America from A to Z (63)

I don't normally write political posts, but I'm stepping outside that custom of mine today. If you're a hard-core (or any kind of core, I suppose) Republican, you may wish to skip this one. I don't dislike you. But I do strongly dislike the current incarnation of the Republican "party," if you can even say that about the warring factions that today were seated as the (slight) majority in the House of Representatives. But you can be sure they'll be claiming some sort of sweeping "mandate."

The past few days have dragged Americans through the travesty of the election of the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, as right-wing Republicans demanded concession after concession from the nominee, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). It took 15 ballots and three days, but finally, in a midnight vote, he squeaked into the position. The title of Speaker seems to be about the only thing he's been left with, but apparently that's all he really wanted.

But I'm not here to write about McCarthy or the power manipulations of Republican strongmen. I wanted to simply quote a part of the acceptance speech by incoming House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who in each of the 15 ballots received the unanimous support of his own party (and more votes overall than McCarthy in 11 of the ballots). Way to show solidarity, Democrats. Of course, Fox News reported that "Conservatives pan[ned] Jefferies['s] [sic] 'rambling disaster of a speech,'" but wouldn't even they have to agree that the following section was, at the very least, far from "rambling"? Though I have no doubt they didn't like it.

"House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy," Jeffries began, then went on:

benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, "yes, we can" over "you can’t do it," and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation. We will always do the right thing by the American people.

The Republican side of the aisle reportedly responded with boos. They can boo all they like, but honestly, this is pretty much how I, and many, many, many other Americans, view the divide. And I say boo on what the Republicans are going to be subjecting the nation to over the next two years. It's not going to be pretty; it's going to be mean-spirited, politicized, and hyper-dogmatic. Demogoguery at its most pathetic.

But I am glad that we'll have Jeffries in a role of leadership. The entire 15-minute speech can be seen and heard here; the A-to-Z part is here.

Oh and, if you're wondering what xenial means (I did), it means "hospitable, especially to visiting strangers or foreigners. Of the relationship between a host and a guest; friendly." Though really, it should have been xeniality, as a noun, to work in parallel with xenophobia. In any case, somebody worked hard to come up with that positive x-word.