I wanted to start a thread separate from the Rush Limbaugh thread to discuss this subject, because for me, it isn't about Rush Limbaugh, but Paul Wellstone.

For the past month and a half or so, I have been struggling with my own personal need for healing the wounds ripped open by the neo-cons in the wake of Paul Wellstone's death a year ago. Being a native Minnesotan and life long activist who worked on many of the same issues with Wellstone and many others on the radical left here in Minnesota and throughout the nation and world, I felt personally savaged by the media and political establishment's rape and assault on the Wellstone family survivors, and the memory of the Wellstones and the other people who were killed in the plane crash. I will never forget the horrendous treatment the broader community of people coming together to greive, in our time of greatest vulnerability, received from both the local and national media and political establishment.

It is hard to describe how deeply wounded so many of us were by that soulless, vengeful savagery. So one year on, a lot of us are trying to come to grips with our need to heal those wounds and move on. Paul Wellstone never suggested that we not view the neo-cons as our enemies--he was always very clear about the allies/enemies thing. But one reason why Wellstone was begrudgingly admired by a handful of his enemies, was because of his integrity--especially his integrity as a warrior of the radical left. He didn't have to preach family values to others, because he lived them. His marriage and his family are a living testament of Paul Wellstone's values. And so that is where I looked for solace and healing when, over the past weeks, strong grieving emotions for the Wellstones and their legacy would occassionally overtake me in a private moment of reflection.

The one thing that has saved me from becoming bitter and cynical about the Rush Limbaughs and neo-cons of this world, is the absolute certainty of the knowledge that it is always, always too easy to hate, and too easy to seek revenge. Yet, I am not much of a believer in forgiveness as the ultimate solution either.

At the end of the day, I don't want to mirror or echo the hate, the venality, the greed, etc. of the neo-cons and their charlatan media whore champions. Which only leaves one way to work towards healing the wounds in me--to work very hard on digging deeper within myself to find the loving compassion I know lies beneath the hurt and betrayal, and to struggle with all my might to maintain whatever amount of personal integrity I have.

The only way I know of doing that is to let Rush Limbaugh be Rush Limbaugh, and the neo-cons be the neo-cons. I know we won't ever defeat them once and for all, because evil is always present in this world. The only reasonable, IMO, thing we can do is our best to struggle against it, and stand up and work for what we believe in.

I have no doubt that we are living through some very dark times right now--through yet another era of graft, greed, hate, and corruption. I know the world will not always be this way, which does make it a little easier to continue struggling against all these things I must oppose with every fiber of my being, because to do otherwise, including jumping on the vengeance bandwagon, would be a betrayal of who I am, not who the Rush Limbaughs of this world are.

Rant mode off.