young democrats learn to sit on the floor (instead of shooting people)

Es­ti­mated reading time is 4 min­utes.

DURING THE DE­MO­C­RATIC SIT-IN led by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives John Lewis (D-GA) and Katherine Clark (D-MA), I posted an ar­ticle from the BBC on Face­book with a com­ment of “Bravo  and Brava for the Do-Something Con­gress!” A com­ment from an­other person al­lowed me to ad­dress the issue of how De­moc­rats are taught from child­hood to sit on the floor to get their way in­stead of beating up others or shooting people.

So, in an act that can easily be in­ter­preted as adult petu­lance, the Rep*blican Ma­jority ac­tu­ally turned off the CSPAN cam­eras that run 24-hours-a-day (if nec­es­sary) broad­casting the do­ings (and the not-doings) of Con­gress to the Amer­ican public.

 

“We have turned deaf ears to the blood of the in­no­cent and the con­cern of our na­tion. We are blind to a crisis.”

 

And the Dems re­acted by turning the ta­bles around and using their cell­phones to tweet and text and broad­cast and ac­tu­ally do live in­ter­views with news out­lets. It was a day to remember!

There were trans­mis­sions via Periscope and Face­book Live that were picked up by C-SPAN, which pro­vides con­tinual cov­erage of Con­gress. De­mo­c­ratic Con­gressman Scott Pe­ters pro­vided a feed, ad­mit­ting that the sit-in was breaking House rules anyway.

One of Pe­ters’ tweets asked, “So why not turn on the House cam­eras so the world can see what’s hap­pening here? What is Paul Ryan afraid of”

 

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Yes, De­moc­rats sit­ting in the street and blocking traffic is a pain-in-the-behind. And they do it to people they don’t know! But be­lieve it or not, they are taught that it’s prefer­able be­havior to shooting people they don’t know. So Dems can brag that the total number of people killed by De­moc­rats sit­ting on the floor or in the street in the past fifty years is zero!

Shooting people is a definite no-no

Ti­tled “Gun-control protest sparks chaotic scenes in US Con­gress,” the BBC ar­ticle ac­knowl­edged that there were dif­ferent ways to look at the scene:

“De­pending on one’s per­spec­tive, the sit-in was ei­ther a shame­less pub­licity stunt in ad­vance of a dan­gerous piece of leg­is­la­tion or the purest ex­pres­sion of democ­racy and civil dis­obe­di­ence since the 1960s.

But as De­moc­rats chanted, waved signs and sang in protest, there was no de­bating it was a his­toric break with con­gres­sional tra­di­tions that has little prece­dent in modern times.”

A friend of mine with po­lit­ical views that are some­times in ac­cord with mine and some­times not, chimed in. To keep her (or his) se­cret iden­tity in­tact, I will refer to him (or her) below as EMCEE. My re­sponses will be equally shrouded in se­crecy as I refer to my­self as ENEWE (think sheep).

EMCEE: The whole thing is pure photo-op. A pub­licity stunt.

ENEWE: Of course: every­body who wants their photo on­line sits on the floor for 20 hours without a shower. Hell, I do it at home every day!

EMCEE: Not everybody—just Democrats.

ENEWE: Well, yes, that’s true, and it’s re­ally no big se­cret. Young De­moc­rats are taught at an early age that when they can’t have what they want, but they truly be­lieve in it, they are not to beat others up, nor are they to shoot them!

Shooting people is a def­i­nite no-no! In­stead, we are taught to sit on the floor for long hours without a shower.

In most De­mo­c­ratic house­holds, it’s the Father’s role to teach the chil­dren, al­though Mothers are usu­ally part of the learning process. Tra­di­tion­ally, it’s done on the first Sat­urday after the young Democrat’s 10th birthday. That way they don’t miss school, even if they do miss Sat­urday morning cartoons.

 

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In the late ’60s, middle-aged, con­ser­v­a­tive Amer­i­cans con­fused lib­eral sit-ins and hippie ‘free love’ with bed-ins while wife-swapping. These weird bed-ins and partner ex­changes wreaked havoc on their middle-class values and so con­fused these people that they ac­tu­ally saw Richard Nixon as a sort of savior of the moral high ground and voted for him. Twice!

We’re all strangers in a strange land

ENEWE: I still re­member the day my Fa­ther made me sit for twenty-four hours on the floor without a shower.

It was 1961.

I hated every minute of it!

I hated my fa­ther for making me do it!

I hated my Mother for al­lowing it to happen!

But dang it, when my daughter turned 10, I did the same thing to her! It was a Sat­urday morning and she couldn’t watch Ru­grats or Doug or Hey Al­bert! Nope, I made her sit on the floor without a shower for twenty-four hours.

If any­thing, her Mother was even more adamant about the lesson than I. But when Mom went to work that day, I slipped my daughter a copy of Stranger In A Strange Land.

Now it’s her turn: she’s preg­nant and has al­ready talked to me about my grandchild’s first sit-in, ten years and six months down the road . . .

EMCEE: Enewe, if you were just some Face­book phantom that I didn’t know, I’d get a chuckle out of that. But knowing you as I do—you just might be se­rious! Maybe that’s the dif­fer­ence be­tween Dems and Reps: I can’t sit for 24 min­utes, much less hours!

ENEWE: Emcee, you know I’m al­ways se­rious. I have no f*cking sense of humor. And, like a Rep*blican, I have no sense of irony. Nice weather we’re having doncha think?

 

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FEA­TURED IMAGE: Here is a photo of sev­eral De­mo­c­ratic Con­gressper­sons flooring their opin­ions re­garding the un­will­ing­ness of their Rep*blican brethren to ad­dress the hor­ri­fying spec­tacle of never-ending gun vi­o­lence in these here United States. Mr. Lewis has the blue tie, while Ms. Clark wears the blue top. A roused Lewis de­claimed, “We have turned deaf ears to the blood of the in­no­cent and the con­cern of our na­tion. We are blind to a crisis. Mr. Speaker, where is the heart of this body? Where is the soul? Where is our moral lead­er­ship? Where is our courage?”

 

3 thoughts on “young democrats learn to sit on the floor (instead of shooting people)”

  1. As a sidebar to learning to sit on the floor, one of the few “things” that was saved from the Flood of 1972 is my timeout chair. It is a con­stant re­minder not to fail to anger or fear.

    Reply
  2. Where was your chair during the Flood? Not at your Mom’s place? Above water?

    If I could re­hard­wire my be­havior, I would make it so that I didn’t re­spond to a verbal cue (ques­tion, taunt, in­sult, etc.) for ten seconds—especially when it’s from a woman I love and live with . . .

    Reply
    • It was at my ‘rents! Somehow sur­vived in­tact and didn’t float away. Some of the sten­ciling is still there.

      I’d ask for the same gift. My tells are very read­able by Laurie, while she re­mains al­most in­scrutable in her fem­i­nine way.

      Reply

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