…and I hate you for it. But I’ve got to hand it to you; you sure have your shit together from an organizational standpoint. Your ideological lockstep is something to behold. Well-oiled and well-rehearsed. Not bad. Not bad at all…
You are adept masters in utilizing the message machine. Hell, you even have your television network! You have deep-pocket donors who are brilliant (in a devious way) at hiding their tentacles that reach deep into your party structure and call the shots. On everything from “entitlement” programs (very affective use of that word, by the way) to the NOAA, the Supreme Court and government regulators. Hell, you guys are so slick you have even managed to snag a few Democrats along the way to help infiltrate our own party to try to shift the Overton Window with our gullible and misguided help. Slick indeed.
You are excellent at emotional manipulation to such an extent that the citizens you claim to represent have been convinced to believe their neighbor is actually their enemy. You have found that “sweet spot” in the public’s conscience at the intersection of fear and shame. Fear of the boogeyman and shame for hoping for some protection from it. I truly don’t know how you do it.
And I make no mistake: You are in it to win it, and are willing to destroy everything by throwing a match on the bonfire of public opinion and sitting back to enjoy the glow. Doesn’t really matter if you end up scorched by it yourselves because you stood for something right? Jeez, you even have figured out a way to use public opinion directed against you into a potential advantage!
And so, noting what strengths (misguided though they may be) you display as a group I find myself repeatedly asking myself of late: What have we got?
I admit I am still trying to figure that out.
I have a President I admire, but seems to absorb naked aggression and (not so) thinly veiled racism toward him like a sponge and offers very little public fight. I kind of feel during a time of such crisis (the true death of an Empire and the world around perceptibly adjusting to themselves to it) I need some more…fire. I don’t know why, but I want some passion. I need it. The inscrutable veil that Obama wears gives him tremendous dignity but it hides the “fire in the belly” a public needs to see in a time as uncertain as this. We have so few heros these days and I wanted one in him. We need our own Reagan (God forgive me). But I admit it.
We certainly have principles and high ideals for our fellow citizens but we have been miserably failing to structure a cogent argument for them for 30+ years now. Oh sure, we get a blip on the radar screen every now and then, but your messaging and the methods of delivering them dominate. How your party managed to make words like “education” and phrases like “social safety net” filthy is still a masterstroke of messaging genius. Even now, you are working your messaging magic.
And are principles and high ideals really what we need during a time of ideological bloodlust poised to undo nearly a century of social and economic progress? Is it enough to hold your monster at bay long enough to hope that we get our own house together in time to avoid economic and social meltdown? That the public wakes up?
I don’t know. I do know that somehow we lost the message of the common man that appealed to decency, reason and civic mindedness, and helplessly watched as you turned it upon its ear by tapping fear and resentment to your advantage. Hmmm.
You are a dangerous animal who is wild and careless enough to burn the house down in order to WIN. Part of me is a bit frightened of you and your craziness; the other part begrudgingly admires your balls as an opponent. I get the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that we are unprepared and underpowered in this ideological fight because your dedication to your cause borders upon hara-kiri, and we look terribly disorganized and weak in the face of it. Sometimes I feel like our Party soils their own undergarments when you start barking in such a way as to define Democrats downward.. Where are the dozens of Alan Graysons we need to take the game to you and watch you face-plant in the public square, so that the country will never again eat the turd sandwich you so regularly serve up to a hungry public? And where is our own unified and determined Party, willing to stand our ground and not keep erasing that line in the sand that gets redrawn a little farther up the beachhead in the face of your ideological invasion?
You are more than capable of crushing and destroying pretty much anything in your path. I see that clearly as there are examples everywhere these days. But I wish I didn’t feel like my Party was so demoralized at times that it felt like we were just waiting for you to come in and finish us off because we seem to lack the fire in the belly that you and your easily manipulated minions apparently possess.
So in the end you may just possibly destroy us as the Party that wove a social contract with its public to protect them and which paved the way for the United States to become the economic and social powerhouse it became. It just disgusts me to know we were present at its murder, yet helped plan the funeral once you did the deed. All because we didn’t exhibit the same chutzpah you did. How sad...
If our party doesn't doesn't get our shit together and fight back HARD against you, you will have effectively destroyed us by staking the only ground we have left.
And, again, I hate you for it.