If there's anything to the notion of one man, one vote, it is that each of us has the opportunity, perhaps even the obligation, to participate in the perpetual renewal of our democracy. Cast in the light of self-governance and civic duty, no other concept chrystalizes the depth and breadth of the American experiment quite like the notion of each eligible man and woman tossing their bean into the hat of their choosing and having the assurance that their will would count equally with every other, no matter station, or age, or race, or sex. One [wo]man, one vote. That is the American way of doing things.
But you, corporate funded front group of aging white people whose protests ironically align with the interests of the people who most want to eliminate the program that paid for your mobility scooter and your home-delivered diabetes testing supplie, you are both American as apple pie and as dedicated to destroying the most sacred of all American institutions as any enemy we've ever faced. One man, one vote was never good enough for people like you.
I have two Senators who represent my interests in Washington. My Representative in the House, not so much, but that's how it goes. She got the votes, and my District changed from D to R, and I'll see what I can do about that next go 'round. So I've got the Senators, and their party holds the Senate and the White House, and so it would seem that their will would be done on most matters, what with American being a one man, one vote kind of democracy. But maybe I'm not one of the right people. I hear that a lot from Tea Party folk, the wrong people get government assistance, the wrong people are running this country (TAKE IT BACK!), the wrong people get to vote. So maybe that's why my Senators, both of them, must appease a minority leader whose votes apparently count more because he's one of the right people.
Anyways, one man, one vote. Apparently we don't do that anymore. At least it seems not. What with a fringe organization of less than 10 percent of the electorate somehow managing to hold our nation's economy hostage, despite the overwhelming bipartisan consensus of almost all Americans that balancing the budget shouldn't be a cuts-only proposition. Somehow the rightiest of the righties, you people whose very lives actually depend upon the programs now up on the chopping block, despite your low numbers, despite the waning enthusiasm your dying population can muster anymore, despite the fact that you are, for all intents and purposes, completely irrelevant to almost all Americans, you still managed to fuck us all. One man, ten votes for you? Really?
But hey, this is the new way it's played? We agitate loudly and we say heinous things and we assert an alternate reality in which the Constitution of the United States of America contains whole chapters of limitations and restrictions upon our lives that not even the most thorough scholars of its text had ever noticed prior to your pasting it on a poster board and carrying it around at a rally? Is that what the rest of us, the wrong people who voted for something entirely different, is that what we have to do?
Or can we just wait like five years until all you stupid old crackers are dead and then piss on your graves while we rebuild from the ruins of a once-great nation that you fucking destroyed because facts mean nothing and all you have to do to be an expert on government and macroeconomics is have strong feelings and a corporate funder? Because that's kind of what I'm looking forward to.
So enjoy what's coming, Tea Party people. Enjoy austerity because I know I will. When you're in the streets and you're eating cat food and they reposess your scooter and they take all your shit as a down payment on the medical care you can no longer get through the government, think of me. Think of the younger generation of dirty hippies who told you that you wouldn't like what was coming, the consequences of the things for which you agitated. Think of one man, one vote and believe this, when you're at your lowest and you're thinking that the compassionate ones, the ones you called socialists and anti-American, the ones you said probably didn't have a job and lived in their mother's basements, I won't be feeling sorry for you. See, because I've got a job, and I've got my own house, and I'm not on Medicare or Social Security, and I won't starve when the government checks stop coming.
So here's my little paen to the expired notion of democracy you motherfuckers tore down because you were cranky and didn't get your nap. I hoped you liked it, even if the words had too many syllables (communism) and the concepts were a bit beyond your experience (Maoism). You managed to deny me the consequent power of my vote, and I guess for that you should be proud. But I'm not the one who's going to suffer for what you have wrought. No, dear Tea Party, that would be you.
Fuck you very much,
Fed up Fed