I Want to Be a Democrat
By A.M. Siriano (12/07/05)
It’s true. I’m not being facetious. Often I find myself fighting the urge to become a Democrat—and I’m not talking about becoming the next Joe Lieberman, who is getting much deserved praise for standing up to his own party, or even another Zell Miller, which would be an honor (and wasn’t he just da bomb at the 2004 Republican National Convention?). Ya gotta love those guys, but this isn’t me.
No, when I say I want to be a Democrat, I’m talking deep left, moonbat, blue-state stuff. Because only then would I be able to really hurt the American left. The Liebermans and the Millers do their part, but their purpose is mostly reactionary as they watch their party crumble. (Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate these men and their efforts to reform their party, but someone please explain to me why they don’t follow Ronald Reagan’s example and just switch sides? You know, I’m all about family, but if the core of the family stands for murder and treason, hmm ...)
The ones who really do the most damage to their party—and thus a great service to America—are the crazies. That’s what I want to be. Street-screamin’ crazy. Face-twitchin’, hand-wavin’, tears-flowin’ crazy. Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, Ward Churchill, and Kanye West all rolled up into one big, nutball nightmare!
I would then walk around saying the most outrageous things imaginable, be as bitter and as obnoxious as possible, and push the very limits of any reasonable definition of treason, knowing all the while that I am offering a wonderful gift to America—as a true American patriot!—because with every inane remark, every violent tantrum, every enemy-loving embrace, I would be helping to render the Democratic party irrelevant, ridiculous, and hopelessly doomed at the polls.
Then, when it was all over, and I was about to meet my Maker, I would make a statement that I had seen the light; and I would apologize to the American people for my abject stupidity, excusing myself only in that being a Democrat is a disease—such was my horrid lot!—but thankfully, I had found help, had checked myself into a hospital, and had come out with my senses intact, a new man, and stable with the ongoing encouragement from my support group ...
And this would be believable, too (assuming I could resist getting carried away—which isn’t like me, and why I probably won’t try it), because often people come to their senses after successfully battling this insidious disease. David Horowitz comes to mind, and Steven Beren, and Christopher Hitchens (still in the program); and there are countless other notable examples of people who fought the disease and won, and few examples of people who, having been healthy, were eager to pick up the disease. Admittedly, the latter does happen, but in most cases, the sufferers’ state of disrepair—think Arianna Huffington—seems to be an accident of poor choices and associations, leading to a fall off the edge on a particularly bad hair day.
Often those who have found the cure remain apologetic throughout their lives. David Horowitz has chosen to confront his past life by fighting for conservatism with every ounce of his strength, while periodically offering a mea culpa for his part in helping the commies’ murderous cause. But if I were to meet him, I would thank him, not only for his present work, but for his past persona. (His book Radical Son, by the way, is a must-read and a literary work of art.)
I was just a boy when Mr. Horowitz was sidling up to the Black Panthers and editing Ramparts magazine. I didn’t know who he was, but I had heard of his comrades, such as Huey Newton and Tom Hayden, and the whole lot of those lunatics helped to make me what I am today. Because of them, I hated liberals in my formative years. They were the clearest examples of what not to become when I grew up, and just as I had parents to thank for steering me in the right direction, I had hippies and commies to thank for being a sign for me, to not to take that left-turn off Main St.
When I was a kid, we had woods behind our subdivision where we used to ride our bikes every so often. The path we took seemed like the Tour de France at the time, but was likely no more than a few hundred feet, twisting and turning among a smattering of trees that were slated for the paper mill as soon as urban-sprawl sprawled a little further. At the end of the path was another path, whose entrance was clearly marked for danger—perhaps by the developers, or just some older kids trying to scare little morons like me. “Keep out!” blared the sign, and all around it other warnings added by grade-schoolers still getting bad marks for spelling: “Dont go in there! Rode of no return!”
There are times when you must take “the road less traveled,” but braving a gentle wood whose path is “grassy and wanted wear” is not the same as marching into hell for a less than heavenly cause. I saw those words of warning, half wondering if they were a ruse to keep out the little kids, but also seeing that it was much darker beyond the sign, and the road ahead obviously less traveled by other young bikers, and deep within the undergrowth the faint outline of a barbed wire that led to other indicators of danger, like piles of gravel and old boards. Not far away, loomed a bulldozer, and sometimes, a smoking man who seemed to be waiting … just waiting …
I was as adventurous as the next boy, but I wasn’t stupid, and when a fellow rider told me the rumors of a foolish tyke who had braved the path and had lost, having fallen into a pit of mud, and then, asking help from a construction worker with a backhoe, had been torn in half by the opposing forces of suction and machinery, I made my decision to stay away. (Okay, so I wasn’t smart enough to ask why the boy hadn’t let go before being torn asunder—hey, it was the Sixties, people!)
Today’s warning signs are in abundance. Every time I see Howard Dean speaking, I start praying that his interviewer let him speak uninterrupted. When people lament, “Why don’t these idiotarians just shut up?” I say, “Let them speak!” Cindy Sheehan should have her own show. Michael Moore should be cloned. Howard Dean should be made Chairman of the Dem—
You get my drift. I guess if I tried to become a Democrat I could hardly be so crazy as to top the crazies out there today, so I’ll stick to my conservative roots, thanking my family—from grandparents on down, who managed to stave off the disease—but also the lefties, whose riddled minds and bodies offer the best example to stay conservatively healthy.
Besides, if I really went Dem for the sake of the dupe, I would have to find every instance of this editorial and expunge it from our collective memory. Sort of like Sandy Berger at the National Archives.
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