Dear Republicans: I’m Glad I’m Not You

You’re not doing well, folks. George Santos is looking better every day.

by Rich Herschlag

My B12 and white blood cell count are low. My low density cholesterol is high. I have a traffic court hearing a hundred miles away ten months from now to keep points off my license. I am a New York Giants fan. I have a molar implant going in next month. Things are less than perfect with me these days. But dear Republicans, I’m glad I’m not you.

I’m glad I don’t answer to a psychotic narcissist with a sixth grade understanding of U.S. history and, psychologically speaking, skin the thickness of onion peel. I’m glad I didn’t spend thirty years complaining about the border and then gut a bipartisan deal in Congress because an imbecile in a golf cart was throwing a hissy fit. Glad my political modus operandi is not waiting for the usual redneck sociopaths to call in death threats to an uncooperative senator. Glad I don’t have to wake up every morning to reposted archived videos of myself condemning the January 6 riot roughly twenty-four months before eventually calling it a peaceful demonstration that got a little out of hand. You’re not doing well, folks. George Santos is looking better every day.

Not that being a lifelong Democrat has always been a cakewalk. Back when Bill Clinton pushed through NAFTA and gutted FCC regulations prohibiting media monopolies, I started calling myself an independent and meticulously scraped the DNC sticker off of my ’94 Saturn. In disgust over the gratuitous Monica Lewinsky scandal—a self-defeating debacle of a monkey wrench in the engine of progressive momentum and whatever was left of good government at the time—I swore off mahogany desks for a year. The capstone of the 90s for me was voting for Ralph Nader a second time and as a result being blamed by family members for 9/11, the Iraq War, and swiftboating. But it never reached the point where I couldn’t show my face at my wife’s Lemaze class.

Yes, I know some of you once proud elephants effectively left Congress in the opening days of 2017, wrote fuzzy warm books about Abe Lincoln, and took peyote at Burning Man while “finding yourselves.” Others returned to your libertarian think tanks, got back on the tobacco industry payroll, and paid down mortgage principal with leftover PAC money from Sheldon Adelson. Still others of you became serial replacement hosts and ad infinitum guests on MSNBC, where you expressed continued loathing of liberalism but added that Mussolini Part II was a tad too much for your Midwest Chamber of Commerce sensibilities. Read my lips: I am not impressed. It’s like demanding a trophy for being one of the not-so-violent members for the Manson family.

So I’m glad I don’t have to wait around for a cryptic post from a 77-year-old buffoon in pajamas eating a Big Mac and mumbling in Pig Latin in order to figure out whether to strap a bomb under someone’s car or just call it a night. I’m glad my fellow alums from Yale Law won’t refuse invitations to our baby shower because I sold my soul to Satan for a possible yet unlikely Vice Presidential nod. Glad I didn’t spend the entire post-WWII era screaming from a soapbox about a robust national defense only to dangle the liberty of Europe and the rest of the Free World from a string. Glad I don’t feel compelled to threaten to destroy the dollar every 90 days by holding the federal budget hostage. Glad I don’t show up like trailer trash in the House Chamber yelling obscenities on national television.

Glad I don’t waste millions of taxpayer dollars on old and boring drug addiction issues of First Family members. Glad I don’t request permission from Donald J. Trump to fart. Glad my idea of freedom is not banning The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Glad I don’t spend roughly one third of my waking hours sweating out Taylor Swift’s presidential endorsement.

Glad I believe my eyes over Vladimir Putin’s propaganda. Thrilled five percent of my disposable income isn’t controlled by Steve Bannon. Tickled pink my kids and their significant others still come to Thanksgiving. Proud I know the name of my congressional representative and that Reconstruction isn’t just what they’re doing with my hip. Glad I don’t think poking a few more holes in the ground in Texas will do much for the price of gas, or that if it somehow did that would justify scrapping the American experiment.

Proud I don’t express my family values by leaving a loaded AK-47 on the sofa while my kids play Xbox a few feet away. Overjoyed I don’t take TASERs, bear spray, and billy clubs to “peaceful demonstrations.” Thankful I don’t force 12-year-old rape and incest victims to carry to term fetuses I will one day gerrymander out of a vote. Tickled I can look at myself in the mirror without Lucifer staring back at me.

Glad I don’t care how old Joe Biden is. Because tyranny is timeless.

Read the latest for Banter Members:

A Tale Of Two Legal Systems

The judicial system is bending over backwards for Trump while everyday Americans get crushed.

by Bob Cesca

WASHINGTON, DC – George Floyd was arrested and executed within about nine minutes. Eric Garner was executed by chokehold for allegedly selling cigarettes. Just about every Black American is familiar with our two-tiered system of justice: one for wealthy white men and one for the rest of us. Even as a privileged white man myself I’ve faced the myriad downsides of not possessing the wealth or status to afford the legal latitude that Donald Trump is receiving…

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A Tale Of Two Legal Systems