Jodi Dean: Spoil Sport

(I notice this dual emotional exhiliration in the air at the possibilities of Democrats winning back seats and taking a majority in the House and/or Senate, with a foundation of fear that Republicans will pull off another election-day heist. Me, maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older, but I am finding it more difficult to distinguish between the two ruling parties. Before you start lecturing me on the obvious differences between them, I'm talking about where their final allegiances lay... this is why this rant from Jodi struck a nerve, she clearly outlines this dis-ease I suffer from... of course where I live being a democrat is almost the same as being a radical. I was once talking to a gay man in a used bookstore in Lexington and he mentioned that he never came out in his small town in Kentucky because people might think he was a liberal--he was serious.)

Spoil Sport
by Jodi Dean
I Cite

Move-on phoned me yesterday. I almost screamed, "just send me an email like you do every fucking day!" but I didn't. But, when the caller asked me to volunteer to do whatever to insure that 'we' take back Congress, I was, at the very least, testy.

"Do you have any idea what the position of the Democrat running in the 24th is?" I screamed, I mean asked politely? He didn't get a chance to answer because of my nasty tirade, I mean detailed recounting of the candidate's position. He got off the phone quickly after that, leaving me hanging just like the Latter Day Saints did that time in Germany when they came to my door and I, anxious to practice my German, started asking them all sorts of questions. I may be the only person ever from whom Latter Day Saints tried to escape regardless of the state of my soul.

Back to politics. I tell Paul, and the other Dems around me, please, convince me I'm wrong! Convince me that it will be morning in America should these Democrats win a majority, convince me of a political sea change, an end of the war in Iraq, a bringing to trial of the Bush war criminals, a wide ranging and serious critique of the entire edifice of the so-called war on terror at every level of government. Convince me that, yes, the minimum wage will be raised, there will be a cap on drug prices, corporate taxes will be raised, there will be adequate assistance to people in need, environmental standards will be improved, not another Bush appointment to the judiciary will be approved, Negroponte will be recalled, the Internet will remain free, free and safe abortions will be available to women who need them, gays and lesbians can marry if they choose, no one will teach the idiocy of intelligent design in public schools, and the delusional wall against Mexico will be abandoned and its proponents sent to the appropriate reeducation centers. Convince me that the Democrats will make a difference. I want to believe.

But I don't.

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