Early in the shutdown crisis, John Boehner famously said "This is not a game." That was the one and only thing he was right about during this fiasco, created by the Tea Party and entirely enabled by Boehner.
It got me thinking about how, to a great extent, the mental energy I have devoted to politics all my life -- I am a dyed-in-the-wool red-diaper-baby Democrat raised to despise Republicans -- was more a less a game.
Don't get me wrong. My passion for and faith in progressive politics was always very real. But having led a comfortable middle class existence in sunny California, where pretty much my every wish came true, I never personally experienced the harsh conservative pushback against the New Deal waged by Republicans, especially since the dawn of the Reagan era.
Until now.
The suicidal shutdown/debt ceiling crisis, wholly plotted with malice aforethought by Tea Party scum and the dope-dealing billionaires that fund them, went right up to the edge of hurting me, personally and directly. As other diaries here noted, I, too, was ready to pull money out of the bank, which no doubt would have been part of a wave of bank runs, further hurtling the country and the world down the abyss.
Fortunately, the President, Harry Reid and my Dems held tough, and utterly vanquished these pricks... for now. It was a sweet political victory indeed.
But I'm left with a sick feeling. These deeply sadistic traitors hurt the country. They were ready to hurt it more. They were ready to hurt me -- me of the dreamy bubble. I have a new and much darker loathing for these monsters of the right. More than 140 of them in the House voted yesterday to cause more and worse hurt on us all.
They really meant it. This was NO game.
We all know this to be true: The Cruzade is not over. They will be back. Let's fight and beat them again, take their gavel away in 2014 and crush them for good. I think it can be done.