About the only

About the only affiliation I accept in this life is that I’m a Democrat. Not a joiner, and not even formally a member of the Democratic Party. But I’m a Democrat. The Democratic Party is, and always has been, a mess. It is the oldest American party, and the only truly big tent in American life. Like the country, it has a dark history. At the time of the Civil War, and for a long time thereafter, it was working the same positively Satanic vibe that today’s Republican Party has staked its future on. In those years, I might well have been a Republican. But since the ‘20s (a century ago), between the two parties, it hasn’t even been close. If you are for the little man (and woman!), ecological justice, racial justice and healing, gays, the arts, modern infrastructure . . . all the good stuff—there is one and only one major party for you. I didn’t choose to be born an American. I didn’t choose to be of European descent. I didn’t choose to be Christian. I didn’t choose to be queer. I didn’t choose to be middle class. I didn’t choose to be a southerner. Anyone who knows me knows I rail against all of that stuff, and am grossed out by all of it at one time or another. At one time or another, I wish each of those things could be different. But here I am. I can either accept this time and this place, and the baggage I bring into it, or not. I can accept my American family, my blood family, my friend family, my queer family and the religious heritage in which I was raised, or not. As an illustration of what I am getting at, let’s take Christianity (please!) I am, in my buddy Sam Wagstaff’s apt phrase, an “ey-wateringly stringent” atheist. I entertain not the slightest doubt that Christian cosmology and eschatology, as well as much of the history contained in the Bible, is bunk. And yet . . . to think that I can slough off the ethics and the culture I received, the Bible verses that echo in my mind and spring to my lips at the opportune moment—to think I can have done with that is the kind of illusion that is best put away in youth. It is part of the garment I walk through this world in. I can add to, modify a bit, but I can’t fundamentally remake that garment. In my view and in my experience, those who believe they can are tragically and destructively deluded. And if one human cannot slough off these garments I’ve mentioned, to think that society at large can do it is even more deluded. Far, far easier for one person. No, we will have to walk with what we have. One thing we have that probably isn’t going away any time soon is our tragically flawed system of government here in the United States. A parlimentary system is, and I think has been proven to be, far superior. If ifs and buts were candied nuts, we’d all die of indigestion, as my mom likes to say. This is what we have. Maybe at some point I will find a way to walk away from this country, and make a different kind of a life somewhere else. But not yet. So I throw my lot in with America. Gas station food, strip malls, tractor pulls, Rikki Lake, Cardi B, strip clubs, trap, subdivisions, megachurches—the whole shit show. I can’t separate myself. And in this America, flawed and shitty as it is, there is one durable and dependable mechanism for social progress—the Democratic Party. If you want to change the world, and eventually you want to legislate as part of that, you will have to work with the Democratic Party. The stinking, loud, always late, always drama Democratic Party. The slow, stupid, antiquated Democratic Party. I don’t pretend that I’m better than that Democratic Party. I am a product of all the same forces that made that old party what it is, and as I work (haltingly, belatedly) to improve myself, I also work to improve the Democratic Party. From the days of the Copperheads who worked to undermine President Lincoln, and further entrench slavery, to being the only major party that knows Black Lives Matter, the party has improved and transformed over the years. It’s never, ever fast enough. And I respect those (to include Bernie Sanders, who I supported for president twice) who choose to stand outside it. Sometimes I agree with them more than with other Democrats. Not infrequently. But for the reasons I’ve been talking about, I choose, and have always chosen, to stand inside it. I have been standing and working for social and economic and ecological justice my whole life. I don’t always receive lectures from people who haven’t been at it as long very well. But I’m just another ratchet ass deluded Democrat. Next.