The Politics of Dancing

I made a somewhat drunken Facebook post last night urging Mitt (“Mittens”) Romney to hurry up and give his concession speech, calling him a sore loser.   Someone, perhaps rightly, indirectly called me out on it this morning, saying that we all needed to “turn the page” and, in effect, move on.

But I’m having a difficult time “turning the page” and moving on.   I can’t find it within myself to act like this is some sort of a game, that the words and actions I’ve seen over the past 4 years are something to just be forgotten.  No, it’s much more serious.

It’s hard for me to be a gracious winner when the losing party:

• espouses lying and deceit as the foundation for the majority of its arguments.
• refuses to acknowledge empirical evidence – impartial, scientific evidence –  that mankind is systematically warming the planet, putting our entire existence at stake.   That’s our economical, religious, moral, social, communal, sexual, existence — the whole ball of wax.  In fact, their candidate laughed at  the notion.
• swindles its followers into believing that economic breaks for the most well-off are something that will benefit the least well-off;   that everyone in this country is equipped and able to lift themselves up by their bootstraps, nevermind the ones who have no boots at all; that helping those less economically fortunate is somehow stealing from those of us lucky enough to live well; that we have an inalienable right to be rich and screw those who can’t achieve that.
• stokes the embers of racism to further its political agenda and candidates.
• denies women the right to make their own choices regarding their reproductive health.
• believes that their God, their Christian God, the one who sent his only son to  this earth to teach us to love each other as we would love ourselves, is the only viable God and all others (and their followers) are agents of Satan.
• believes that revisions to our system of health care are somehow Socialist in nature and that, once again, taking care of those who cannot provide for themselves is not a moral imperative.
• ignores what our Founding Fathers laid out in the Constitution, that this is a land of laws, of equality, of opportunity for all.
• lies to the country about the reasons to enter into war.
• would deny its own family members the same rights they enjoy.

No, I can’t be the gracious winner.  Not yet.  Not until I see the losing party practice the Judeo-Christian beliefs it promotes.   Not until I see the losing party adhere to our Constitution.  Not until I see the losing party abandon the ugly policies of hate and exclusion.