Something to Calm Me Down

Daily Kos

Gnashing and Rending: A Modest Proposal That You Chill

by LarsThorwald

Mon Apr 28, 2008 at 03:07:45 PM PDT



What's all this, then?



I go away for a nice little weekend with my family, and I come back to the internets and it's like 28 Days Later or 28 Weeks Later, except it's only 4 days later, and instead of the "rage" virus, everyone has been infected with "chickenshit Democrat hand-wringing" virus.



Well, pardon my French, but fuck that noise.



Follow me over the fold, because I am about to give you the woodshedding slash fight-them-on-the-beaches lecture you so clearly need. You are Alan Arkin, and you desperately need an Alec Baldwin to tell you how it is. You need a Jimmy Dugan, standing there, yelling at you about how there is no crying in baseball.



So sit down and shut up. Because you are acting, excuse me, like the Grade "A" archetypal Democrat: the spineless pussy.



And you need to calm down.



Reader discretion is profoundly advised.



* LarsThorwald's diary :: ::

*



Pay attention. And for Christ's sake, stop fidgeting with your hands.



Look, I don't know what the fuck spooked you into your little blue funk, but this wailing and rending of garments and gnashing of teeth has got to stop. And let me tell you why.



Presidential politics is a contact sport played without pads, and many of the most aggressive players on this field are in it to win it, and that means blood and pain and unfairness. The media has not been a fair ref in decades, and you know what? Boo fucking hoo. Yes, the media picks on candidates, but goddamnit, every one of the candidates that has ever taken to the stage to announce his or her candidacy knows that. And if he didn't, if he was really counting on fairness from the media, then he is too stupid to be President.



If any candidate thought that things like Wright or Bosnia or flag pins or other things weren't going to come up, then that person is too naive to be President.



If any candidate thinks that every week is going to be a million-dollar, gold-plated lovefest from the public, then that candidate is too pollyannish to be President.



Now let me tell you something you already know. Barack Obama is not pollyannish. He is not naive. And he sure as hell isn't stupid.



You don't think he and Axelriod didn't sit down months ago to discuss the potential scandals and controversies? You don't think they mapped that out and weighed that in the balance of how to run the campaign? You don't think they saw what was coming a mile away like the punchline to a bad joke?



You must. Because some of you people have been mewling around here like a bunch of hanky-clutching twists, all eat up over how and whether Wright will doom Obama, or whether one poll showing "decline" will doom Obama, or whether this miniscule campaign tactic will doom Obama, or whether that one will doom Obama.



You have gone from hope and change to doom and gloom. You people have gone from "Yes We Can" to "Obama Should..." And where you once saw the possibilities that awaits a candidate who has millions at his back, you now see an abyssmal pitfall at every slight misstep. OMG!! OBAMA GAVE HILLARY TEH MIDDLE FINGERS! WHAT WILL THIS DO O HI9S POLL NUMBERZ?!?!



Jesus Christ. What the fuck happened to you people?



Has Karl Rove so conditioned you that you now accept his rules and react like whipped dogs to every shout by an opponent? Has the Clinton campaign and its supporters so thoroughly fatigued and harrangued you that you now wonder whether Obama is "electable" based on the arguments of someone who should be the very last person making electability arguments--someone who is losing?



Are you so easily defeated?



Well, let me tell you, sisters and brothers, I don't believe you are that easily defeated.



Because you know that this was not going to be easy, and you signed up all the same. You know, as the man himself said, that the battles ahead would be long. That there would be a chorus of cynics who would only grow louder and more dissonant.



You knew that this man--this African American man who dared to challenge, who had the audacity to challenge existing power structures and ideas and the way of doing business--you knew that this man was going to be attacked, and derided, and ridiculed, and scorned.



You knew that his kind of thinking would make too many enemies.



You knew that they would throw more than the kitchen sink at him--you knew that their goal was to make it such that he would feel that the whole of the moon and the stars had fallen upon him.



You knew that in this primary we would see the most jaw-dropping, line-shattering, undignified things ever said about or hurled at one man. You knew he would make mistakes, and you knew those who wanted him defeated would take every mistake and twist it into a lie-filled, pointed cudgel that they would use to bash him again and again and again.



You knew all this.



You knew all this, but still you signed up.



But now a poll or two sends your head into your hands? Now a speech by a Reverend makes you a veritable cassandra, shouting with woe at the defeat this will bring? Now the slightest breeze makes you shutter your windows and fall to the floor crying about the storm?



What a slender reed you must think this man, that he would bend and break under such circumstances. And yet, throughout all of this, has he raised his voice or bared his teeth? Has he angrily confronted a reporter, as McCain did when pressed? Has he poured out emotionally, or lash out with calls of "Shame! For shame!" as Hillary has?



Of course not. His is an even temper. His is a carefully measured countenance. His is even, at times, a show of humor.



He does not moan, he does not rend, he does not gnash. He keeps his eyes on the prize, and he negotiates rocky shoals.



He is not stupid. He knows where the weaknesses lie.



And if I didn't think he couldn't handle this and worse, I'd have abandoned him long ago. But I didn't.



And neither did you.



So calm down. This is not the time to panic, for there is nothing to panic about.



Put on your helmet and tighten your chinstrap. Grab tight your standard, and hold fast.



You march with fourteen million strong. You march with strength. You march with change.



You march, my brothers and sisters, with history.



Onward.