I would say all the things we wish we could say to these elected officials, particularly the GOP Congressmen/women who continuously say Some Dumb Shit. I'm thinking specifically of moments when I wish I could have fact-checked Rand Paul about his remarks to Secretary Clinton, or to Sen. Mitch McConnell's response to Obama's inauguration speech, or to Rep. Boehner's comments during the "Debt Ceiling Crisis."
I wish someone, anyone, with just a little bit of fire and facts would stand upon the floor of the House, or the Senate, or even the White House lawn and stop the ignorance as it is uttered, rather than letting it hang, fetid and nauseating in the air like the second-hand smoke of cancerous junkies. I want to, for once, hear someone on national television says "No, you're wrong. The truth is actually this."
But wish-fulfillment isn't part of politics, and certainly even MSNBC isn't likely to rock the boat so much that a little bit of water possibly dribbles in to reveal to everyone that we're actually close to sinking.
Give it another 100 years and maybe one iceberg, and this remaining superpower can easily go the way of Rome, slowly, painfully, but altogether inevitably into the dust of our collective intelligence.
But let me pivot positive: I'm not saying all is not well in the kingdom of Denmark or that people aren't on the front-line confronting the kind of ignorant bigotry regularly masquerading as legitimate politics. I'm just saying we're not being all that hard on them for it. And maybe that's just because the people in the room really don't know any better. And maybe the people that do know better are so disgusted they wouldn't go near that room with a hazmat suit and a Costco sized bottle of sanitizer.
And maybe this would all be so much easier if every TV screen could be tuned to the same channel for 10 minutes that played a brief introduction to the reality of American politics, complete with pie charts, fact-checks, and a final declarative statement consisting of: "This is all true. Every single thing. It is not open to interpretation or argument. Accept it, keep calm, and move along."
Ahh, but what am I thinking? The Revolution will not be televised.