I have so many thoughts right now. The main thought I have is one word:
Bankruptcy.
This is not meant to be an attack on anyone. It's just a thought about how the modRepubs tried one more time to run the 1988 Presidential campaign, how they were gifted a brown-skinned dude with an Arabic-sounding name (I don't even know if that's the proper term) and a so-called "most liberal voting record," and a strong record on using the boogey man of terrorists to convince just enough of the electorate that they were "the national security party,"
and how they still lost.
I had nothing to contribute to this political season but words. I am broke, like many Americans who have college degrees but little opportunity. I didn't have money to give. When the primaries were in full swing, I was working two jobs, one serving coffee and one serving the rich of NOLA, 60+ hours and six days per week. My feet always hurt and my right hip veered dangerously close to arthritis. No time nor ability to put my "feets in the streets" (as my old mentor Maynard Jackson used to say).
I don't know if you noticed or not, but I did not once praise or endorse our new President. That's right.
I didn't even want to do it.
What I wanted to do was remind anyone who would bother to read my words that once upon a time there was a Republican party in America before Lee Atwater. I wanted you to see the hypocrisy, the hate, the cynical manipulation of people who've never had a chance at a decent education.
Every day I asked myself, "How can decent people who claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth vote for the modRepubs?" How?
It is because I was raised by people who voted Republican that I chose to focus on this failed party and its disgusting strategy. It is because I spent more time in a Southern Baptist Church than anyone other than Billy T. Nimmons himself that I wanted to call out the Pharisees and hypocrites. It is because the sentence "In as much as you've done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you've done it unto me" is STILL my guiding principle that I had to cry out against the evil I saw around me.
I was not raised to believe that calling brown people "monkeys" is acceptable behaviour.
I was not raised to believe that forcing someone to follow any religion is the way to convert him.
No, my father taught me by example that every man and woman deserves to be considered your equal until he or she shows you otherwise. Disagreeing about politics is not a reason to despise anyone. And my mother, despite her many flaws, taught me that civil discourse is necessary and expected.
I first voted in 1988 in the primary, for a Senator from Illinois. Paul Simon wore the bow tie. He was an old school Democrat. I could not believe in any other candidate, Republican or Democrat. He appealed to my sense of idealism by saying "We are a United States. I can't tell you how a child failing in school in Louisiana affects people in Washington state, but I know it does." Yes. I can see that. So I voted for him. And I voted for Governor Dukakis in the general election. I did not believe in George Bush then.
I will be honest and say that I did not believe in Bill Clinton, either. Nor did I believe in Albert Gore, and certainly I didn't believe in John Kerry. Feh, I thought.
The modRepubs have become an ugly, ungainly beast that now only can win by fomenting fear, hatred, suspicion, mistrust, and outright lying. Where was the appeal to the best in us? Seriously, is all they have a mixture of abortion, fundamentalist religion, and fear of non-white people? Wow.
White people have always had an axe to grind in America. They've hated the native people, the slaves, the Irish, the Italians, the Jews, the East Asians, the Mexicans, the Arabs...whew. And when they ran out of those folk, they turned on "Old Europe." This is funny to me, because I don't know if white people have noticed, but they have been on top since, oh, FOREVER. White people have stood back and put their arms around their toys and said "MINE MINE MINE MINE!" for so long that they don't really understand that sharing is the best way to make sure that they WILL get to keep their stuff.
Honesty about ethnic prejudice makes many people uncomfortable. I understand that. But that is the beauty of tonight. Tonight was the culmination of a process that had shone a brilliant light on the ugly side of the modRepubs. Atwater said it best: "In the 50s, all you had to do was yell 'N-----! N-----! N-----!'" Then it became yelling about busing, and then it became yelling about welfare, until finally we got back to yelling the equivalent of the n-word. And I say, thank whatever invisible man in the sky you believe in that "people" like Saxby Chambliss would show you the filthy recesses of their old, stupid, white minds.
I am drawn to the disfranchised and marginalised in the world. I live in a poor city, and have never shied away from making friends with black people. I have had black friends tell me, "You've crossed over!" My first job after college was working for the South's first black mayor. It's not posing. My Father brought his best friend, a black man, to our lily-white First Baptist Church in the early 70s. My Father was no bleeding heart liberal. He had one belief: Tell it like it is. Before Alzheimer's claimed him, he told me he did not trust or believe what the modRepubs of W were saying. In other words, they weren't telling it like it was.
My goal during this election was very simple, and a tribute to my Father: Tell it like it is. I didn't see any reason to talk about Senator Obama. But I had to call it as I saw it about the fear mongering, hate mongering, lying, distorting, negative, unhappy, bitter, nasty, divisive modRepubs.
I am the type that tends to be more reflective after a successful moment. I don't know how to live in the present. When UMass made the Final Four, I couldn't cheer. I cried. I could only recall the struggle to get there, and those who couldn't be there. Tonight, I cried, I cried for all the kicked-in heads, for James Meredith, for Nat Turner, for heroes like Stokely, and Bobby, and Mario, and Cesar, and Shirley, and Jackie Robinson. I am a white boy from Georgia, but to me, tonight was a promise kept by the United States of America. Thank you. I think I love you again.
