Sherry Speaks...a Political Musing...

For chickens coming home to roost, nothing beats the Democratic party like the democrats.

For eight years, the out of power in the White house party has nursed it’s grudge, treasured its hatred of all things not Democrat. For eight years, there has been an “ I-Double-Dog-Dare-You style I-hate-George-Bush-the-Most” type fight on the political playground, with honors, applause and face time on CNN for the person able to best capture the exponential level of hostility towards the current administration. Now, with two promising candidates of the DNC eviscerating each other publically and privately, the party that thought it couldn’t lose, is fraying at the seams.

Why?

Because the political base has fed on anger for eight years and can’t just turn that spigot of rage off. The Bush administration is gone regardless in seven months, and all that animosity needs a new target. It doesn’t just evaporate, it lingers in the atmosphere like CO2 gases. It pollutes the spirit and the mind. It prevents legitimate solutions from being considered if they come from the wrong source, and renders even the most minor of disagreements that span across the political aisle unbearably impossible to fix.

Where is the peace and love? Or even civility?
Where is the open mindedness and tolerance for alternative view points?

Politics may have always been a blood sport but these days, it’s more like Survivor than American Idol, with the American voter in the awkward role of Ryan Seacrest. As an observer of the political process, I confess, I prefer less government to more, I think laws and policies and the fiscal allotments that back them reflect priorities, and that all life and all liberty in recent years, have been held cheap.

The irony of all of this is, the three candidates in question are like the differences between the regular, premium and super levels of gasoline…there’s a dime’s worth of difference to each, but they all are overpriced and still only perform the minimum function for which they were formulated.

Let’s stop pretending that the politicians have all the answers, walk on water, have control over all of their past or their associates or even can manage to escape in this digital age, momentary lapses of temper, judgment and wardrobe. Let’s stop mocking people who seek to serve for being human or being so polished, we decide they aren’t. Then we could decide, do we want a country where the hatred goes on forever, or where we recognize there are multiple ways to operate and use government and no one person or body politic has a monopoly or even a plurality of the actual solutions necessary.

Democracy in action requires compromise. It's messy and incomplete. It seldom satisfies purists or idealogues.

Demanding that only one side be heard, be it to the right or the left, in politics or in the news, is refusing to accept anything but a dictatorship from the side one backs. It is not a democracy, it is not even an representative republic. It is the triumph of a small collective of would be philosopher kings who think they have the knowledge, acquiring power. Forgive me, but I haven't seen Socrates or Plato in the running, and I'm not sure I'd trust them either anyway.

Each of these people have their sins, their flaws, their less than noble desires, but they also willingly seek to serve and that is no small task. No one looks good in a microscope or in a funhouse mirror.

So Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives...let's try to play nice in the sandbox for a while and when you're all done.

Let’s eat those chickens before they cost too much.