An open letter to my "disappointed" Democratic friends

[NanceGreggs]

43. "The Republican Party is not our enemy."

The Republican Party has done, and continues to do everything in its power to slash funding to programs like welfare and SNAP, shut down abortion providers and silence pro-choice advocates, diminish the power of women to access birth control and their legal right to an abortion, destroy the very concept of the separation of church and state, suppress the vote by instituting insane ID requirements, gerrymandered districts to give their party unfair advantage in vote tallies, promoted every initiative to teach religious-based Creationism as opposed to factual science in our schools, fought to defund programs that benefit our veterans, refuse to accept the equality of women in the workplace and their right to equal pay for equal work, and dismiss out-of-hand the plight of the unemployed, the homeless, the sick and the dying.

They have consistently stood their ground in favour of laws that subject women seeking abortions to humiliating procedures, laws that deny equal rights to gays/lesbians, laws that give rapists parental rights, laws that condemn women - even female children - to delivering babies that have resulted from rape and incest, laws that make it a crime to feed the homeless, laws that separate families via deportation, laws that make it easy to acquit murderers by virtue of their victim having been black, and laws that steal from the poor in order to give to the billionaires among us.

They are pro-war, pro-corporate welfare, pro-tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and multi-billion-dollar companies. They revere and protect gun ownership in spite of the statistics on how many Americans - especially children - die each year as a result of lax gun control legislation. And in the midst of gun-toting hotheads known to be prone to violence, they continually point their fingers at gays/lesbians as being the cause of natural catastrophes like hurricanes and floods, and at the poor as being the cause of the country's economic woes - offering up their designated scapegoats, and encouraging the notion that their elimination from society will cure all that ails us.

Republicans consistently show themselves to be anti-minorities, anti-atheist, anti-Muslim, anti-religious freedom for anyone other than Fundie-type, so-called Christians. They are anti-science, anti-education, anti-gay rights, anti-choice, anti-voting rights, and anti- anything that even remotely smacks of a democracy that operates BY and FOR ALL of the People, as opposed to the select few that have the money to support their campaigns, and the stupidity to elect them to office.

So you can take your "the Republicans aren't the enemy" rhetoric and insert it in that portion of your anatomy where it belongs - and where it can keep your head company, while it's at it. In fact, I doubt you even know what an 'oligarch' is - it's just another term that you've seen repeated on DU, and have added to your on-line vocabulary in order to be part of the crowd you march in lockstep with.

And please spare me a reply. I am already familiar with the cliches you invariably utilize to get across your point in a tireless attempt to pretend you actually have one - which you don't, and never do.

Given all that Republicans stand for, all they have encouraged, all they have tried to sell to knuckle-dragging, drooling FOX-News adherents, all the damage they have done to the country, and the agenda they repeatedly foster - "more of the same, only worse" - to hear someone say they are NOT our enemy is despicable.

I KNOW who my enemy is - and it's not the centrist Dem, it's not the conservative Dem, it's not the Obama supporters - and it is certainly NOT the people you and your ilk have determined are not pure enough Dems to meet your standards - standards which, by the way, have nothing to do with the Democratic Party, but everything to do with your need to present yourself as lefitier-than-thou at every possible opportunity, as though it actually means something in the real world.

MY enemy is the Republican Party as a whole, everything it stands for, everything it seeks to legislate, everything it attempts to promote, and everyone who votes for (R)s in support of the agenda they have made no secret of wanting to further.

The fact that your "Republicans are not the enemy" schtick is acceptable on what still purports to be a Democratic-supporting website speaks for itself. It also explains why the traffic stats on DU have been in decline for the past three years: Ain't no Democrat got time for this shit. Real Democrats are too busy fighting their known enemy, the GOP - instead of pretending they are not really the enemy at all.