David J Bauman

It’s been a busy week since the election, but also I’ve taken as much time as possible to just read and work on new poetry. Sorry, not a lot of blogging, but I thought I’d do a belated post-election wrap up before moving on to our regularly scheduled DadPoet posts.

I’ve said, probably somewhere in recent comments that I tend not to give much press to the most poisonous of public figures. The likes of Fred Phelps, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh (yes, I do put them all in the same category), Trump and maybe least toxic of them, O’Reilley don’t need my help to spread their anger, hatred and crazy talk. For the same reason, even when talking about gay issues, you never hear me mention that charlatan Fred Phelps.

But when the crazy talk gets so crazy (see my last post about Trump’s Revolution), when they are this out of touch with reality, it needs to be pointed out. The good people on the ground who have been poisoned by their insanity need to know what their crazy heroes said before they deleted their comments from Twitter.

There is so much I could say, but again, let’s keep it brief. You can check out some great political blogs in the related posts below.  Meanwhile poetry awaits, and this post needs to get out of my drafts folder where its been for three days so that I can write about how stunned I am to find myself the father of a 22 year-old son! Happy Birthday, Jo! Amazing to be having a beer with you tonight, after looking at your kindergarten pictures this morning!

One of the best ways to sum this up is with this short video that you may have already seen. If you have not, please do, it’s worth it. And if you can at all spare the 15 minutes to watch the long version, do yourself a favor and click here. I think it’s perfect.

Trump was tweeting all over for a revolution, for fighting back. You can click back to my last post to learn more about that, but apparently he couldn’t do math any better than Carl Rove, and was unaware that those California votes still being counted would tip the popular vote in Obama’s favor, to the tune of about three million. He was complaining about the electoral college, but I think it’s funny that none of those boys were upset when G.W. Bush lost the popular vote and but won via electoral votes. Life went on, eh? Well, Trump, like it or not, Obama won both the popular vote and the electoral vote.

And regardless what you think of it, and I think it does has some value, (You’ll have to look up the history on your own), here’s a brief video from a few years back of how the electoral college works in plain English.

Alright, so Bill O’Reilley said that the conservatives lost because the American public wants “stuff.” Rush Limbaugh claimed that conservatism lost because it’s hard to fight Santa Claus. I say they are both living in delusions, and extremism. This election was not about handouts to free-loaders, but about compassion, and reason. Do they remember how they boo-ed Rick Perry? The man said that if we wish to punish kids (who have only known this country as home) because of their parents moved here illegally that we had no heart. He shortly lost ground in the primaries. Having a heart and winning the Republican candidacy apparently could not go hand in hand.

Romney thought he should be taxed less than people like me, because people like him invest in the economy. In his partner’s words, he sees himself as a “job creator.”  I was not convinced. A history of “venture capitalism,” that even his own Republican peers referred to as “vulture capitalism,” laying off workers, downsizing and outsourcing all were ways to line his and his investors’ pockets, and evidence to me that he could make money, but not that he cared enough to lead people, or help his country’s unemployed get back to work.

This election was about kindness and compassion, but not about “stuff” or handouts. It’s about not firing teachers, firefighters, police officers and other public workers while trying to say that they are the problem, rather than the bankers and wall street boys who wrecked the economy.

I pointed out at work the other day, when I overheard a discussion about welfare fraud and “moochers,” that we recently had a Republican president for eight years, and we had those problems then. It’s not because of Barack Obama. I asked if they were aware that taxes did not go up during these last four years. I pointed out that there are certain wealthy guys who just love it when we fight among ourselves and think that our neighbors are trying to get a free ride while we work so hard, when in fact most corporate CEO’s know nothing of the hard work they do every day themselves, and with the taxes that Romney and Ryan wanted to raise, we’d be paying while the wealthy would be getting tax cuts.

It was actually an intelligent discussion, and respectful on all sides. I think we need more of those, and less of the angry hate flinging. I can talk to someone about his or her fiscal ideas of conservatism, and even disagree, but I have a hard time being respectful toward people who pedal disrespectful social policies that infringe on the rights of women, immigrants, and minorities.

I’m not saying, most of us are not saying, that there is no room for any sort of conservatism. Most of us are all for fiscal and personal responsibility, but we are also for compassion and respect.  There is no room in a healthy nation for the kind of hateful, hurtful, angry racist, anti-gay, misogynist conservationism of the radical right, especially of the folks I mentioned up above who are really not news people at all , but entertainers, making big money off of the paranoia they incite in good American citizens.

But how good are we when we not only let them talk this vile gibberish, but we then spread it ourselves? We are our brother’s keeper after all. Thank god, our nation hasn’t yet forgotten it. I had feared that maybe it had. But good things happened Tuesday. Some of it, including the marriage equality votes, and the ousting of some of the most vitriolic Tea Partiers, like Joe Walsh, I was crossing my fingers for. But as Rachel Maddow said, “That happened.” The conservatives need to stop and think about their failings, instead of blaming it on the rest of America.

But  now we push forward for a better world and a better tomorrow.

Related articles

• What’s Hurting the GOP More? Immigration or Limbaugh? (themoderatevoice.com)
• Kübler-Ross Meets the Conservative Movement (theamericanconservative.com)
• Picket Fence Apocalypse (campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Romney lost because Obama beat him (smd12364.newsvine.com)
• FOCUS | Hey Rush Limbaugh, Attitude Not Tokens Get Minority Votes (readersupportednews.org)
• Ann Coulter and the Republican Problem (lifeasiknowitv1.wordpress.com)
• Bitter (chiefwritingwolf.com)
• Robert J. Elisberg: Who Is Most Pissed Off After This Election (huffingtonpost.com)
• Ann Coulter Tells Conservatives to Stop Talking Crazy Sh*t (crooksandliars.com)
• Maddow: ‘There’s been a truthfulness problem with the Romney campaign’ (rawstory.com)