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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 12/10/17

The New Democratic Party Strategy: 'Dumb and Dumber'

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Senator Al Franken
Senator Al Franken
(Image by (From Wikimedia) Lorie Shaull, Author: Lorie Shaull)
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Democrats don't know how to fight--and apparently are unable to learn. Their actions are becoming prime examples of "Dumb and Dumber."

The lynch mob of 13 female and 19 male Democratic Senators, including Chuck Schumer, sought moral "high ground" in calling for Senator Al Franken to resign. Their plea elicited a resounding Hallelujah from other Democrats.

Unfortunately, they failed to notice that the universally defined moral high ground is gone. In gleefully seeking their high-minded version of high ground Democrats have succumbed to the con man's playbook.

"We go high when they go low" has abdicated to destructive forces. This retreat from head-to-head confrontation surrendered the Oval Office, the Supreme Court, the federal courts, and all the federal agencies that protect and elevate us. It has enabled the steady teardown of democratic institutions and principles that were more than two hundred years in the making. More disturbing, It has placed the nuclear codes in the hands of a mentally unstable president, according to a consensus of mental health experts.

Perhaps because I grew up on the tough streets of Brooklyn, I learned that going high is not the way to deal with sociopathic morally empty pool room thugs.

Wake up, Democrats! It's the age of designer morality. A one-code-fits-all meaningful moral high ground is an illusion, as eloquently expressed by journalist Charles Pierce in Esquire:

"The problem is where do the Democrats go now, although I'm fairly sure Senator Kirsten Gillibrand will be heading to Iowa. Is it time (again) to tug their forelocks over Bill Clinton? Maybe they could dig up Teddy Kennedy and hold their own Cadaver Synod, expelling him from the Senate posthumously? LBJ would be next, then Jack, then finally Thomas Jefferson. Ah, but now, we are told, they have The Moral High Ground, as though you needed to throw one of your own overboard in order to have the moral standing to oppose seating an alleged child molester in the Senate, or to remind people that the president copped to sexual assault on tape...There is no commonly accepted Moral High Ground left to occupy anymore, and to pretend one exists is to live in a masturbatory fantasyland. It's like lining yourself up behind Miss Manners in a political debate against Machiavelli. Until the Democrats are willing to think asymmetrically about the very real political danger posed by the president* and his party, the danger will grow until it becomes uncontrollable, and that point is coming very soon, I fear. By the time the Democrats admit to themselves that their political opposition has moved so far beyond shame that it can't even see Richard Nixon any more, the damage wrought to our political institutions may be beyond repair."

South African Anglican cleric and theologian Desmond Tutu's often quoted astute observation about colonialism is informative and instructive: "When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, let us pray. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land."

When the Democrats open their eyes expecting to celebrate ownership of a mythical high ground they might be surprised to find themselves on low ground amid Sodom and Gomorrah, if not the apocalypse.

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Bernard Starr, PhD, is author of The Crucifixion of Truth, a drama set in 16th century Italy and Spain. Starr is a psychologist, journalist, and professor emeritus at CUNY, Brooklyn College. At Brooklyn College Starr taught developmental (more...)
 

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