How to Destroy the Democratic Party and the Country

I know, I know, I was supposed to write more of these but I was unexpectedly sucked into more book stuff and then ended up in the hospital...well, you know how it can go. And I was all psyched, gonna write something that isn't politics.

Well, so much for that.

There's been a big debate, when people aren't going on and on and on about how horrible Hillary is, even in the face of the monstrosity we have in the White House, about how to "fix" the DNC. What can we do after this calamity?

Here's my short answer: Don't fix it. That's not what's broken. Well, it wasn't.

Could use a bit more spine, of course, but that plays into why it's struggling so much now while the GOP is circling the drain. This should be when the DNC has it made. Unfortunately, we're so convinced we suck that we're going to throw away what makes us great out of fear. That's stupid. I need a state-sized hand to smack this country a couple times. Snap you out of it.

Now, here's my long answer: What the hell is wrong with you people? The biggest problem the DNC and people who are sympathetic to the DNC have is that they've been told no one agrees with them, so they are constantly second-guessing themselves. Too often, they are unwilling to make a stand in case it upsets some group of voters because, if they're not in power, they can't get anything done (especially with the current state of the GOP). That's whacked thinking of course, but slightly less whacked than the alt-left and the alt-right/now mainstream GOP which has been told everyone agrees with them (and they believe it) and think they walk on water because that's insane. These folks think they can do anything and it won't come back to bite 'em in the butt, that they can espouse any horrific notion and there will never be repercussions. They believe their own lunacy. They forgot they were even lying.

There are a couple things everyone who isn't currently part of the Trumpian mind meld (and I use the term "mind" loosely) or part of the Sanders mind meld keep forgetting.

For the past 60-70 years, all the good governance, all the recovery from fiascoes and blatant government corruption, all the sound economic policies and civil rights, all the improvements that so many have had in the past seventy years have had Democratic fingerprints all over it, even some of what happened on a Republican president's watch. All the unnecessary wars, the slicing back of safety nets, the fiscal irresponsibility, the deregulation, the environmental looting, that's GOP.

The Republican party hasn't had a clue how to govern in decades, which is why their presidents do so much damage but not as much as they might because they rarely have had a Republican Congress at the same time, and they've made their total inability to accomplish anything but catastrophe a point of pride. They not only willingly but gleefully picked up the ugly mantle of bigotry when the Dems (who had it first) began to realize how totally unsavory it was. They wear it unabashedly while telling us that bigotry doesn't even exist and probably never did.

Part of the Dem's good governance--and this is important--is that they never forgot the Republicans were part of the citizenry, too. That they looked at the big picture, were willing to wheel back their wants and wishes at times, accept half a loaf, often finding out the half a loaf was too much at once and adjusting. They LEARNED. The DNC wasn't just about winning, it was making the country greater, more inclusive, better for everyone and they would have gotten a lot further on that if they hadn't spent so much of their time cleaning up after GOP messes and, honestly, trying to make it work with difficult people who kept saying the opposite of the truth as if that could make it reality.

Someone's got to be the grownup in the room, got to do the grunt work, and make the sacrifices required for making this country function. And, more and more as decades progress, that was falling into the hands of solely the Dems instead of being something at least a few Republicans were trying.

What about the communists and stuff, the independents? I'll get there. The alt left has a bit in here, too, but it's not what you think it is and it's got nothing to do with governance.

Now, since the GOP was busy forgetting anything they might ever have known about leadership, they had nothing to do but line their pockets by passing out favors (and, yes, there are Dems guilty of this, too, and--gasp!--independents, but for blatant self-serving corruption, the GOP are masters. They don't even pretend they're not profiting off their legislation anymore) and figure out how to win. Because that's all they got. And winning, it turns out, is much easier than governance because no (self) sacrifice is required, no truth, no accountability, no thought. It's all about emotional manipulation and, since they've got the evangelicals in their fold now, they know just how to manipulate with hatred and fear, rage, all the things that have led to the ugliest chapters in human history. It works because emotional responses turn off thinking (literally) and outrage (for real events or false) becomes the catalyst to convince people to constantly subvert their own best interests.

Is it doomed if we don't stop it? Absolutely. And they'll take a lot of good people with them. The damage could go from years of recovery to total annihilation, and not just because our Trumpian toddler wants to play with the big red button. No way, unchecked, this ends in a pretty way. It never has.

So, Bernie's and other alt-left icons are the answer, right? I mean, obviously, he knows how to counter the GOP's winning strategy and can bring brightness and light into all the dark recesses of the DNC. Ugh, I just threw up a little in my mouth. Where's that state-sized hand again? We need another smack.

The alt-left is not without its uses. Historically, here and there, they have pointed out abuses no one notices and stirred up outrage that prods the DNC and other to stand up and address.  But occasional screaming is not the same damn thing as governance.

The LAST damn thing the DNC needs is to hand over the controls to ANOTHER group that's never had ANY experience governing (except in several Latin American countries riddled with poverty, violence, and corruption). Or assume a man who couldn't even win a contest among lefties can win over a whole country of everyones, even using the same tactics as the GOP (which he did). And still lost. He's not even good at it. Oh, sure, he tried the divisiveness and the "us vs. them" rhetoric, the hate-the-rich mantra, then moved on to the smear the one with governance experience by insisting that there's nothing worse for the country than knowledge and experience. That was quite the logical fallacy. And he failed conclusively so that everyone knew it (but him and his most rabid followers).

Now, personally, I'd love to forget about Bernie. Not only has he lost all relevance sometime in April, but he's a never been, rather than a has-been, and knows diddly poo about leading because, if he did, he wouldn't be tearing the DNC apart under the guise of "unity." But, sometimes, even someone not worth one's time says something that just can't go unchallenged, and this is especially so now that the DNC has (idiotically) embraced them as their messiah: tossing away civil rights as if it's something we can pick up later, no problem, once the "real" problems are dealt with.

That's total horseshit. Not just because those civil rights for immigrants, Muslims (and Jews, too), blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, women, LGBTQ, disabled people, the elderly, are all on the chopping block while Bernie whines about corruption, though they are, but also because this is what separates us from everyone else. Not just the GOP. If the DNC decides, "Oh, we're not going to even try on this stuff now. We'll get back to it," there will be nothing to stop the wholesale dismantling of more than a half-century of hard-won progress because there is no one else defending it, no one else standing up for it, no one else who gives a shit.

As soon as you make the human rights of any citizen of this nation negotiable, something we can live without, no one is safe. As soon as you take away a woman's autonomy over her own body, she is less than human, not even able to decide her own life. As soon as you tell a black man, "Suck it up, the new minimum wage (which will never happen) will help you, too," without any cognizance that he can't get a good education without improvements, will find himself in jail on trumped up charges, or otherwise marginalized from the potential he might otherwise have had, you have become complacent that he'll never be treated as a full human being, deserving human decency

And that's the thing. Bigotry isn't just cruel and mean-spirited. It's STUPID.

Let me repeat that in case you missed it. It's STUPID. You can't marginalize half and more of your population without the country, as a whole, suffering for it. That potential, the minds and ideas and breakthroughs and culture and classics and everything that will never come to pass make the world that much darker. For what? So some fat cat somewhere can get a second yacht?

Stupid. Bad governance.

And suicide for the DNC because, right now, the blocks that come out, year after year to help them in the voting booth are women and minorities. Not because the Dems have always given them all they want, but because they'll at least try, because everything different between now and when "colored only" was a common sign, happened because the Dems fought for it.

If the Dems tell them, "Hey, you're really not worth it," not only will these still-marginalized people have no one to protect them, but the Dems will have lost the people who were most loyal to them.

And we'll have deserved it.

This whole notion is so illogical and asinine, so utterly self-destructive, it stinks to high heaven of GOP anti-logic and manipulation. I don't know about you but I'm sick to death of being manipulated by the stupid party. So, DNC, stop it. It's embarrassing.

So, what do we do?

Guess that will have to do with the next post.