Disjointed Entry 2

So...I took a break from a bit of heavy reading to check the news...and like a fool, I clicked onto photos from a protest in Russia where 9,000 police were deployed in combat camouflage uniforms to stop protesters at a banned Anti-Putin rally. I can't really explain what I felt as I clicked through them: the first showing students with some sort of red smoke flares, the second a street teaming with flags and people, the third a better shot of the second, the fourth shows a column of Russian police in combat camouflage storming down a street, the fifth shows a middle aged woman waving a copy of the Russian Constitution at soldiers, the sixth shows the police wading into protesters with what appears to be a mother trying to shield her daughter in the foreground, the seventh shows a student futilely trying to keep his grasp on a Russian flag as he's forced into a police vehicle, the eighth shows Chess champion Gary Kasparov throwing up his arms at the front of a crowd as police encircle them, and the final photo is quite possibly one of the most chilling, the herding and arrest of journalists.

These people for the most part are not dangerous dissidents, they are not traitors. These are people who are upset that the President of their "Democracy" has almost total control over the media and is very much enforcing an authoritarian regime the likes of which was cast off in 1991. They simply want to express their freedom, to do more than taste the fruits of democracy.

Now change to the United States of America. We are not a united nation. The current administration has done as I think it believes is best...and as a result, our service men and women are dying; Iraqi civilians are dying in droves.

We like to talk about the indomitable American spirit. Have we seen it? A small percentage of eligible Americans voted in the last elections, and even in the important 2004 elections. Iraqis showed up in huge numbers, dwarfing ours by far in percentage, and at a far greater risk from groups that were threatening to kill anyone with the inked thumb of a person who voted. Now in Russia, we can see people voicing their opinions, marching in peaceful protest, knowing full well the fate that awaits them for expressing this opinion.

We are a fallen race...humanity. Yet, we continue, to paraphrase Tennyson, to strive, to seek, and not to yield. We in democracy have tasted a freedom that we wish to continue to consume, one that apparently is worth brutalization and possible death. Those who are Christian have also tasted a type of freedom we cannot flee, Grace...and it is that Grace that has allowed people to struggle against the seemingly impossible, to overcome that which has appeared insurmountable, that has allowed people to stare directly into the face of death and accept their fate with a simple nod of the head, or, preaching their beliefs until the moment of death.

Freedom. Grace. An eternity of difference, but close enough it seems in this world. Fallen as we are, there is always the hope for redemption.