“Unity” is the buzzword now that the election is over.
John Kerry, in his obligatory phone call to Bush, spoke of the “desperate need
for unity” and “coming together.” I’m having a hard time deciding who exactly
to unify with. Maybe I can unify with the guy who wants to kill doctors who
perform abortions and who was charged with sterilizing a woman against her
will. Senator Coburn also makes a good point about rampant lesbianism in the
schools and how the girls have to go to the bathroom one at a time. My main
concern here isn’t that so many of these girls are corrupted by lesbianism, but
rather that they seem to be unable to go a few hours without having sex with
each other. In the school bathroom. Good for the Oklahoma Senator; by stopping
this problem before it gets out of control, he really stuck his finger in the
dike.
I can unify with the guy from South Carolina who doesn’t
think gays should be allowed to teach. Using the kind of logic that could only
come from a nutcase in this Confederate flag-waving state, Jim DeMint
rationalized his comment by saying that his sentiments also extended to
pregnant, unwed women. I bet a gay pregnant unwed teacher would have no problem
sending all the lesbian students to the bathroom at the same time.
Or I can unify with my favorite candidate, Jim Bunning of
Kentucky. Pitchers often burn out their arms early in their careers – does the
same thing happen with the brain? Bunning is a role model for all those who
want to run for public office but who lack the sanity that many see as a
requisite. Because of him, there is little doubt that candidates will pop up
across the nation carrying around jars of their own urine and espousing
platforms like “A plan to remove all the embedded microchips” and “Peoria,
Bloomingdale’s, and Santa Anna: the new axis of evil.” The man with a lifetime
ERA of 3.27 is starting an era of “those who are out of their fucking minds.”
It’s going to be tough to unify with these red states - the
vast expanse of land that falls in between the two coasts and the northern
border. George W. Bush is the legitimate President of the United States; he is
the choice that America made. The choice was also made by 11 states to ban gay
marriage. This decision – so crucial to gay couples, so irrelevant to their
opponents – came directly from the voice of the people. I’m not surprised that
many are rethinking their commitment to direct democracy and the general will of
the people. “The people” are spread out much farther than Manhattan, San
Francisco, and Chicago; it is hard to “reach out” to a group who most of us
would prefer never to be within arm’s reach.
A lot of us are disappointed in the people of this country,
disgusted by the choices that have been made. I am going to make a bold stance,
though, and say that I like these people. I like Americans; I don’t think they
are stupid, and; I sympathize with them. It is dangerous to waste our anger on
the people of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, and all those other states that we
usually equate more with the attack scene in “Deliverance” than we do with
political astuteness.
Yes, we, as Americans, elected Bush, but we, as Americans,
are also exposed to a system of lies and propaganda from the top down, an inept
and irresponsible media that has given this administration a free ride on every
subject including weapons of mass destruction, uranium from Niger, the ties
between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the leaked name of Joseph Wilson’s wife, the failure
to renew the assault weapons ban, the evidence about missing weapons at al-Qaqaa,
and countless more issues that have been ignored, distorted, or cursorily
reported with no real investigation. We have had our conceptions of “morality”
hi-jacked by neoconservative ideology and Christian Right dogma. The people
have been conditioned and duped by religion; they’ve become victims of the
unholy alliance between church and state that has solidified religious
brainwashing and state-approved subjugation. We have endured years of Democrats
acting as a faction within the Republican party with no leadership, a pathetic
level of opposition, and a presidential nominee forced into the position of a
“war candidate” because of the support he gave to the President for the invasion
of Iraq.
I do feel unified with the people of the heartland of
America, those who are exploited at work, economically oppressed at home, and
subject to so many insidious forces that they help reelect their persecutors.
The inclination to blame and castigate mainstream America is wrong: it doesn’t
acknowledge the system that keeps people ignorant and the institutions that fail
to protect democracy. Dismissing the people of Arkansas, Tennessee, and other
states with whittling-based economies as “stupid” is blaming the victim. We
live in the most religious Western, industrialized nation. We’ve had
fundamentalist Christians serve in the highest levels of government. We have a
corporate media that has turned its back on democracy in favor of profit and
obsequious stories from partisans, lazy “investigative journalists,” and
embedded reporters. We have a mass of people with a false consciousness who
believe all the lies and who are tools of the ruling class. When you blame the
people, you stop fighting for them, and that is dangerous path to embark on. If
we are going to listen to Kerry and try to become unified, we need to continue
opposing Bush, hold a critical mirror up to the Democrats, and recognize that
the heartland of America, whether they know it or not, is on our side.