THREAD: Liberals- I get it- the Franken stuff blows. It challenges our values and our self image as a party/people of morals. But I worry in our quest for purity we will be slaughtered- LITERALLY.
2. We've been down this road before. We demand fair play & rule following. But we have an opponent that doesn't. They don't worry about how it will play. They don't care about the hypocrisy. They don't care when they're called on it. And they don't have to because they win.
3. We get the moral high ground and they get the goddamned country. Gerrymandering? Voter Suppression? ACA? Gorsuch? Stacking the ENTIRE judiciary? They got all of that through ill gotten gains. And we're pretty damn powerless.
4. We come for a sword fight & they shoot us. Then we go and raise money off of the honor & dignity of the sword-fighting code. Every single time.
4. Our moral purity is going to be cold damn comfort when we're rounded up. Our commitment to helping women won't mean much to the women who are victims of domestic violence & rape when conservatives limit victims' rights and judges like Roy Moore are appointed.
5. Is there something distasteful about that? For damn sure there is. It sucks. But let's also have some perspective. Al Franken isn't accused of what Moore or Trump are and if we treat it all as the same we have problems (I get that it's all part of the same construct).
6. Again- it's like liberals think this is an academic debate where only our principles are at stake. Does banishing Franken get rid of the patriarchy or improve the lives of women everywhere? I don't buy that it sends a message powerful enough to make up for the costs.
7. They are coming for us. Literally. Immigrants are being rounded up and detained. The earth is being raped and pillaged. People are dying in Puerto Rico. Children are going without healthcare. Education is being undermined & dismantled. LGBTQ citizens are being targeted.
8. They are abandoning homeless vets and senior citizens. This isn't hypothetical. I "confess" to caring more about those people than Al Franken's victims. I wish I could care equally about everyone, but I can't. We can't.
9. Reasonable people can disagree on this. But don't call me a bad feminist or a bad liberal for caring about the lives of the many women, men, and children who this administration threatens. I don't think moral purity gets us anywhere. You're probably going to win this one.
10. because unfailingly, democrats make the same decision over and over. We'll campaign on our purity hoping to win a PR battle and a blue ribbon for good citizenship. But it won't actually protect people
11. Maybe it doesn't matter anymore. Maybe BECAUSE we have no power, we can be purely symbolic. Maybe this gets us into the kingdom of Heaven after the GOP fire of destruction sweeps the nation. Congrats. But I'm a Jew and I never bought the whole heaven thing.
12. You work on the kingdom of heaven (which ruled by a king probably has some patriarchal bullshit too), I'm going to focus on the here and now of this world. I'm tired of losing. If I feel a little morally sick over it, I'll drink more.
13. In Simon Weisenthal's "the sunflower" he ponders whether he did the right thing while he was a prisoner in a work camp in not forgiving a Nazi's deathbed request forgiveness. Another prisoner in the camp chides him for asking- it is a question for AFTER they survive.
14. Weisenthal writes the Sunflower because he DID survive. Let's have the conversation if and when our democracy survives. Right now, I'm too busy fighting. /END
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