In the short time since Barack Obama went from Presidential candidate to President-Elect, there has been no small amount of celebrating from Kossaks. This is a good thing for America, is it not? A celebration of the truly American notion that a person can become the most powerful individual in the country no matter their skin tone, wealth, or beliefs. Indeed it is a great day for the world, ushering in a time where people of all walks of life can look around and see the world is truly changed, right?
Well, except for the backlash against Republicans and conservatives taking place all over. I blog about it here because this is where I've seen it perhaps the most, which saddens me a great deal.
I responded vehemently on a diary titled Republicans Hate You. As the responses and counter-responses piled up, it became obvious that some people are simply willing to classify an entire group of people and address them as an entirely negative entity, with no room for understanding that those of different beliefs have reasons for believing as they do. That many people who belong to a political party do not let it be their only source of political, economic, or social viewpoints. What amazes me about this trend is that it is so plainly lifted from the stereotypes of Republican actions that it borders on the ludicrous.
Perhaps I should not be so amazed. I remember in 2000 when my fathers Republican friends were gleeful at the loss of Gore and spoke against Democrats as a whole, labeling them "a finished party" and lamenting that "if Democrats had as much brains as they had dreams, they'd be Republicans." I also remember a similar vibe in the throats of many collegiate Republicans in 2004. They gloated and they denigrated the entire Democratic party as though it was a solid voting bloc, and not simply an association of people that felt a particular way about the election.
What I do not understand however, is the reaction to this win by some Democrats. You have just won an election that promised to rid the world of the era of Bush. Is your first action going to be to follow in the footsteps of the Bush supporters? Are you really going to attempt to cast all Republicans in the same mold, to view them as enemies to be vanquished, dissidents whose ideas and opinions are to be marginalized and cast aside? We have seen how that works, and it is not pretty. We RELY on a system of multiple parties-- of multiple ideas and multiple points of view on all issues.
So why are people calling for Republicans to be cast out like some leprous community? Are we not still Americans? Do we not understand balance of power? Or simply the idea that government should be a meritocracy where a persons character and actions are weighed more heavily than political party? After all the Republicans who made the choice to not only vote for Obama, but to rally support to him (such as Colin Powell), do we really believe that there is a single "typical" Republican that speaks for all of them? No. To believe so is as blatantly foolish as stereotyping people on any other issue.
Perhaps this affects me more because I'm already considered a pariah by many whose viewpoints, like my own, tend to skew to the right, simply because I voted for Obama. Now it seems that many like me, who are conservative, but crossed party lines to vote for Obama, are being lumped in with the people who accused President Elect Obama of being a terrorist. To me, the only great lure of the Democratic party was the concept that ideas trumped identity. That, unlike many Republican associates of mine, Democrats were more interested in the larger picture. What worries me now is that this wave of euphoria will give way to already-growing movement of vengeance-- which would result in Democrats acting no differently than the Republicans whose ousting they desired so completely.
There was a trend which disturbed me in the months leading up to the election of Obama, and that was the "Break their Spirits" mantra going around. It seemed, at the time, a fairly juvenile and caustic way of describing what boils down to a difference of policy agendas. In retrospect, it has become a reminder of how those who are downtrodden don't mind breaking of spirits...as long as it isn't their own. Why the need to dehumanize those we fight. Being a Marine, I've seen such dehumanization lead to terrible actions that we regret as an entire Armed Forces.
In the end, whether you're a Republican or Democrat, we are all Americans (unless you're one of dKos's many international readers, in which case, we are all Earthians). We are all complex humans, with differing opinions on a plethora of ideas. Party identity is a shallow way of judging somebody. Let those of us who supported Obama do no more damaged to an already highly partisan country. It is time to mend the divides in this country, not deepen them by attacking people as a group, or stereotyping our opposition in retaliation for the hurt those people have done in the past. We should be better than those whose actions we dislike, not mimicking them.
I do not mean to single out the author of that diary, either. It served merely as an example of a larger trend.