dad says, at least). They spread lies about the Pats throwing rocky snowballs at other teams and accuse us of corruption -- though it might be argued that every team taped other teams. People on the outside call them arrogant and selfish and mean. People outside Massachusetts call us oblivious and ignorant and narrow-minded. If we are oblivious and ignorant and narrow-minded, is it really such a problem? After all, looking at our history, we have done some pretty incredible things for a country that seems entirely ungrateful. Obviously, we were doing something right by taking more interest in helping out locally than remotely. We've made some radical moves and led the charge on many important battles.
And since the early 20th century, our leaders have been the Kennedys. Well, the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys. I suppose the only way I can describe how I feel about the Kennedys is to say what I said in my Peace Corps application essay (yet to be completed):
My love for the Kennedys goes beyond the love of a constituent for a senator. My love for the Kennedys comes from the fact that they, in their selflessness, refused to fold, refused to surrender to a life of ease simply because the road before them was hard, and the road behind them paved with tragedy. They are gone now, these three astonishing brothers, though their legacy remains. And as they passed the responsibility down, one brother to the next, so Ted has left it to each and every one of us.
And you know as well as I do what they stood for:
"For the fortunate among us, there is a temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success, so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education, but that is not the road that history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger or uncertainty, but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history. All of us will ultimately be judged and as the years pass, we will surely judge ourselves on the effort we have contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which our ideals and goals have shaped that event."
For decades, Ted Kennedy had been our fearless leader, our intrepid lion, and our rock. He lived his life as an act of repentance for one stupid, common, selfish sin. He made his life one of public service though it would have been too easy to retire into his vast fortune and extensive family, to retreat from the public eye and live out his days safely, untouched by the criticism and haunting accusations of the guilt that plagued him. Rather than succumb to his weakness, rather than give in to those who told him his life was forever tainted, he made a genuine effort not salvage it, but to give opportunity to those who would otherwise never have had it. He cared truly and deeply for the people he had sworn to protect and defend in the Senate and he worked tirelessly, even as he died, to ensure that our interests would be at the forefront of everyone's minds. And not just the interests of the wealthy, or the elite, but the interests of people like his great grandfather, who worked the docks and scrounged his way up. People like my father and my mother, who work from six in the morning until midnight every day. He understood that in order to equalize things, someone had to give something up. He gave up his life, his privacy, and his contentedness. All he asked of us was that we follow him as fearlessly as he led us; he begged of us to make the sacrifices necessary to ensure that his efforts would not be in vain and to make sure that someone else, someone less fortunate than myself, had the chance to see a decent doctor or receive a sufficient education. He not only saved lives with the legislation that he helped to pass; he improved them.
But you know all of this already. I know you do.
But then he died and we've been stumbling lost and scared, fragile and uncertain. We were taken advantage of by one savvy campaigner and ruined by one terrible campaigner. We were readily manipulated with promises of wealth and stimulated economies that were stamped with JFK's face -- I ask you what JFK might have said had he seen Scott Brown rape his legacy and then deny him emergency contraceptive. (Perhaps if it had been available, we could have stopped this unholy election.) They say America has swung too far left and that we need to stabilize it, that they voted for him because he represented balance.
Balance? Like the sort of balance our economy has seen? Like the sort of equal distribution of wealth this country is known for? Oh, yes, I understand completely what these upper-middle-class yuppies are thinking. "But universal health care means taking something from me, right?"
I wonder when my beloved Massachusetts traded its soul for a wallet.
They say he represents a smaller government -- the sort of government that won't lead to socialism and won't interfere with my life, that I can work hard and be rewarded. Work hard like my parents and be rewarded like them? No offense to my parents, the hardest workers in the world, but the government doesn't REWARD them. And if by interfere these people mean tell me who I can legally love, or what I am permitted to do with my body, or what pills I'm allowed access to if I am the victim of a violent crime -- then I wonder what they're smoking, because it's probably the same potently illegal stuff the government won't let most people have. And as for Wall Street and the banking world? Well, they're rewarded for ruining our economy with their carelessness, their imaginary numbers and money, their naked short selling, and their selfish pursuit of MOREMOREMORE. They behave as if their jobs, which make no one's life easier and save the life of no one, give them some right to wealth and excess. They call this the American dream.
The American dream is a product of a 1950s ad campaign as invasive and effective as Scott Brown's. The American dream, the real American dream, is what Boston used to mean. The Revolution. The Civil War. The Civil Rights Movement. The ability of people to affect change in their own lives by utilizing their votes and trusting their government to have the best interests of the lowest and the most wretched at its core. America was founded on the belief that we are all equally worth cultivating. That our lives, however blue collar or DIFFERENT or POOR, are worth the same as the men who rule the country, the men who can afford to give more. Our voices are raised in the same chorus of need and worth and just because someone has opportunity to be better than me, does not mean that they are. Just because someone has the opportunity to do what I cannot do because of my circumstances does not mean that I am worth less to my government. That's not socialism; that's democracy. That's what America is supposed to be, what we must aspire to. I am a human being and don't you dare tell me that the American dream is work hard and rewarded. The American dream is live, and be valued. That's what it was at the beginning and what it always will be -- it's just that sometimes we get so blind to it, we get so carried away by our greed and selfishness, and our entitlement and our certainty that we do deserve this because we want it. We don't deserve anything but the opportunity to live. It is the most basic of opportunities and if we get more, we are obligated to do whatever we can to help those who don't have the opportunity to live without our help.
Don't even get me started on the universal health care issue. As Catie Curtis wrote following Rita, "Jesus said, 'Feed the hungry.' Jesus said, 'Help the poor.' 'Take care of each other.' 'Love one another.' People look around: we let them down." That just seems like basic humanity, giving everyone access to affordable health care. It's as basic as housing. And who would say we ought to close our shelters?
If this is truly what the people of Massachusetts want, then it's not my state anymore. It's not the state I fell in love with or the state I consider my beloved home.
Ted's not even cold in his grave and we've betrayed his memory so soon. I've never felt so shattered.
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