At some point, won’t you be forced to face the fact that, even if you are the perfect patriot, fortified with all wisdom and diligence, the corruption in your own party runs so deep and wide as to reduce your influence in it to something nearing one big, well-intentioned zero?
For starters, you will likely make too much of the encouragement you’ll find in the occasional like-minded soul who comes your way. You’ll overestimate the power of your confederacy, and the likelihood of your activist plans succeeding. And if you’re like most, you’ll make that mistake that is so very hard to admit to―the mistake of hacking fecklessly at the branches of evil, rather than at its root.
You simply must understand that you are operating without the luxury of seeing what will have become of your life’s efforts in the long run. So ask yourself this: If you had 50 more years left here to work at it, is what you’re getting done for the cause this year, when multiplied by 50, anywhere near the difference you hope to make in your lifetime?
If not, don’t fool yourself. Millions do this very thing, but don’t you fall for it yourself. If it’s not working, won’t wait a lifetime to figure it out. Do the math now! And then figure out what would really have to be done to make the difference that needs making.
What I’m afraid you will discover, friend, is that the need is so great as to test your resolve―and that of every American―to give what all needs giving to that end. It would be easier to keep pretending that it’ll all be OK, somehow or other. It would be easier to revert to believing in Santa Claus than to face the ugly reality of the day, and how great and relentless is this mess we are in.
I cannot tell you exactly what the future will bring, but I can tell you that it will test our souls, and perhaps even by fire, where so far, we have already long been failing the gentler test of principle. I doubt there is any efficacious escape from discomfort in this world―whether from the daily discomforts of due diligence, or from the life-despairing discomforts of ruin and war that come from avoiding the former for generations at a time. But mark my words: reality will have its cold say.
Again.
