I remember a little over a year ago the country was in the middle of the health care debate. Progressives were on the ropes because conservatives used fear of the unknown and inaccurate information to scare the public into thinking helping their fellow citizen was wrong. I remember a number of us thinking that if the American public was going to be so easily swayed maybe they would deserve what horror they got. Quite a number of progressives jumped ship on the President. I had my own crisis of faith.

Some of my friends had either recently returned to voting for the 2008 election or had never voted before. They wanted change, but they forgot we had lived 8 years under Bush. For people like myself it had been a long haul, with Reagan and Bush 1. While we could intellectually process that the President had only been in office less than two years, and the mess he had to clean up was at least 8 years in the making, if not more, we wanted something done and we wanted it done sooner than later.

Well, many of us are paying for taking our eyes off the ball. Despite the cheering of some progressives on a national level, many states were swept by apathy and conservatives gained ground. They campaigned on the catnip of politics; lower taxes and reform. It wasn't until these politicians got into office did the realization happen that lower taxes and reform were for the rich, not the common people.

Yes, there were signs. Arizona had laws passed on immigration that were draconian and other states had questionable laws, but I think people didn't line the items up to see what the whole plan was. Now the election is over and Republican legislators in states are passing intrusive laws. These laws have nothing to do with creating jobs or tax reform. The laws, if anything, favor the rich.

I have seen people who are lashing out at the President again, as if the election of these politicians are his fault. They are looking to him for guidance, for advice. These folks are looking for someone to save them when the power to save is within themselves. We have to stop blaming others for our problems. I know this sounds like a conservative mantra but it's kind of like conservatives who for weeks said we had to go into Libya and remove the leader, then when the President went in they did a 180 degree turn and said the President shouldn't have gone in alone. They hate the President and would rather contradict themselves, hoping others who hate the President will not do a quick search to see they just flip flopped on an issue.

We have to understand the President isn't someone who is going to wave his hands and make things all better. He's not going to be someone who will help out our revenge fantasy. We can't just vote once and figure the world will change in a day or a week. Blacks have had over 400 years of slavery and 50 years of voting rights. We elect a black President and our racial concerns and prejudices are not going to be erased overnight. We have problems on a local, state and national level and we can't just vote once and hope things will change. We have to watch the politicians, hold them accountable for their actions. We have to look past the sound bites to see what they are saying.

We have to use common sense.

That's something that is in short supply today. We want the fast answer, the crime solved in one hour. Life doesn't work that way. Politics is messy. It is backroom dealing, worries about re-elections and greasing palms. Because it isn't pretty doesn't mean we can think of it as beneath us or that it too dirty to look at. We have to. There are people, a few few but very rich and powerful people who don't care about us. They think of us in terms of labor, as cogs in a machine. We aren't human to them, but then again they don't think about humans. They think about profits. They think about money. We are just a process to get to money.

We have to stop thinking in the short-term. We have to stop listening to the words being said by people who only want to manipulate us. We have to research and think for ourselves. This is becoming increasingly difficult as those rich folks want to keep us ignorant. We have to seek out the truth, but use our common sense to clear away the junk thrown at us. We must learn to reason and think again.