NOTE FROM AN ANGRY DEMOCRAT

From my friend, Benny, the firecracker salesman. By the way, this is what a real live progressive Democrat sounds like--or SHOULD sound like at this particular moment, if he is the real thing. Born in deep East Texas, but he crawled out of that red dirt loblolly wilderness, shed the alligator suit and learned how to think for himself. This is the real McCoy--no compromise with the truth, no pusillanimous half-measures. The code he lives by: "The only thing you find in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos."

So, here's the note I just received from him in my e-mail box:

Did you get a thing from Camp Casey Easter meet-up and act-up? I don't think I'm up to it. What is going on in our Congress is simply that the half-way Blue Dog Democrats won't sign onto anything unless it is deeply compromised, watered-down, and ineffective. They represent districts that contain voters that resent being forced to elect Democrats in the first place and think that the oceans rising to cover Hillsboro and Texarkana is not nearly so scary as taking the Confederate flag down from the Georgia statehouse. There are a few good progressives left, but before they can vote for anything that makes a nickel's worth of difference, they have to be elected to office, and have you looked lately at the American citizen who does the deciding of whom to elect? Parts of Massachusetts and California and Oregon is all that remains of the nation inspired and devoted to the Enlightenment. The best and brightest were sitting at University Christian Church when you were the only speaker in the entire lousy temple with a shred of ordinary human decency, and not a one of them gave a flying fuck for any principle or any virtue, or for anyone but their own goddamn self. And one is branded a bomb-throwing red if you're not sitting in the Amen section of the First Baptist Church every Sunday morning listening to the most puerile, hateful, clap-trap you can possibly imagine in your sweatiest, bourbon-soaked dream. If Pelosi had an ounce less grit or single-minded devotion to working her ass off for a country that doesn't feel a dime's worth of gratitude for her leadership or for her diamond-hard devotion to doing the best job possible for this ungrateful, self-absorbed nation, which hasn't even a willingness to become informed of what is happening in the world besides a big-breasted blond bimbo over-dosing and killing her stinking, trifling ass with grossly over-priced pills from Rexall drugstore or the Dallas goddamn Cowboys beating Washington in a football game on television, she would go back to San Francisco and leave the malignant greed-heads to do whatever they wanted without anyone to interfere or do one fucking thing to impede their rule, just like before she was chosen to serve as Speaker. It is, I am accepting a bit more every day, a rare privilege to be acquainted with even a handful of friends and family that remain kind and steadfast and thoughtful. I can't imagine Ms. Pelosi or any other intelligent member of Congress maintaining a willingness to give a shit, or certainly not to beat their head against a brick wall day after day for a nation of selfish, rich, stupid, and mean citizens. If I continue to look honestly at my country, or even at humanity its own self for more than a few quick minutes, a craving for whiskey becomes pretty bothersome. Reality has been difficult for me for some reason since I was a kid. I'm really glad I'm not trying to fix this unworthy country like those losers in our Congress. --Ben H.