"Closet" Democrats Everywhere

Oh, it's bad. It's a damn shame. It's like a sickness. A sickness of cowardice. A disease.

I had a bagel this morning with an old friend of mine who worked with me, years back, on a daily news-rag.

And she told me something that just about made me sick to my stomach. She said that during a Bill Nelson fundraiser held at a swanky country club in Indian River County, the media were kept out not by republican thugs adversarial to the press.

Oh no. No. It was the democrats themselves who fought to keep the press out, especially the photographers. Why? Because the social stigma, and the business repercussions of admitting affiliation with the democratic party! These were potentially too great to risk!

So be a dear and put your cameras down and not ask who's in here donating a measly $25 per plate in a milquetoast effort to - yeah yeah- "support" Bill Nelson.

"Good God! After all, so and so down the street might just discover we are (gasp!) associated with Bill Nelson! OMG and he's, like, one step away from Mao!"

"Heavens, and our business might dry up, to-boot!"

I have one question: what the hell is this, Northern Ireland? Are we living in Ulster? Are we living in the days of Sinn Fein? I mean, where is Gerry Adams when you need him? What's next? A wall? Murals? Hostages? Bombs? Barbed wired? Where the hell is this? Is this America?

Is it now illegal to be a democrat?

What is going on? And democrats? What a bunch of craven cowards! When was the last time you heard of a republican ashamed to admit he was a republican? What the hell is wrong with you people? Seriously. How do you expect your man to have a fighting chance to get re-elected if you're too damned chickenshit to claim him as your own?

Is this what it comes down to? Your "friends" might make your business dry up? Wait? In addition to not inviting you to their next party?

Do you have "friends" like this? If so what sort of a weak sap are you, if you have "friends" like this? If you stomach these sort of friends, what sort of a craven gutless social weakling are you? How do you gaze in the mirror? How do you meet your own eyes?

If these are your friends and you are still sucking up to a social set capable of this sort of behavior you have no soul; you have no core; you have no right, to call yourself a democrat. You, my friend, don't get it. And you likely never will. You are a limousine liberal. The worst kind, a cowardly one. You need to seek another political party that has no core, no spine, no soul, no objectives, no principles other than self interest. No social conscience.

Hey! They're called republicans. Look into it. Leave the good works to people who care.

And this sort of cowardice isn't isolated to Indian River County either. No. My local newspaper Florida Today just shoveled along the last serious investigative reporter they had - Jeff Schweers- to greener pastures elsewhere. Arizona I am hearing. Where the local Gannett paper there will likely keep him locked in a corporately sanitized muffled muted hamster cage, just the way they did here.

I have seen weekly newspapers offering more news content, more push back to tyranny, than our Gannett rag these days. I mean, it's bad. I swear to God. It's...I don't even like to admit I used to work there. Godawful. Shameful. Literally, like reading a baby-food package.

Cowardly retreat from corporate tyranny is not confined to newspapers, either.

I have actually heard that local teachers are too afraid of being labeled as "anti-christian" to offer support for our local candidate for the Florida house; too cowardly to help unseat a republican thug who thinks dwarf tossing is a remedy for our ailing economy. A thug who votes lock step with the ongoing efforts to (wait for it) dismantle public education. The same effort whose ugly natural conclusion is these same teachers reapplying for their old jobs, at half pay and no benefits from a big-box learning corporation.

Teachers won't step up to unseat our dwarf tossing republican who hates teachers; because they are too insipidly concerned for the social stigma, and reduced opportunity for advancement, should they be "outed" as a democrat.

Dig that.

Talk about being brainwashed to vote against your own interests; apparently, just like during the days of the inquisition, all you have to do to get the masses to kow-tow is tell them they are going to hell if they start to think, if they start to look out for themselves. If they dare to raise their heads up and look at what's really going on; sure, they're "hell-bound" See? They're "baby killers". They "don't support the troops". The "d" word.

And some of you democrats fall for this? How dare you call yourselves democrats. How dare you say you are "progressive" or you are "liberal?"

Until you show some spine, stand up and fight, you don't have the right to use these words in describing yourself.