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So, what's a few more?
My old DU user name was "BareKnuckledLiberal". I should have kept it, especially since I discovered, to my horror, that my long-time general Internet user name, Pigwidgeon, had been appropriated by J.K. Rowling for one of her Harry Potter characters, and may now be the "intellectual property" of her publishing house.
My aim is to return some of the fighting spirit to the Democratic Left in general. Disappointment has festered into defeatism, snobbery, paralysis, cynicism, South-Park-ism*, Counterpunch-drunkeness** and political entitlement passivity.
"Political entitlement passivity" is a piece of jargon I coined to describe the attitude that many angry, disappointed Democrats develop. They get the idea in their heads that the Democratic Party is run by experts, authorities and specialists, and that they have no right to become involved with it. Conversely, they come to believe that their representatives should do things for them, and when a desired piece of political action is undone, they blame the representative, swearing that they will call down fire and brimstone and a loss in the very next primary. (I don't always disagree with that, but I think the harsh action is much better used in a carefully targeted manner.)
I believe that I have a better case to leave America than most of the people who claim they're going to leave America -- I have longstanding chronic illnesses, can not qualify for medical aid, and I could pass the Canadian Immigration Candidacy exam sans aucune difficulté. Once in Canada, I would be able to get all the health care I need, and be able to return to full-time work as soon as I can. I get no joy out of either illness OR idleness. So, why do I stay? Because I love America, and I'll be damned if I let some overpaid cabal of power-drunk God-floggers and vampires-manqués take it away from me and those I love.
I love Canada, too, and get just as misty-eyed reading a stirring speech once given by Johnny Mac as any of our American founding fathers, but America is my home and my heart, my mother, my lover, my wife, and my daughter, every bit as much as a good citoyen of France is devoted to his (or her) Marianne.
I love the world, but America is mine -- and I am America's. Those who would batter, rape, despoil, prositute, and subjugate her will have to contend with me -- and, I hope, millions of my fellow Americans, still passionately in love after 230 years, whose most-cherished love-letter begins with the words "We, The People ..."
Okay, okay, I'm mad for poetic hyperbole. But somehow, in the course of growing up in the 1960s, I learned Patriotism without hatred. My Dad was in the military, and although he wasn't exactly a radical, he once told me he was fighting for the protesters and demonstrators just as much as he was fighting for the flag-wavers.
I think the attitude he passed on to me explains why my love of America remains strong, in spite of her decades of enslavement under the gorilla pimps of neo-Conservatism. America, body, heart, and soul, is worth fighting for. And the date on my own tombstone will never be later than the date to be written on hers.
And what of our fellow Americans at DU, who may be ready to seek a divorce? Well, loneliness and a long night of defeat can cause anyone to make a bad decision. It's part of our task to turn that situation around. Our enemies aren't simply limited to the radicals of the GOP -- there are enemies inside the House of Democracy, intangible things that don't respond to fighting or to medicine, but only a rekindling of love and a renewal of encouragement.
So, it's true, I fight a lot with some of the people here for many reasons, but not over America. I look at the problem this way: At DU, I have friends and co-partisans (some of whom I like to spar with), and I also have friends whom I may have let down by not providing encouragement and support when they needed it. It's tough to tell sometimes, and I haven't really gotten used to assuming that anyone could be ready to bug out.
Some of them may, in fact, leave America. Keep a spare room for them -- they'll be back. They will always be a part of America wherever they go, and America will always be a part of them.
Which part? The best part!
--p!
* South-Park-ism: A form of elitist cynicism expressed by South Park creator Matt Stone: "I hate Conservatives, but I f*ckin' hate Liberals." ** Counterpunch-Drunkenness: A form of elitist cynicism that often appears in Counterpunch magazine, similar to the complaint of stand-up comedians that their failure was due to being "too hip for the room".
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