Donkey

From dKosopedia

On January 15, 1870 a political cartoon by Thomas Nast appeared in Harper's Weekly titled "A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion". Since then, the donkey has become a symbol of the Democratic Party, though unlike the Republican elephant, the donkey has never been officially adopted as the party's logo.

Commentary

We Are The Donkeys Of The World

"We are the donkeys of the world.

We the people.

We are the people that America is all about. We the people. Not we the corporations. Not we the Enron, we the Halliburton - We the people. We the people who don't have billions in offshore bank accounts - we the people who won't inherit a fortune with no effort. We the people who built the railways and picked the cotton and bled in the wars and taught the children, we the people who sweat in silence.

We are the donkeys of the world. There is no load we won't carry. There is no mountain we won't climb. And if you mess with us, we kick you in the ribs - hard. Don't you ever forget it.

They are the elephant, the big noisy guys who get all the glory at the parades and the circuses, without lifting their share of the burden.

Politics isn't as complicated as it looks. There's only two reasons anyone gets into politics. For patriotism, or for profit. For morals, or for mammon. For the bill of rights, or for the dollar bills. For America, or for aristocracy.

The politics of profit have not changed for thousands of years. First, they divide the nation, along superficial lines, religion and culture mostly, and they usually try to have something to do with sex. Then, they loot the nation, and subvert time-tested values with their greed, with their love of mammon. Then, to distract the nation from their looting, they scapegoat some unpopular minority - whether it's a religion, culture, or sexual identity, all scapegoating is the same.

They say "look at those different people. Look at them, they're dirty, they're diseased, and they're going to have sex with your kids - and they're behind the corruption of our culture." Never mind that it's not that lesbian couple across the street that owns Fox Broadcasting - Rupert Murdoch does. It's not the Hispanic janitor who decided to put "trading spouses" on the air - Rupert Murdoc did. It's not the homeless war veteran who told everyone to measure a man by how much his car costs. It's not the disabled mother whose husband left her who's telling our daughters that plastic surgery is a substitute for decent character. Cultures aren't corrupted by unpopular minorities. Cultures are subverted by powerful people who do it for profit.

That republicans think they can insult people by calling them "do-gooders" says a lot about them, doesn't it? It says a lot about their culture of corruption, which seeks to replace our time-tested values with the new culture of greed, consumerism, superficiality, irresponsibility. If ours is a culture of do-gooders, theirs is a culture of do-badders.

We support economic growth as a means of improving the morals and culture of America and the world. Any growth that fails to do this is not growth, in our opinion. Any growth that conflicts with those intangibles is nothing but a cancer. We aim for full employment because opportunity leads to better character than idleness. We wanted to prioritize the hunt for Bin Laden over Saddam because oil is just oil, but security and justice is priceless. We protect the environment not just because we like to hike and go fishing, but because all moral systems believe in humbleness and respect for the glory of creation. We support fair trade and living wages because fairness and equality is not taught with words, but with actions.

You could have your kids recite the 10 commandments 10 times a day but if you worship the golden calf, they'll ignore your words and follow your example. The Republicans like to sound trumpets before they pray, yet when they kneel down, it's only to better pick your pockets.

Donkeys aren't like that. Maybe we're too stupid, maybe we're just to stubborn to be anything but ourselves. We're always either hauling a load up a mountain, or kicking some bastard in the ribs. We are do-gooders. We the people. Deal with it." -PatriotismOverProfits