What did you think? That elections would not have consequences? That America would not notice or care about the burnt ruins resulting from your policies? Did you buy into that caricature of us that you constructed? Democrats as effete, effeminate, and ineffective? That we are Socialist fascist Saddam-loving terrorist sympathizers who would love nothing more than for Al Qaeda/Iran/ScaryMooooslims to acquire fissile material for them to incinerate America?
We have news for you, pal. This is who Democrats are: We weld, mine, fit pipe, dig, haul, lift, plow, put our shoulders to the wheel and our hands on a machine every day. We run into burning buildings, put ourselves in the line of fire, teach children, care for the sick, put on uniforms, and do our duty. We are social workers, librarians, bus drivers, crane operators, college professors, plumbers (real plumbers), and yes, community organizers. We minister, we heal, we get up early, work the late shift, take night classes, wait in the cold for buses, get stiffed on tips, come in on weekends, and feed our daily worries and disappointments with hope.
And you? You will never acknowledge your fellow citizens, that we -- not you -- are the ordinary mainstream that fuels America, embodies its values, and gives it strength. You don't understand this kind of strength.So let me put this in terms that you can understand: We just knocked you down, pal. Your mouth is good and god-damned bloody. And now you can squirm and writhe, but don't look away, turn your face up from the dust and look up into our eyes. That is our boot on your neck. That bitterness is how blood tastes when it's your own and not the blood of Iraqi and Afghan children, not the blood of the flower of our military youth, of tortured innocents whose unheard screams resound unheard in cold, dark cells while you observe them mildly in lab coats from behind your clipboards. You will scream too, but you, however, will still be heard; you will still shove your porcelain faces and acrylic hair into our screens, still disgorge your caustic bile into our newspapers, still engage in your action figure patriotism in that alternate reality that you refuse to leave because it has served you so well for eight years.
Because you were successful, weren't you. We'll grant you that. You did exactly what you set out to do. You set fire to the world and smiled while it burned. You had undisclosed locations, crackpot schemes, and elaborate blueprints for a permanent majority that has now gone the way of the Thousand Year Reich. But while it lasted you turned over government agencies to be managed by the corporations that they were created to regulate, shredded the Constitution, harmed labor, used patriotism as the pretext for spying, for harming civil rights, for engaging in wars, for disappearing people. You hurt the climate, changed laws to hinder citizens from obtaining justice, and at every turn sided against citizens and with corporations. In fact, you turned every possible endeavor over to corporations and their lobbyists for them to profit from their installation of you as their proxy. And on and on and on. But it's over for you..
You're still in denial, we know, still insisting on your own relevance and believing that greater days lie ahead for you. Denial. Because when your health care is better, schools are improved, and our nation regains some international respect, you will still have your guns, you will still have your hatred, your resentment, your bigotry and your fear. You will still also have your freedom of speech, and you will still be using that First Amendment right to rave against the wave of change that will have brought you these improvements in your standard of living. That is our goal, to make this country better for all of us. But you will still hate us, the Democratic voters who made your lives better, and you will deny that we improved the nation that your fringe (now indistinguishable from your mainstream) is trying to leave.
So have your tea parties, wear your funny hats and aprons at those "We Surround Them" barbecues, talk your seditious secession, and lobby to rename Independence Day. Wail and gnash your teeth, because that's all that's left for you to do now. You never cared for all of America in its glorious extravagant diversity that you mock, disdain, and attempt to extinguish. You only wanted to rule, to beat down the part of America that threatened you, that enraged you with its reminder that others matter, that human beings are flesh and blood, not unfeeling objects for you to throw into the meatgrinder of your wars and policies hostile to human dignity and life.
You don't understand that this was eight years in the making. That we won in 2000 and that this wave is a tsunami now because the waters were held back by five people you appointed as supreme arbiters of American justice. Instead of justice we were forced into a surreality, a waking nightmare similar to science fiction alternate timelines in which Nazis won World War II.
We can't have back what we lost. We can't undo what's been done. The world will still be imperfect and we will still have to fight you every step of the way to improve the lives of all Americans, including the people in your base. The future will still be difficult. But today? Today (and maybe for the next couple of days), we will gloat. We will revel. We smashed your mouth good and hard, and you know it.
So eat it, motherfucker. Eat it. Because it's only been one hundred days; there's more to come, and we're going to make good and god-damned sure that you get more than your fill.