The danger of nodding off after elections

Following the bruising President Barack Obama put on Willard Romney and his GOP minions, I was determined to not replicate my mistakes in 2008. Yes, he won that time, too, but I, like so far too many other supporters kicked back to take a break after our well-earned victory. That was a major mistake. Our President had no visible backing either from his liberal base or the ConservaDem wing of the Democratic caucus.

The rest of us got caught napping when CNBC financial analyst Rick Santelli set off a Tea Party explosion, exploited by big money backers, that set hard-working Americans into an anti-healthcare reform frenzy that masked an ugly, racially-tinged underbelly. The entire episode put these citizens on the wrong side of their own best interests and amplified the nature of their darkest angels.

It was against this tide that I found my voice, no longer willing to simply wave off the virulence as merely crazy talk. Turns out, my countrymen aren't as discerning as I'd assumed. In fact, they're not just ignorant, they wish to become moreso -- railing against education and, in my home state of Texas, slipping into their Republican platform a plank denouncing the teaching of critical reasoning.

The remaining thinking class woke up one day after a 2010 Tea Party rout horrified at what had happened to our country and determined to take back OUR country. To change our tone, our rhetoric, our patriotism. Someone was surrounded alright, as Glenn Beck posited back in 2009, but unfortunately it turned out to be us -- the sober, the sane, the REAL Americans.

I can't speak for anyone else but I can no longer afford my traditional post-electoral Tryptophan-esque stupor. There's work to be done and I've got to wake up and get to it. I will ask for help but if others around me don't feel the same urgency, fine. I'll do it myself. Don't want to, not my personality, but I will go it alone. I'll register voters. I'll start petitions. I'll educate my neighbors. I'll fight draconian Republican measures. Whatever means necessary.

It's time to get busy and move #Forward. I am.