“A Bigger Tent”
This is the text from a presentation I am scheduled to give at 10:30am today to my good friends and fellow resisters at the Palm Desert Greens Democratic Club. -PD Update: It went quite well I do believe. Thank you PDGs!
As many of you know due to my recent medical battles with cancer I have limited my public appearances, including Zoom presentations as part and parcel of my job to be best patient I can be, to stop arguing with my doctors, and try to rest as much as possible giving what is left of my immune system a chance to get in on all the fun and participate in the healing process.
With that said, when I received an email from Charlie Ara of the Palm Desert Greens Democrats, a local democratic club that I have belonged to for almost 10 years, asking if I would reflect, or perhaps lament, upon the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald John Trump, I could not say no. In fact, over these years, when it comes to Charlie Ara and the rank and file of the Palm Desert Greens, it seems I have never been able to say no. So here I am. Ready to do my part.
For I am a believer that all of life is in one way or another political in nature, and that at a minimum, decisions should be made by those who are willing to buy the ticket and take the ride, seatbelts not included.
For my dark money, if politics were a sport, I would analogize it to the great American game of football. Two teams, fighting to reach their own end zone that are I might remind, as far apart on the playing field as they could be.
As with both politics and football, those who know, know the game is not won at the top, by million dollar quarterbacks, running backs and receivers, flashy as they may be, but at the offensive and defensive lines for it is there, where the two teams line up nose to nose and toe to toe where the real battles take place and it is here, in the trenches where the game is ultimately won or lost.
In politics, the team that does the often invisible but hard work, over time, at the local level of voter registration, disseminating truthful and pertinent information to the public often including why we are different and better, than the other guys, followed by getting out the vote, polls to the souls, at the local and community level, but also above the mud, is where groups such as the PDGs fight the good fight and yes, in the final analysis where elections are inevitably won or lost.
This is where the PDGs along with many other fine local organizations in and around the Coachella Valley excel. And we all know, that when democrats vote, we win.
Do we argue and quibble with one another? Of course. We relish nothing more than a good conversation, or fight and to speak our mind, regarding what it is we stand for. If we didn’t I suggest we would not be democrats. For as democrats, we do not adhere to a single party line, policy or agenda. We do not feel the need to vote in lock-step with any single candidate or candidates simply because they have an “R” or a “D” or soon perhaps a “Q” by their name.
Recently, a gang, or mob if you prefer, that I now consider former members of what was once a vibrant and rightfully proud GOP party, indeed, the party of Abraham Lincoln, the party that led us out of the misery and societal degradation of slavery, laid violent siege upon the hallowed halls of the Capitol Building, committing numerous, violent, illegal, and yes, chilling acts of incitement to riot, insurrection, sedition and possibly treason.
The GOP I remember would not have done this. Yet this new breed (or is it in-bred) of slovenly and sanctimonious for no good reason banana republic bunch of maggots, I meant, MAGAts (or did I?) have decided to align their political fortunes with a dangerous, racist, misogynist, homophobic, anti-Semite and overall religiously intolerant demagogue who seeks nothing less than turning the greatest democracy the world has ever known, into a vile, hate filled, dystopia based on nothing more but self-serving lies, with a false narrative, or perhaps even gospel I feel is best described as hating one’s neighbor as the golden rule.
It seems so transparent, doesn’t it? Yet they have heard the words and rhetoric of a false prophet and would be tyrant and have voluntarily decided they have found their golden calf with a political twist that best represents their core beliefs and “alt right lifestyle” or more accurately, code for the open and unrepentant practice of racism.
Let’s call them the MAGA, or Party of Trump for now, keeping in mind this is a group that will follow anyone who continues to feed their cowardly reliance on destructive lies, half-truths, gas lighting, all culminating in a mass delusional comfortably numb state of non-feeling, non-thinking bliss where there is no accountability for one’s own actions and ever if there were, all will be forgiven.
Make no mistake. They are a cult of nihilists. They don’t know what they want or why, and so as with all voids that cannot be filled, the now unsustainable God’s love that was in their hearts now replaced by rage, hatred, fear and soon calcifying in open acts of violence. As they continue to fail, the only thing left to do is to begin the endless list of individual persons or groups who are responsible for their self-inflicted feelings of guilt and grief. In this manner, the pariah becomes the victim. This time around, democrats, any democrats will do.
Over the past few years, four to be exact, you have all been witness to this process and perhaps even felt the sting of their anger. They call us godless because we recognize the wisdom between adhering to the separation of church and state. They vilify us for kicking God out of their schools because we do not believe in prayers in the classroom.
They hate us because we don’t believe in telling anyone, regardless of their gender and sexual preferences who they should and should not love. What they should and should not wear. What they should and should not be. We have all seen, how democratic has become synonymous with socialist with socialism now including a healthy dose of satanic worship and practice.
They call us traitors because we believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everyone. They call us anti-law enforcement because we do not believe anyone, including the police, should have the right to murder minorities, in a manner that can only be described as the pre-judgment of guilt with the remedy of execution, based upon on nothing more than the color of one’s skin.
They detest us because we refuse to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body. I don’t know about you, but these are just some of the reasons why I am so proud of being a member of the democratic party.
Today’s Trump Party calls us a sickness, or at times a disease. They call us radicals because we want to help people who are not as fortunate as we are. They vilify us for “canceling their culture” when all we want to do is take down statues honoring the “lost cause” a cause that included the continuation and expansion of the sickening, evil as evil gets, and quite frankly entirely ungodly institution, of slavery.
I speak thusly as there is no longer any reason to ignore or tolerate the obvious. The events on January 6, 2021 were nothing short of an armed insurrection against the American people by a group of, and I’ll be kind here, not merely misguided or confused, but now murderous, malicious and miscreant intolerant group of Neo-Nazis who adhere to a political vision apparently based upon an ideology that solving problems through dialogue under the 1st Amendment pales in comparison when they can simply utilize their 2nd Amendment right to own a firearm and simply kill whatever offends them is available.
This, is a line that cannot be crossed without accountability and consequences for all involved. From the top to bottom. And when I mean bottom, I also mean those at the top. It really is sad, isn’t it?
As for the future, my best guess is the Republican party will break into two parts. There will be a traditional GOP contingent trying to return to the greatness of the anointed Saint Reagan years. How successful will that be? Only time will tell.
As depressing as that may be, there will remain a shrinking, but still active regional let’s call them “Q” party who will continue to prefer living their lives below the ground, constantly craving for the next even deeper, ever crazier conspiracy theory to hang their ass-hats on.
But here is where things get a bit brighter for there will also be those former Republicans whose views would fit with what I would describe as more consistent, although admittedly conservative wing of the Democratic Party.
We must be prepared, without animosity or judgment, to welcome with open arms our new brothers and sisters into our midst, even mindful that it is never too late to do the right thing. If it makes you feel any better, the remaining haters will hate you for that too.
And so, as we see our ranks swell while watching from a safe distance the inevitable food fight breaking out in the Republican cafeteria of horrors, I offer a sort of prayer, if not a vision for the democratic path going forward.
Good Lord, please grant me the wisdom, courage and patience to build an even bigger and better, kinder and caring, representative of not some of the people, but all the people blue tent.
To help welcome those who I can help, and to let go of those who I cannot. To hope for the best while wary we are at a junction in our history where many of our fellow Americans have chosen to another, and in my mind, more difficult and dangerous path.
A path built upon fear, hatred and a political outlook and actions of division that are entirely contrary to the American ideal of forming a more perfect union.
All the while, we can take solace in knowing that we were there. Yes, that We the PDGs were there and that when our time is done, we will be replaced by a kinder and gentler generation, dedicated to the American dream and the proposition that government of, by and for the people shall never perish from this earth.
And on that note, God bless you, the Palm Desert Greens, and God bless America.
