I don’t want to hear another Prop 8 whine or another "I’m sooo disappointed in Obama for [ fill in the blank ].
Listen – if you think you can do better, then where in hell were you when the rest of us needed real help? I’m a retired male whose retirement benefits disappeared along with a bunch of financial institutions. I’m back to work at a time when work is hard to find (duh!) and thank God every day for what I have. I may not be happy with the hand life dealt me, but I’m damned thankful for my wife and kids and grandkids.
I’ve been a Democrat all my life, worked for years in the county party, and supported a number of people who either turned out to be either dependable friends or total rat bastards who tried to use their position to line their pockets. I’ve seen good people destroyed and bad people lauded in the political process. I’ve seen liars succeed and honest men fail for no other reason than failure of the voters to see the truth. Benjamin Disraeli once said, 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." It seems in politics, the last two are predominant. Don’t trust polls.
But this rant isn’t about me.
It’s about you.
Let’s get the loud part over with first – for you gays and lesbians who want to be married, just remember you’re a small minority in your own community. The far greater numbers have no interest in a stable, long-term relationship. Bisexuals aren’t the least interested in marriage because they can’t make up their minds on which side they swing – bad husband/wife/both material from the get-go. What I don’t want to hear about are all the many relationships – each one special, of course. It sounds too much like brag.
I have no problem with your relationship(s). I work with and have known many gays and lesbians since high school and several remain strong, long-term friends. I know their families and their friends, been to weddings, funerals and been with them through bad times and terrible times, just as I do with my straight friends.
But I’m going to tell you, just like I told them – Obama has absolutely nothing to do with Prop 8, and to make him guilty for its failure, or to be accusatory about whom he selects for his swearing-in ceremony has nothing to do with you. He doesn’t belong to you any more than Dubya belonged to the fundamentalists. Regardless of what you may think.
Get your act together, go out and work to get another Proposition 8 passed. I promise to support you and I’m certain Obama will as well. Like the rest of us who’ve worked long and hard and sometimes failed to get equality and justice over the years, it takes dedication and lots of hard work. Never, ever forget that. Remember, too, that your opponents truly believe in their point of view just as you do yours. Learn to communicate.
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[Update: The "loud part" means "a phrase, comment or statement that is twisted, inverted or simply backwards to elicit a loud response." For those who didn't understand this, I sincerely apologize. This entire diary was intended as a snark for all the diaries and comments since the election. BTW, all of the phrases I used above actually appeared in comments and diaries in one form or the other during that period without response. Amazing!]
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The other thing I’m sick and tired of hearing is "Obama failed to [ fill in the blank ]" or "Obama is too far right/left/center to be a true [ fill in the blank ]."
Obama is Obama, no one else. He managed to survive the worst the Democrats and the Republicans could both throw at him. And he succeeded. With our help. And he still needs our help.
Not only does he somehow have to repair the god-awful damage done by the last Bush administration, he has to do it in the face of a Republican party who will stop at nothing to defame him, attack him openly or ambush him at every opportunity. They will do everything possible to turn you and everyone else against him. They will try to prove the intellectually challenged, slacker, rich frat-boy was smarter and better at everything and pound on every least real or imagined or invented mistake to show that Obama is less capable than the drooling idiot who last sat in the Oval Office. Again, remember that a Rhodes Scholar is intellectually and emotionally superior in every way to a drunken frat boy who can’t manage to show up to handle his agreed upon responsibilities.
Let me ask you this: do you think you could do as good as or better than Barak Obama? If you do, get your cherry red ass to Washington DC after January 20th and offer your skills to the government. Then you work until that same ass is dragging home every night to help regain what’s left of these United States. I think – no, I know – we need every person of sound mind and body to help haul our reputation out of the mud, to show the world, by example, that our citizens are important to this nation and that we’ll fight to protect and care for them.
Only then can we honestly help others to do the same, regardless of their political or religious beliefs. We cannot help others if we cannot help ourselves.
Finally (yes, there’s an end to this diatribe), let Obama make mistakes. He’ll make them because the only way to learn this job is OJT (on-the-job training). Let him fix those mistakes without judgment on your part, two or three times if necessary, to get it right. Support him when he’s doing well and then provide extra support if he needs a do-over. He’s smart, he’ll learn to do it right.
He’s our guy, he’s shouldering the load and we all have great expectations. But he’s stepping into this terrible job at the worst possible moment in time.
Love and protect him and, through him, the rest of us.
Yes, we can!