I'm a single-issue voter: I'm a Democrat

[mdlbear]

I want my country back, and the only way to get it back is to vote for a Democrat in every damned election I'm qualified to vote in.

The Department of Health & Human Services moves to define "contraception" as "abortion".

I live in California. Our initiative process has made it entirely clear that any small, cynical group of greedy bastards can cobble together enough special-interest votes to get almost any hare-brained scheme that benefits them passed by a simple majority. The Bush administration and their puppet masters have done that on an even larger scale; the entire Republican party has been turned over to the religious right as a way of keeping a small group of extremely rich, extremely cynical people in power. This latest move is a blatent attempt to drag mainstream Catholics into the conspiracy, and it may very well succeed.

One more term with a Republican in office, and there will be a right-wing nutcase majority on the US Supreme Court. DO YOU WANT THAT? If you have to think hard about it, I'm not sure I want to know.

I am old enough to remember why a crossed-out coathanger is the symbol for the abortion-rights movement. It's because, back when abortion -- and even any other form of contraception -- was illegal in most of the US, a common way for a woman to try to end an unwanted pregnancy was to attempt to stab the fetus to death with an unfolded coathanger. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when black people were in danger of being dragged out of their homes and lynched. When gays in the military were lucky if they were merely beaten to death when they were discovered, and not tortured in the process. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember people driving across state lines to get abortions. To buy contraceptives. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when Jews and Catholics, as well as African-Americans (as we call them now) were routinely discriminated against in jobs, housing, and college admissions. When restrooms, drinking fountains, and schools were segregated. When Jewish kids like me were routinely teased -- if not worse -- at school. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when a divorced-and-remarried relative couldn't go back home to Italy for fear of being arrested for bigamy, because divorce wasn't legal there. DO YOU WANT THAT HERE?

Think about whether you want the bad old days back before you vote Republican, because that's what you're going to get, and worse. Much worse.

We are one Supreme Court justice away from a right-wing religious dictatorship. If that. It may already be too late, because the ones pulling the puppet strings aren't necessarily tied to the religious right. That's just where they can get the votes now. If that coalition falls apart, they'll start to cobble together a different set of single issues. We may only have one or two terms to root them out. They already have a head start.

I am also old enough to remember when Richard Nixon was considered by many to be a corrupt right-wing nut case, and to remember that he was somewhere to the left of most of today's Democrats. I am old enough to remember when "liberal" was considered middle-of-the-road. I am old enough to have been proud to call myself a radical.

I am old enough to remember when the US had a middle class. When most rich people paid their fair share of taxes. When we learned the Bill of Rights in school, and knew that our government was there to enforce it and not to undermine it.

I am old enough to have learned the Pledge of Allegiance before a Republican administration added the words "under God" to it, and I still say it as I learned it.

DAMN IT, I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

Thanks to this post by snobahr, this post by kyburg, and this post by ravan. Planned Parenthood has an online petition.

Comments

[harmonyheifer.livejournal.com]

You hit the nail on the head. I am younger than you but even at 49 I can see how drastic the loss of our middle class has been. People like my dad, who is 84 and actually lived through the depression can see the changes even more starkly than the boomers. We are skidding so close to disaster socially, financially and politically that for anyone who is paying attention it is just plain horrific. Economists are talking about 1929 and the great depression, sociologists are making valid comparisons to Nazi Germany and the gilded age where there was no middle class. Mainstream media and the talking heads are blathering on about flag pins and Jesse Jackson and only a handful of people seem to realize that the Republican candidate for president is totally unable to speak unscripted for more than about a minute, has trouble even following a teleprompter and has anger management issues that terrify his Republican peers in the US Senate. We have a Supreme Court and a legislative branch that are either controlled by or trampled by the executive branch, which has expanded to ridiculous levels of power and corruption. Our national infrastructure is crumbling, working people are homeless, mentally ill people get no treatment at all, and millions of Americans get their medical care only in emergency rooms because they have no insurance.

As a country we are fearful of anyone who isn't white and afluent because those "immigrants" are murderers, rapists and taking from us in any number of ways, but we are too stupid to see that the people who are really raping and pillaging our country are the rich white people in the gated communities. The fears they are projecting onto the masses are their own fears, that someday the working poor will take to the streets and rise up and beat them to death for what they have done in the name of security, patriotism and religion. This country is obsessed with security while we bomb other countries into the stone age. We feed the little shop of horrors monster plant that is our Military Industrial Complex and as long as we have the narcotic diversion of television, cell phones, and a few creature comforts, we will sit in our recliners, have a beer and repeat the canned talking points of pond sucking scumbags like Karl Rove and think that what we are saying is not just true, but an original thought. "Americans can be counted on to do the right thing only after they have exhausted every other option." Churchill was right, and I pray every night that we have finally exhausted every other option, because there isn't a lot of time left, and things are getting a lot worse a lot faster now, like a boulder rolling downhill.

America needs to wake up. As your post so beautifully puts it, it is much later than we think it is. I was taught that our system is self correcting. Many of the things I was taught in school have turned out to be lies. I hope that the self correcting nature of our government isn't one of them. There are days when I have hope, and there are days when I think this country is already lost.

I take hope because the people in power now have screwed up so totally that they have wrecked our economy, and that is bad for the uber rich robber barons who pull the strings. Those guys need the working poor happy and complacent and they really do have nightmares about the unwashed masses swarming over their gated walls. Maybe those nightmares will make then think twice about stealing a third presidential election in a row. and giving the presidency to a drugged up puppet. Especially if the angry masses who have had it rise up and vote out the scum that have been selling us all down the river. It is hard to fix a landslide to look like anything but a landslide, or so I have been told. We will soon see if that one is true as well.