“Unity” is the buzzword now that the election is over. John Kerry, in his obligatory phone call to Bush, spoke of the “desperate need for unity” and “coming together.” I’m having a hard time deciding who exactly to unify with. Maybe I can unify with the guy who wants to kill doctors who perform abortions and who was charged with sterilizing a woman against her will. Senator Coburn also makes a good point about rampant lesbianism in the schools and how the girls have to go to the bathroom one at a time. My main concern here isn’t that so many of these girls are corrupted by lesbianism, but rather that they seem to be unable to go a few hours without having sex with each other. In the school bathroom. Good for the Oklahoma Senator; by stopping this problem before it gets out of control, he really stuck his finger in the dike.
I can unify with the guy from South Carolina who doesn’t think gays should be allowed to teach. Using the kind of logic that could only come from a nutcase in this Confederate flag-waving state, Jim DeMint rationalized his comment by saying that his sentiments also extended to pregnant, unwed women. I bet a gay pregnant unwed teacher would have no problem sending all the lesbian students to the bathroom at the same time.
Or I can unify with my favorite candidate, Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Pitchers often burn out their arms early in their careers—does the same thing happen with the brain? Bunning is a role model for all those who want to run for public office but who lack the sanity that many see as a requisite. Because of him, there is little doubt that candidates will pop up across the nation carrying around jars of their own urine and espousing platforms like “A plan to remove all the embedded microchips” and “Peoria, Bloomingdale’s and Santa Anna: the new axis of evil.” The man with a lifetime ERA of 3.27 is starting an era of “those who are out of their fucking minds.”
It’s going to be tough to unify with these red states—the vast expanse of land that falls in between the two coasts and the northern border. George W. Bush is the legitimate President of the United States; he is the choice that America made. The choice was also made by 11 states to ban gay marriage. This decision—so crucial to gay couples, so irrelevant to their opponents—came directly from the voice of the people. I’m not surprised that many are rethinking their commitment to direct democracy and the general will of the people. “The people” are spread out much farther than Manhattan, San Francisco, and Chicago; it is hard to “reach out” to a group of people whom most of us would prefer never to be within arm’s reach.
A lot of us are disappointed in the people of this country, disgusted by the choices that have been made. I am going to make a bold stance, though, and say that I like these people. I like Americans; I don’t think they are stupid, and I sympathize with them. It is dangerous to waste our anger on the people of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and all those other states that we usually equate more with the attack scene in “Deliverance” than we do with political astuteness.
Yes, we, as Americans, elected Bush, but we, as Americans, are also exposed to a system of lies and propaganda from the top down, an inept and irresponsible media that has given this administration a free ride on every subject including weapons of mass destruction, uranium from Niger, the ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the leaked name of Joseph Wilson’s wife, the failure to renew the assault weapons ban, the evidence about missing weapons at al-Qaqaa and countless more issues that have been ignored, distorted or cursorily reported with no real investigation. We have had our conceptions of “morality” hi-jacked by neoconservative ideology and Christian Right dogma. The people have been conditioned and duped by religion; they’ve become victims of the unholy alliance between church and state that has solidified religious brainwashing and state-approved subjugation. We have endured years of Democrats acting as a faction within the Republican party with no leadership, a pathetic level of opposition and a presidential nominee forced into the position of a “war candidate” because of the support he gave to the President for the invasion of Iraq.
I do feel unified with the people of the heartland of America, those who are exploited at work, economically oppressed at home and subject to so many insidious forces that they help reelect their persecutors. The inclination to blame and castigate mainstream America is wrong: it doesn’t acknowledge the system that keeps people ignorant and the institutions that fail to protect democracy. Dismissing the people of Arkansas, Tennessee and other states with whittling-based economies as “stupid” is blaming the victim. We live in the most religious Western, industrialized nation. We’ve had fundamentalist Christians serve in the highest levels of government. We have a corporate media that has turned its back on democracy in favor of profit and obsequious stories from partisans, lazy “investigative journalists” and embedded reporters. We have a mass of people with a false consciousness who believe all the lies and who are tools of the ruling class. When you blame the people, you stop fighting for them, and that is dangerous path to embark on. If we are going to listen to Kerry and try to become unified, we need to continue opposing Bush, hold a critical mirror up to the Democrats and recognize that the heartland of America, whether they know it or not, is on our side.
For more of Sussman’s work, visit www.ACrowdedFire.com and listen to A Crowded Fire on 88.1 every Sunday from 12:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m.
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