Love is Worth It

Democracy Now had a great sequence yesterday on the Gay Rights March in DC, starting with Lt. Dan Choi's speech about coming out, "love is worth it."  He's facing discharge for telling even though he wasn't asked, and his crescendo in DC can be seen on the website:

But when we’re telling the truth about our love, our country slaps us in the face and orders us, “Don’t ask,” and orders us, “Don’t tell.” Well, I am telling you that the era and the time for asking is over. I am not asking anymore! I am telling! I am telling! I am telling! Will you tell with me?

On the show, he talked about coming out to his parents.

Well, when I came back from Iraq, I finally understood what love was when I started a relationship, my very first one. And I didn’t want to lie about that anymore. I didn’t feel that if I respected my parents—and I respect and love them—that that kind of a relationship should be based on anything other than integrity and full disclosure. They should be a part of it.

The principle here is crucial: respect means you tell the truth even or especially when it will produce disagreement and conflict.  The same holds for politics and economics as well: the continuous lying we face as part of the growing orbital divergence of our two economies, finance and everything else, is an exercise of continuous disrespect. It paralyzes us, but only in the short run. As Lt Choi proves, when the paralysis ends, the truth-teller activates not only himself but everyone he or she touches.  That process of upheaval in both love and finance is slowing turning its bow towards the way out of the harbor.