Everybody Needs to Chill The Fuck Out!

My liberal friends, take a short memory ride with me for a moment. It’s January 2001. A month earlier, the Supreme Court stopped the recount and handed the presidency to George W. Bush. Protests of his inauguration are planned. (Dude hadn’t even taken office, and we were already protesting the motherfucker.) You know he’s going to be incompetent. You saw through all that compassionate-conservative bullshit and that $200 tax rebate bribery scam. You’ve been pissed since early November, and little do you know, you’re going to stay pissed for eight more years. It’s that anger I want you to remember. Remember the hate. Remember the way you pronounced “W” like it was an expletive (George W. Bush). It was damn near an act nonviolent protest the way you pronounced that “W.” Remember how inarticulate you became when he was brought up in conversation. Remember how many stammering “asshole, shit, fuck… shitting fuckerhole” remarks you made in front of your girlfriend’s Republican parents, unable to hide your venomous rage. Remember the times when that anger turned to despair, convinced that we had indeed become Rome. And this was our fall.

I’d like you to remember because that vitriol and bitterness are exactly what we’re seeing from conservatives right now. We’re really not that different: when our side doesn’t win, we get pissed. (Some of us get so pissed, we take our ball and move to France, but that’s a different story.) Barack Obama has gained a sizable lead in every poll imaginable and conservatives are freaking the fuck out. And that hatred is boiling over right now. Sure, it could be racially motivated (the way the McCain ticket is almost constantly race-baiting, that wouldn’t be a surprise), but the more and more I think about it, the more I think this:

We’ve been taught to hate each other. From the time we choose our political identity, we’re taught that the other side is corrupt, incompetent, and evil. As a liberal, I’m accused of being an elitist, soft on crime, and anti-family bleeding heart who wants to give rich people’s money to those who don’t want to work. And the other side is filled with toothless, uneducated, anti-choice bigots who only want guns to make up for their little dicks.

For whatever reason, this country lives in constant division: white/black, gay/straight, right/left, north/south. And it’s precisely this division that prevents us from truly making any progress. These divisions only give us someone to blame, someone to point a finger at and say, "My life isn't what I want because of them."

If we’re constantly being wedged apart by issues like abortion, welfare, or immigration then we will never be able to really see the whole picture, the proverbial forest right in front of our eyes. This prevents us from living harmoniously together, stops us from pursuing our own happiness, and blinds ourselves to the fact that maybe, just maybe there are more important things in this world than our petty differences.

It’s like on "Lost," when Jack says, “We either live together, or we’re gonna die alone.” Slowly, but surely, in our own myopic ways, we’re all dying alone.

Now who’s to blame for that shit?