Chris Graham: Secession

I totally get the bent toward secession that we’re seeing from the sore-loser set that has cropped up in the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election.

I, myself, am a recovering sore loser – and I had it bad, y’all.

I ran for a seat on Waynesboro City Council a hundred years ago, actually in 2008, and lost, and it was the end of the world.

Seriously, it was. I wanted to move out of town, and on my way out, stop at the border, wipe the dust off my feet and vow never to look back.

In Waynesboro, it’s the do-nuthin’ Republicans that had me gloomin’ and doomin’. Four years later, people across the South are jonesing about the apocalypse because of Democrats that they fancy as socialists.

It’s all a matter of perspective – the gloom and doom, and what to do about it.

Took me a while, but I figured out eventually that the way to fight back was to, well, fight back. I became chairman of the local Democratic Party committee a few weeks after my election loss, and helped boost Democratic turnout in the November 2008 elections to a point where Barack Obama outperformed what John Kerry had done here in 2004 by nearly 1,500 votes, and 15 percent overall.

Then I turned my attention to the proverbial grassroots, serving a term on the board of directors of the local United Way, and aiding several local nonprofits with the development of marketing plans through my small business, Augusta Free Press LLC.

Along the way, we built our business to a point where we make a good living for ourselves by helping doznes of small-business owners make their own good livings with our marketing acumen.

Those Republican do-nuthins on the City Council … they’re still doing nuthin’. And we’re not concerned with them in the slightest. Those of us who want to do something are too busy doing it to be bothered with their inactivity.

So there’s my advice to the wannabe secessionists. Get over yourselves, like I did. The sun will come up tomorrow, or the next day, or at some point in the next four years.

Life is too short to spend it wallowing in misery about what was not meant to be. Use it to make a better tomorrow.