Go, Team!

It’s not hard to believe that terror in the form of politics inhabits our collective live daily, both on the national stage and at work, in school and at home. personally, I f*cking hate politics. Life is not chess, and if it is, then I’d rather be a hermit. Oh, wait: I am a hermit.

But even so, hermits can root for their respective teams, right? I’m feeling pretty good watching my team, the Democrat Party, roil up some tasty ass-whuppin’ right ’bout heah. Yeah, it’s no surprise that the Republicans, with the extreme right, and fairly inscrutable, TEA (Taxed Enough Already, if you didn’t know that it is an acronym) Party caucus messing with the reality of compromise that is Washington and everywhere else, for that matter, have shot themselves in the collective foot with not only the Sequester, but with this threat of debt default. As a commenter on Boehner’s Facebook page referred to him, and presumably the rest of the Republican Party, as an “asshat” – and that’s from a Facebook “friend” – it looks like they’ve finally done it. Good for them.

President Obama commented that it’s time to stop “governing by crisis.” Sounds reasonable, right? Yes, because my team are not asshats. Compromise is a necessary thing. If you’re a douche, then you don’t think so, probably. There’s no room at my table for people like you, then.

Without agression, without name calling, without denigration, the Democrat Party moved in solidarity and quietly waited out this latest round of bullsh*t. In NJ, Steve Lonegan, the former mayor of Bogota, (not Columbia, though he might has well have been), where, during his tenure, garnered media attention by attempting to have English be the official language of that city, continued to spout all manner of half-truths until the voters spoke and voted – on a Wednesday, no less, for Corey Booker.

Get a load of Booker: he’s the son of the first two black IBM executives. He went to Stanford and then to Yale Law. Ever study law? I have, but not at Yale. I’m sure that none of the other Brooklyn Law students I went to school with ever had designs on Yale, either. Why? Because we didn’t go to Stanford. You know why? Because although we we pretty smart, we weren’t disciplined AND smart enough to get into Stanford and THEN get into Yale Law. Go ahead – try to get in: I’ll wait.

Since you’re still here, I will assume that your application was not accepted. Therefore, I will continue. Booker then went on to becaome a Rhodes scholar and thenm rather than join a top law firm on Wall Street, this suburban kid of means and family went to the inner city to give back, to help. He was, as Jews would say, a real mensch.

As Mayor of Newark, NJ, a truly terrible place to live, he not only turned around the crime rate, but also secured private funding, in the form of a $100 million grant from Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, to help the city’s schools. To me, this is the kind of person who epitomises the nature of the Democrat: a sense of belonging to the world or at least something more than Manhattans after golf at the country club.

This is why it’s so astounding that so many low-information citizens seem to think that the Republican Party is theirs. Grover Norquist’s ability to hold the collective Republican Party’s feet to the fire with the pledge that each member resist any form of tax or spending increase means that these members are bound to vote against the interests of their constituents. Think about it – new roads, a necessity in a country full of crumbling infrastructure, is necessary to commerce and makes for new jobs right at home. But how do those roads, meant for the public benefit, get built? Money, yes? And where does that money come from? Please don’t say ‘the private sector’ because that’s a) silly, since roads are public conveyances and have been since Babylonian times and 2) there’s no money in it, directly, anyway, as could be shown on a profit and loss statement, so why on Earth would the private sector fund publicly-regulated, not-for-profit (directly) projects? Why would the ‘market’ provide health care to those who can’t afford it? Just because? Or is it because you don’t really understand what’s involved and those who do – that is, the politicos who directly profit in the form of money and power and who are, almost to a man, lawyers – understand exactly what’s involved and are playing a shell game with your sorry ass?

So what if a political party decides that it really is a party of the people and that the people who choose to align themselves with the ideals of that party elect a black man as President – twice. And that black man manages to do what my other favorite President, the elegant and foxy Bill Clinton, couldn’t do, that is, enable every American to have access to health insurance. And that same governing party allows the defeat of DOMA, so that there’s less intrusion of government in the lives of people who just want to live and be left alone and to not be penalised for where their hearts take them. Oh, wait: isn’t that a Republican tenet? Less government? More self-determination?

That’s what my team stands for – people, from the Greek ‘demos’, or the ordinary citizens of the city-state in that time. Ordinary, like you and me. That’s why today was an outstanding moment for us ordinary folks. Quietly, resolutely, we waited for the ‘other side’ to come to their sense. They didn’t, and the price they paid is implosion and what they will pay is failure. To be a party of inclusion, you really, really have to include all, even ordinary people like us.

So, rah, rah, go, team, go. This is a great country loaded up with pretty fabulous people of all ilk and stripe. Yes. Yes, we can.

The 'Democrat Soviet' Logo set as the featured image for this post is from the blog, "http://donpublius.blogspot.com/2009/03/end-of-democrat-party-as-we-know-it.html" Make of it what you will.