Reflections on How the Democratic Party Can Stand Up for Democracy
Heading for the exit in a cart
Reversals are normal, abrupt or otherwise. Like sacks of Rome, to be expected when perceptions of corruption cross the line. The electorate’s turn toward corruption posing as its reverse was enabled by Democratic Party misjudgment that itself and the country had not crossed the line of corruption.
The meaning of election 2024 is that the door was wide open to rule by corruption because the democratic institutions it’s replacing were already corrupt. So far removed from the ideal of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address — service of the people, by the people, for the people, — so far taken from conscience and given to Machiavellian tribal expedience, so far removed from character with integrity, that it begged to be replaced by Democracy’s reverse.
A reversal of this magnitude can’t be re-reversed overnight by minds still conditioned to uphold a bygone status quo. They’ll need to adapt by trial and error until they get it: the “enemy” isn’t “out there” but in here. Wasting our energies on distractions, like bulls deceived by the matador’s muleta, heading for the exit in a cart.
Room for improvement
The Democratic Party has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to revisit the ass-kissing, integrity-busting, mode of transactional politics-as-usual that brought us to this pass. To renew its commitment, defined by Lincoln, to the down-to-earth code of conduct for every participant in Democracy’s experiment. Not to the stench of an unchanging status quo. Nor to any tribal “ism” like socialism.
Rome’s barbaric invaders are reversal energized by reversal. By being recognized as though they’re there, sucking up all the headlines, making everything be about them. By endless provocations whose only purpose is to attract the attention they can’t “exist” without. The angrier it is toward the provocateurs the better it is for them, until they get what they want: self-destruction by violence.
Unmooring the Republican Party from any resemblance to “The Party of Lincoln” and so abandoning it. Making it available, like a website domain, to anyone who claims it. Any party committed to character with integrity, personified by our most loved and admired president, Abraham Lincoln. To be claimed by the Democratic Party should it prove itself worthy of it.
Greatness at the heart of Democracy
What will get Democrats somewhere is Newton’s law, that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. Understand context with explanation that combines both logic and love. Put attention where it belongs: on what it will take for those still committed to Lincoln’s ideal to reclaim it and rebuild it stronger than ever. Understanding that while this is happening the “strength” of its barbaric reversers will diminish in equal proportion.
Their hare-brained entertainments in the theatre of the absurd no match for minds thinking rationally and hearts feeling sensitively. The appeal of boorish cruelties, reversing consent into slavish conformance in the name of “order,” no match for empathy. The trait whose absence defined slavery as inhuman and abundance defined Lincoln as human.
And our Democracy as great. For its part in helping to rid the world of slavery in one war and fascism in another. Wars of necessity, when blood had to be shed and courage tested. Not wasted on the theatrics of self-glorification by the cult of hierarchy. Ass-kissing apes seeking immortality in the insignia of corruption: SPQR standards, heil-myself salutes, swastikas, and prissy SS uniforms. The apotheosis of “winning” in the wreckage of Berlin and Hamburg in May 1945.
Integrity at the heart of greatness
Yes. Fight with all our might. Use every means afforded by the Constitution. But while we’re doing so learn to stop being manipulated. By MAGA provocations and ass-kissing Republicans, who no more stand for “republic” than the “Party of Lincoln.” Into wasting our thinking and attention on phony issues, and start paying attention to the real issue: our own character and our own thinking. The observance of honor and integrity that distinguishes human-ape from ape. For which nobody is responsible but us.
Stop being dis-integrated by the lure of self-serving convenience, an addiction that only we can break. Gather instead where the Party belongs: at the Lincoln Memorial. Honoring his ideal of integrity by honoring our own.