I always tried to approach politics with the understanding that if I intend to genuinely care about this stuff I have to be ready to have my heart broken… repeatedly. I still feel that way, but it’s never been this difficult before. Maybe it’s because there hasn’t been a Democrat in the Whitehouse in my adult life and it takes the Republicans being out of power to appreciate how truly fucking insane they are. Pundits and conservatives talk about these watered down, milk toast, conservative, corporate fucking Democrats like they are Chairman Mao, Stalin, and Hitler all rolled into one. Meanwhile I sit here hoping and praying for just one strong, intelligent, capable, true liberal to find himself in even a modest position of influence. Is this really where we are now?
I remember catching my first whiff of conservative rot during the presidential campaign when the cons broke out the “be afraid of liberals” marketing. I just kept thinking, “Really? Are they talking about the far left Hillary Clinton?” “Do they even know what the DLC is?” “Are these people serious?” To answer my own question, yes, they are serious. They are also ignorant, misguided, generally stupid, and wrong about almost everything, but they are dead fucking serious. So what are you supposed to do when people just don’t care about the facts? What are you supposed to do when the fundamental foundation of conservative ideology (me first, fuck everyone else) bubbles up to the surface and spills out into our political discourse like bloody, rancid, boiling shit? I wish I knew, I just keep reading, keep correcting people when I hear nonsense, I call my Senators and Congressman, I go to meetings, I write letters to the editor, hoping that in aggregate all of that will make some kind of difference. But I still feel so helpless, like I’m staring down a bunch of angry villagers with torches and pitchforks trying to hold them at bay with line graphs and pie charts. *sigh*
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