The other guy eventually gets in

 

In recent days, I find myself thinking a lot about 2008.  Barack Obama, the first black man elected President of the United States, had led the Democrats to an impressive victory.  I’m sure there can be much discussion over the factors that played in his favor, but at the time to those of us that backed him and voted for him, it felt like a huge victory, and looked like a mandate from the American people.  He won 52.9percent of the popular vote, 7.2% more than McCain’s 45.7%.  The Democrats in the House gained 21 seats, giving them a comfortable majority of 257 to 178.  For a brief moment, the Democrats held a supermajority in the Senate, a feat that looks unattainable these days for any party.  When people today suggest that Trump’s victory is a mandate of the American people, I think back to this time, and think – if ever in my lifetime was the outcome of an election a mandate of the American people, this would have been it. 

It was a bad time to be a Republican.

In my younger, naïve, delusional days, I was full of hope.  I wanted to see an outstretched hand from the Democrats to the Republicans to join them, to join this mandate of the American people.  There was talk of Obama having a Republican in his cabinet, and we were excited about that.  Perhaps after 8 years of a failed war mongering dubya administration that divided the country, finally we could come together behind a new chapter in American history.

What would unfold would be unprecedented division that has yet to slow.  And there are very different views on how that unfolded.  To some – Obama was foolish, and traded in all his favors too soon to ram through a poorly crafted Health care bill, which cost him and the Democrats dearly in the midterms.  To me, I saw the Democrats emboldened by their victory, roll up their sleeves and get to work.  A big part of their campaigning for years had been for health care reforms.  It was their time to deliver.  And throughout the process, the Republicans did nothing but bitch and moan.  Carrying out publicity stunts of carrying reams of paper to demonstrate how “long and complicated” the Health care legislation was.  Nevermind the legislation was largely based on previous proposals from the Republicans themselves.  But heaven forbid this new administration have a success.  Bitch McConnell made it very clear what his goal was, and it wasn’t to serve the American people.  It was to make this new President a one term President.  And working with the Democrats to carry out their mandate from the American people wasn’t going to accomplish that.  And so unfolded 8 years of Republican obstruction, preventing anything we voted the Democrats in to do from getting done.  In my mind, the Republicans denied us our victory, and worked against the will of the American people.

Anyways, that’s my highly biased view of how it unfolded.  Do I really believe all of that?  *shrugs*  Does it matter?  Perhaps it’s an angry oversimplification of how I see it.  But it’s certainly how I felt about how things unfolded.  We voted for change, we got obstruction. 

But another memory stands out in my mind from the time of Obama’s Presidency.  And that’s a youtube video posted by Penn Jillette.  I forget if there was a specific event or action that he was responding to, but the gist of it was talking about the problems of a President grabbing more power.  The build up speaking to, even if you believe he’s doing it for the right reasons, even if you think he can be trusted with that power….THE OTHER GUY EVENTUALLY GETS IN!!!!  And what unfolded was an amount of time of energetic jumping up and down and screaming about EVENTUALLY THE OTHER GUY GETS IN!!!!  The point being – when a President makes an unprecedented grab for power, and we’re just ok with that, that becomes precedence, and then any future President gets that power.

And that brings us to today.  Where what the Trump administration aided by Musk are doing can undeniably be called an unprecedented grabbing of power.  Applauded by the right as a necessary uncovering and cutting of excessive government waste.  Backed up with lists put out by the administration of what sounds like ridiculous wastes of money no rational person would agree to.  Many of which were misleading statements, or flat out lies.  When pressed on the misinformation, Musk basically stated sometimes he gets it wrong, but trust me, bro.  Not a very satisfying answer at all.  When pressed on issues like this, some responses are to the effect of that tired old saying, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelets.  And for some reason, comparing omelets with sex somehow got into the answer in one odd case.  But that hardly seems like a satisfying response to a case of millionaires and billionaires carrying out a plan to cut things they see as waste without doing the proper research, which inevitably results in necessary aid being denied to the poorest and most in need in this world.  It really comes across much like this:

It seems rather hypocritical for Musk to be shutting down aid to the poor, when his own SpaceX Company has received 38.8 million in federal funding.  You want to cut government waste?  How about we stop handing out our funds to the billionaire class that doesn’t need them!

I also find it rather odd to see a section of the country that is usually so mistrustful of the government with power, cheering on this power grab – are these people really so short sighted?  Have these billionaires really earned your trust?

But, even if we put this aside, and chalk it up to liberal exaggeration.  Even if you truly believe that this is all ridiculous waste that is finally being cleaned up.  This is still the part of the story where we need a fired up Penn Jillette jumping up and down frantically screaming “EVENTUALLY THE OTHER GUY GETS IN”

Liberals have now lived through 8 years of their mandate being plowed over by a disgruntled GOP that was only interested in clawing back their power, 4 years of Trump’s first term despite losing the popular vote in the election, and an unsatisfying 4 years of Biden with just more anger and division.  In 2016, the rally of the Democrats was “when they go low, we go high”.  I’m not hearing that anymore. 

Despite how big of a fucking moron I think George Dubya Bush is, at least his rallying cry was “I’m a uniter, not a divider.”  And he failed at that miserably, but at least he took that tone.  Trump, however, basically brands half the country as his mortal enemy to be defeated.  That is not how to be a good leader – he’s supposed to be the President for everyone, not only the ass kissers that submit to his will!  His leadership style only further drives a wedge in the country, and further escalates the anger and division that exists in this country, and I think we need unity more than ever in this time.  But Trump is not leading us to a path to unity.  The Democrats and liberals are tired of losing to this bullshit, and they’re angry.  The liberals in this country aren’t ready to rally behind and elect a rational leader that will bring the country together, they want revenge against this revenge.  They want the anti-Trump.  And the right and GOP’s embracement of anger and revenge is going to bring them more anger and revenge with what will likely rise out of the current broken Democratic party.

THE OTHER GUY EVENTUALLY GETS IN!!!!

And when he does, HE’S GOING TO BE PISSED, ANGRY, AND EMBOLDENED WITH THE SAME POWER THAT TRUMP FOUGHT FOR AND GRABBED AWAY FROM CONGRESS AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!!!!

This is not a good road to be on, and there’s lots of reasons for the sane and rational on all sides of the isle to be very concerned about what this all means for the short and long term future of this country.