Change you can bereave in (Or, How I learned to stop worrying and hate the Democrats)

And breathe out.

The people have spoken. Their votes are in, they’ve been counted, we think, and faith has been restored in the system. Barack Obama has been elected president without incident and Big Bad Bush, barring some last-minute presidential term extension act that all the Democrats will vote for, will head back to his ranch in January. Or if not his ranch, then perhaps the 100,000 acres of land he bought on an aquifer in Paraguay. (Note to self: I wonder if Paraguay still has no extradition treaty?)

So now that the country’s all fixed up sharp again and the sense of urgency and panic are gone, ol’ Snotty here, yours truly, would like to pour a tall brandy, take a deep breath, bring the volume down a level and just get real witchew.

I get that Obama’s intelligent and very charismatic, and his election certainly affords a feeling of empowerment to the black community. He’s also got more people than ever before to engage in the political process (though, you could argue Bush has done just as much toward that, as well, by being such a villain). What’s more, Obama should substantially improve Americans’ image abroad. These are all positive things, and for that reason, Barack Obama’s election is better than John McCain’s.

But what is all this change he done talked about? Obama said it himself: “Most of the bills I voted for in the Senate were from Republicans and President Bush.”

Every single Democrat, save for a handful, has been a fucking collaborator with this current criminal administration. For the first four years the Democrats were enablers, an opposition in name only that was so terrified of the political climate it let the Republicans pull whatever got damn atrocity they wanted.

But by the time we reached the second four years the Democrats smelled an opportunity, and they moved from enablers to active collaborators. The political landscape in America became a bizarro world where traditional Republicans like Sen. Dick Lugar, of Indiana, and Sen. Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, called for an end to Iraq, while the Democrats, nearly in unison, voted for more funding for that unlawful war. Some did it to boost their conservative credentials; others did it because they knew that the longer the war goes on, the more it hurts Republicans.

Democrats have played with people’s lives for the bullshit excuse of political opportunity, and I find that inexcusable. You might say, I hate that. Some say Obama and Hillary and others had to vote the way they did because the country was too conservative and they needed to get elected at this important time so they could one day enact that change that always seems to be just around the corner!

Bullshit. For two reasons. Firstly, we’re not talking about a farming bill. They were voting on war and torture and civil liberties and the future of Roe vs. Wade! By 2004, the war in Iraq was no longer popular (which is why Democrats keep extending that Republican-branded holiday), the nation was appalled by waterboarding, the people were fearful of being spied upon by their telecom company, and justices Alito and Roberts weren’t supported by a majority of the people. The Democrats, Obama and his ambitions at the forefront among them, voted for every single one of those! Abortion rights, which is a sexist issue not a religious one, have been put in danger because Obama voted to confirm justices who vehemently oppose a woman’s right to choose. Why does Obama hate women?

Finally, secondly, aggravatingly and unconscionably, if the country really truly is that conservative (New York and Illinois were really that right wing?) and you’re forced into a position where the only way you can retain your seat is to vote against your better conscience… then fucking resign! Become Cindy Sheehan (who Democrats now brand a ‘traitor’ for running against Pelosi). Become Jesse Jackson. Lead people in protest outside the halls of Congress rather than capitulate within them. The only reason one wouldn’t is because of hubris.

I know what a Republican does. Like a giant turd in the grass, I know what to expect when I set foot on their side of the yard. But the Democrats should have been better. What does it say about them that a former Ku Klux Klansman, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, became the moral conscience of that party? At the very least, when the Democrats got their majority in Congress they could have thrown a dart at a wall full of crimes and chosen one, anything the Bush junta has done, with which to impeach this administration. But no. Obama and Hillary said it wasn’t the right time, given the nation was at war. Or was it that the longer an unpopular Bush was in office, the more it benefited the Democrats in the long term come this election year? Pelosi went further and flatly said impeachment was ‘off the table’.

Assholes. Big, shit-encrusted, rubbed-raw, dysenteric sphincters. They’re even worse than Republicans; they lure you into the grass with your bare feet on the promise of no more shit, only for you to discover that all that morning dew is actually piss.

The Democrats could have done something to stop it all; in 2006 they finally had the political capital they complained they didn’t have when they were forced to vote for the Iraq war, but they didn’t do a thing to make it right. They’re collaborators, and they’re just as guilty.

Obama eloquently invoked the spirit of King in his inspiring speech the other night, but if he truly in his heart wants to be a reformer, he applied for the wrong fucking job. In the last eight years, the Democrats have shown themselves to be the left arm of a right-handed vigilante. Change, however vaguely or specifically they wish to articulate it, will never come from a Democrat nor a Republican in the political system we have today. It will only come when they foreclose on that old white house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC.