I’ve been a lifelong in your face, but behind-the-scenes hand-wringing, Democrat.
The kind of neurotic, over-educated, big city, holier-than-thou bleeding heart liberal that gets parodied in a Saturday Night Live sketch, roasted on Fox News or is constantly and very curtly dismissed in opinion pieces on the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
I don’t remember exactly when this started.
But I do recall how pissed off I was as a young teenager in 1971 when people laughed at the brilliant and black N.Y.C. Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm when she announced she was running for president.
Clearly, she was the smartest person in the race. And certainly the most honest and decent.
(Note: Though certainly that wasn’t a high bar).
Yes, I was too young to vote but how stupid can people be, I proclaimed to anyone who would listen (Note: Not many). It’s so obvious Nixon is a lying sleaze!!
When my own Democratic mother insisted she was voting for Nixon because he promised to end the draft and she didn’t want me to die in Vietnam, I didn’t talk to her for a week.
If the Army drafts me, we’re in a lot of trouble, I screamed back at her.
And I will not be going to Vietnam, trust me.
I hadn’t revealed my gay card yet. But I knew.
Well, here we are several generations later.
Gays can be in the military, a woman of color has been nominated by the Democratic party to run for president and, after a barnstorming convention with record-breaking, meme-making viewership, she is right now favored to win by 3.6%.
As for laughing, all we can hear is the natural belly laugh of the candidate, Kamala Harris, the current U.S. Vice President and California’s own former senator and Attorney General, as she shows her party, the country and the world that a politician can be smart, qualified, tough, loving, articulate, strong, ambitious and yes – human – all at the same time.
Mrs. Chisolm must be laughing somewhere.
Among other things.
I don’t give myself much credit for knowing as a teenager that someone other than a straight white male could be president. I was a little kid growing up in the tumultuous sixties and all you really had to do was look around to realize that one day that could be so.
But it sure was nice to watch the Democratic convention this week and see it happen in such an irresistibly, celebratory fashion as you were being proved right.
Yes, I know. Not so fast. She hasn’t won yet. Just as all seemed lost six weeks ago, that’s how quickly this lead, this enthusiasm, this OPTIMISM can disappear.
But can’t we be happy about anything EVER?
Yes. We. Can.
I won’t recap the record number of unprecedented moments of joy among Democrats over a four-day convention (Note: The previous record must have been two or three vs. what now clearly tallies well into the thousands).
But I do want to reclaim some of those moments for one overall point of personal privilege.
I realized once and for all after four days of watching the DNC that:
a. I am MUCH more patriotic than I thought.
AND
b. I don’t at all mind a sports metaphor. It simply depends on who is using it. And why.
Yes, it would be so much more fun to talk about Barack Obama cracking a thinly-veiled d-ck joke re: Trump’s crowd size, or Michelle Obama down and dirty wondering aloud, in her best south side of Chicago accent re: his 2024 presidential run: …Who’s gonna tell him that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those “Black jobs?”
But they say it so much better than I do. And it’s available on You Tube.
Barack (7:30):
Michelle (11:30):
Instead, I have to confess that it was VP nominee, Coach Tim Walz who made me see it wasn’t so much that I hated playing team sports at school, which fueled a life-long annoyance at pretty much any team sports analogy under the sun.
It was that I loathed every high school gym teacher and sports coach I ever encountered in real life until I “met” him – the guy who not only coached football AND taught social studies, (Note: Not health ed!) but served as faculty advisor to the gay/straight alliance at the high school where he worked.
I don’t know that Kyle Chandler’s beloved (Note: Even by me) Coach Eric Taylor on Friday Night Lights would have done that, and he was a fictional character.
So when Tim Walz started to close out his acceptance speech for Vice President by stating:
Team, it’s the fourth quarter, we’re down a field goal, but we’re on offense and we’ve got the ball. We’re driving down the field. And, boy, do we have the right team, I was all in.
And when he ended by saying: Our job for everyone watching—is to get in the trenches and do the blocking and tackling: one inch at a time. One yard at a time, one phone call at a time, one door knock at a time, one $5 donation at a time. …Look, we got 76 days. That’s nothing. There’ll be time to sleep when you’re dead. We’re going to leave it on the field! I was sold.
Yes, it helped that my beloved aunt in New York City also used to say you’ll have plenty of time to sleep when you’re dead to little whiny me when I balked at doing something hard, but that’s not the only reason.
As for over-the-top patriotism, anyone who came of age under Nixon, or more recently, Trump, has probably had a difficult time with it.
Too often the empty gestures of in-your-face flag-waving or a robust hand over your heart when the national anthem played was the measure of a patriot. And protesting the actions of your country, your president, your lawmakers or the actual laws themselves meant you were a…traitor?… a Commie?… a Soviet/Russia spy?
Well, the tables have certainly been turned on all that, and most particularly on the latter, in this presidential race, haven’t they?
That’s how a new patriotism coined by Vice President Harris in her nominating speech – one that not only moved me but, I suspect, millions of others who knew in their hearts it wasn’t a song, a salute or the stars and stripes that made a patriot yet never had the right words to say exactly what did – came across:
I… see an America where we hold fast to the fearless belief that built our nation and inspired the world. That here, in this country, anything is possible. That nothing is out of reach. An America where we care for one another, look out for one another and recognize that we have so much more in common than what separates us. That none of us — none of us has to fail for all of us to succeed. And that in unity, there is strength. You know, our opponents in this race are out there every day denigrating America, talking about how terrible everything is. Well, my mother had another lesson she used to teach: Never let anyone tell you who you are. You show them who you are.
America, let us show each other and the world who we are and what we stand for: Freedom, opportunity, compassion, dignity, fairness and endless possibilities.
We are the heirs to the greatest democracy in the history of the world. And on behalf of our children and our grandchildren and all those who sacrificed so dearly for our freedom and liberty, we must be worthy of this moment. It is now our turn to do what generations before us have done, guided by optimism and faith, to fight for this country we love, to fight for the ideals we cherish and to uphold the awesome responsibility that comes with the greatest privilege on Earth: the privilege and pride of being an American. So let’s get out there, let’s fight for it. Let’s get out there, let’s vote for it, and together, let us write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.
I didn’t write it, I didn’t say it, but for the first time in a long time I finally felt it.
Beyonce (ft. Kendrick Lamar) – “Freedom”
notes from a chair 