OKAY. NOW GET REAL

(A Note to Republicans)

Okay, now get real.
Get real about the grave problems this country needs to address.
Get real in recognizing you have been one of them.
Get real in acknowledging that Obama is not the tyrant you have made him out to be.
Get real in working with him rather than against him.
Get real in owning your part in the plight of the poor and the underprivileged.
Get real in accepting the reality of social security, and of all those programs you have disparaged as "entitlements."
Get real in accepting that basic affordable care is both workable and necessary for millions of your fellow citizens.
Get real in the recognition that our national obsession with gun ownership is detrimental to the health and well-being of thousands of our children.
Get real and find sensible ways to regulate the excesses of the financial industry.
Get real and address the deplorable state of education in this country, particularly among those where it is most needed and most poorly supplied.
Get real and assure that no child in America goes to bed hungry.
Get real about science.
Get real about the reality of climate change and the urgent need to address it, to protect the Earth for our children and our grandchildren.
Get real about the decaying infrastructure, that threatens business as well as individual Americans.
Get real about privacy.
Get real about those who languish without evidence or trial in the dungeons of Guantanamo.
And while you're at it, get real about Cuba.
And get real about the many thousands wrongly held in our own prisons.
And with the death penalty.
Get real about military power, its costs and its limitations.
Get real about the limits of American power in a radically chaining world.
Get real about how your actions are perceived in the rest of the world.
And so much more.
Just get, real, okay?  It's all we ask.