A couple of days ago, when Tom Vilsack's name turned up as Secretary of Agriculture in Obama's administration, and then Ken Salazar got picked for Interior, a light bulb went on in my head. Ah-ha, I thought. Obama's idea of a big tent holds not just a variety of races, genders, and parties. He's accepting different points of view, too.
Today, defending his choice of Rick Warren as invocator-in-chief at the inauguration, he said so. We can disagree without being disagreeable, he said.
Hoo-boy. I suppose he thinks we should forgive the trespasses of the wingnuts on the right over the last eight years, and learn to live with those toads.
My first reaction is resentment. Why us? Why do the Democrats always have to make nice while the crazy wingnuts get away with bad-faith negotiating and vicious double dealing? Couldn't we slap them silly for a while, and then, when we feel a little better, start down that forgiveness path?
My second reaction is this: that's why we're Democrats. We believe in making nice, in being grownups, in for...for....(deep breath)...forgiveness. If that moronic crackpot in the White House had been a little less moronic and a little more mature - if he'd been accountable to everybody, and not just to the ultra-rich - we might not be in a world of hurt now. And continuing along the trail he blazed and then expecting to end up somewhere different is the definition of insanity.
Besides, we voted for change.
This is going be to a mind-expanding (character-building?) exercise. But okay. I'm ready. On with the show.
(Not giving up my Fox News voodoo dolls, though. Forgiveness can only take a person so far.)
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2 comments:
Never let them see you flinch. That's my motto.
We bounced around the mountain west and the plains for a couple of decades. My husband was a USAF missile guy, and they stick those damned things out in the middle of nowhere. My best 'Mom' lesson came when we got sent back to a desert billet and I took the kids, now in their 20s but then ranging in age from about three or four to maybe six, seven tops. I got out the books and showed them pictures of scorpions and snakes and gave them the warnings about flat bike tires and fangs stuck in treads, always admonished them to always have their water bottle filled and talked to them about dehydration. All the stuff you tell the little rats to keep some day in the future from being shot to hell by being spent in the emergency room.
Then I took them out in the scrub that ran all the way from the property line of the apartment complex (Stella Gardens in Tucson) to the Wilmot gate of DM to introduce them to the desert. I was explaining why it was important to not pick up rocks, and I used my toe - secure in a pair of sturdy boots (a good pair of boots can save your life)- and kicked over a rock. There were four scorpions under it, and they all arched their stingers as soon as that rock moved. It scared the shit out of me, to be perfectly honest, but I didn't let them see that. I turned and looked at them smugly and crossed my arms and said "see?" and all three were wide-eyed and both of the girls jaws were dropped down around their navels.
It's good to know that the urge to say "Ha!" when proved right is as maternal and natural as is the urge to make them put on a sweater when you're cold...
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