Daily Affirmation

Al Franken is now the junior Senator from the State of Minnesota. For anyone who spent any time in the late 1970’s smoking hemp and watching TV on Saturday night, this is sort of like Yahoo Serious being named the Secretary General of the United Nations. Franken prevailed by only approximately 300 votes out of 2.9 million cast, but the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that was about 299 more than he needed and he will be traveling to Washington shortly after the 4th of July holiday to take his place aside the other 99 immortals currently pandering to narrow and self-interested constituencies. I suppose it goes without saying that he’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, at least half the people like him.

Franken’s election now gives the Democrats 58 seats in the Senate. With the two independent Senators, including former Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Joe “I Love Israel More Than America” Lieberman, caucusing with the Democrats, they now have 60 members. Much has been made of this number and the potential for filibuster-proof voting in the Senate, but Democrats have the party discipline of startled cockroaches and the threat of one-party rule is unfortunately just another Republican boogieman, like the “gay agenda” or Saddam Hussein. It did occur to me, however, to daydream as to what would actually happen if the Democrats suddenly unified behind President Obama’s leadership and, ignoring Republican apocalyptic prophecy, passed legislation to address trivia like health care, energy independence and climate change.

The recent Republican argument against every potential function of government except killing Arabs has been, in no particular order:
1) We can’t afford it;
2) It’s against our nation’s principles;
3) The Bible is against it;
4) It’s premature;
5) It’s an over-reaction;
6) The “average” American is against it;
7) We don’t understand it;
8) Science is involved, so it frightens us;
9) Somebody gave us some money to do something else;
10) We’re too busy screwing hot chicks from South America;
11) We resent president Obama because he is smarter than we are.
These are generally less than compelling reasons to oppose lucid and clearly articulated policy proposals (although #10 does have some merit), but the Republican Party continues to resist almost every initiative brought forward by the President while providing little insightful analysis or contradictory reasoning of their own. So why shouldn’t the Democrats ignore the Republicans as being irrelevant, which they clearly are from a numerical and (I believe) an intellectual perspective? What if we actually implemented a policy, any policy, rather than interminably bickering and spinning in circles?

To borrow a page from President Bush’s playbook, I subscribe to the theory that we vote for President Obama’s agenda or we all die. Now, some of you pessimists will note that we will all die anyway, but we should try to avoid living a Mad Max existence of scarcity and want and being chased by possibly cannibalistic nomads in fuel-inefficient Plymouths across a desert landscape denuded of all vegetation and advertising. Let’s face it, living in Macon, Georgia is already a dismal prospect; just imagine if the climate warms significantly. The point is, we, as a species, very well may be in for a world of hurt due to a warming planet, and if it is suggested that we should not act because we are not absolutely sure of our role in climate change or because it would be economically inconvenient to do so, we are taking a huge risk with our future. The same reasoning applies to energy efficiency; we are crude oil addicts and we are already down on our knees sucking nasty wiener in the back alleys of world oil markets and this will only get worse if we don’t take alternate energy sources seriously. John Boehner doesn’t understand this because, as a Republican, he doesn’t see anything wrong with sucking nasty wiener.

I don’t know how Senator Franken will work out; he may possibly be co-opted by the allure of wealth and prestige like most of his colleagues, or he may prove to be a true servant of reason and equity. I can only hope that he will quickly figure out what side he is on and do something besides blather. I am, however, cautiously optimistic that the people of Minnesota have done the Union a favor; after all, anybody who has been sued by Fox News has to have something going for them.