I used to write on this site a lot. My only recced diary, I think, was a tribute to the word “douchebag”, so take anything I have to say with a grain of salt. I used to use humor to capture what I was feeling about John McCain and Sarah Palin. At the time, I thought, Sarah Palin. National Joke. Will our country ever forget the shame of her nomination ?
Well, it looks like we did. In spades.
We turned our first black president into our last thinking president and now we are in “The undiscovered country”. The Hamlet one, not the Star Trek one. Or maybe the Star Trek one, too.
But we didn’t do it on our own. We had help from Russia, who showed us that no matter how much we think we can hate our fellow Americans, there is always more Americans to hate — even if they only exist on some laptop in Minsk.
It is tempting to look at our situation today, and think, “OK, it’s bad, but this will be the beginning of a great awakening. It can’t get worse. This is the absolute nadir.”
But back in 2000, we thought Nader was the nadir. The horror of the Bush years, the logic went, made all the arguments over Gore’s appeal seem so silly. An administration lying the country into a generational war was such a cosmic wedgie in the fabric of our national psyche it would slingshot us into a new millennium of enlightenment.
I guess it started to, but the rubber bands on those briefs snapped somewhere in 2010, and if we want to go forward, we now have to limp along, awkward and desperate — like this metaphor.
But that is why I was so mystified yesterday when the Kennedy announcement set off waves of recriminations among democrats. It’s the Bernie Bros! It’s the DNC! It’s Kos! It’s Jill Stein!
Where is the time machine that people seem to think we have, that can take us back to when any of those arguments would matter? Because I’d like to borrow it and buy some bitcoin.
I get it. You can’t make a Trump supporter regret his vote, or see reason, or feel bad for immigrant children, or use the right “their”, so you yell at a democrat because deep down you know they are capable of analysis and shame, and it feels good to shame somebody.
But feeling good is why Kentucky invented bourbon (well, that, and to make up for inventing Mitch McConnell.
I think Gary Johnson said it best when he posed us all the question, “What is Aleppo?”
Stop beating up other democrats to feel good. It’s not worth it.
And if you’re confused as to who your fellow democrat is, look around you. It’s the guy who lost his job, the mom who might have cancer, the kid with undiagnosed depression. It’s the immigrant whose family just got torn apart, the parents who just lost their son to heroin, the soldier who’s never coming home. Whatever letter they circle in the voting booth, I guarantee that something they need is something you’re fighting for — or should be.
But, if you must post something shitting on your fellow democrats, just leave it in its original Russian. We’re gonna have to learn the language sooner or later.
