Indelible Memory I
It's a sunny day in the 1960s, and I'm a teen on a date, strolling around the famed Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx Zoo. Opened in 1899, the 265-acre park within the City of New York houses creatures from the tiniest tree frogs to elephants. This is a memory of an elephant.
My date and I stand with a lively crowd facing the fenced, open-air pen of the elephant exhibit. One elephant is working the line as people fling peanuts at him. But a creep of a guy tosses a lit cigarette butt into the elephant's trunk and grins. The elephant turns from the crowd and lumbers to a water trough, dips his trunk, then walks back to the fence and aims his full hose to douse the miscreant, wiping the grin off his face. Those of us who witnessed the exchange cheered. Still, after that encounter, the elephant is done with humans - even those with peanuts - and joins the herd in the shade.
Noble Beast Besieged
Given my regard for the long-suffering pachyderm, you may appreciate my dilemma over its service as a symbol of the Republican Party or formerly Gallant Old Party (GOP). Though that symbol took hold in the 1870s, it does not seem fair to identify the elephant with this century's “Party of No.”
Indelible Memory II
I find it hard to forget an ugly encounter with Republicans in West Palm Beach, Florida, in 2000.
With my husband and two friends, I had traveled across the state to join vocal picketers carrying handmade signs and urging election officials to ignore the intense political pressure from Republicans and continue to count the contested presidential vote. The state's mind-numbing Bush, Buchanan, Gore and Nader ballot was reason enough to doubt the results. (See the photo of my husband's sign.)
For days, news cameras panned stone-faced Republican operatives who packed a West Palm municipal building. Like aging frat-boy bouncers, they blocked the halls as local officials struggled to move from office to office to decipher ballot issues. Outside, we encountered these same thugs, their bullhorns in hand, corralling picketers and issuing a dismissive shout in our faces, "Go home, losers!"
Note: With the 2016 popular vote for Hillary Clinton exceeding the “winner's" popular vote by nearly three million votes, history repeats itself for today’s "losers."
Lest We Forget
We know an election has consequences. Remember 2000 - 2008:
- The 9/11 attacks occurring under a cavalier Bush/Cheney Administration's watch - despite intelligence warnings - and due to, "No actionable intelligence," as Condoleezza Rice saw it
- A trumped-up reason to invade Iraq trumpeted by journalists - such as Judith Miller - wannabe embedded war correspondents
- War dead and crushing debt
- Privatization of the war bankrolling Halliburton and Blackwater mercenaries
- A Wall Street free-for-all and tax holiday for the rich that blew the Bill Clinton tax surplus and left us an imperiled economy
Republicans defended the madness, questioning the opposition's patriotism and filling email inboxes with diatribes. Such rants deteriorated into full-blown racial slurs when Barack H. Obama served as president. I welcomed his historic elections and watched his administration wrest the country from the financial brink and the war zones and eliminate Osama Bin Laden - with not even grudging thanks from pugnacious apologists.
Internet debate remains tediously predictable today, down to complaints about the need to be politically correct, as if that occurs with any frequency on Facebook or other social media. Small wonder we retire to our respective corners. I long for a Walter Cronkite to report - without foxy sneers - real, non-insinuated news and calm everybody down. I thank you, Judy Woodruff of the PBS News Hour.
Now What?
The notion in 2016 of a Republican president was alarming. The events of 2017 are all one could fear with this runaway administration and free-wheeling Congressional representatives. We shake our heads over an alternative reality - no right to healthcare, no climate change, no problem with offshore drilling, no danger from guns in the hands of the mentally ill; no reproductive rights, only tax relief for the rich, dismantling of the government and a crusade for the pre-born. We resist, defending human rights, defending science, demanding a semblance of sanity and doubting the party in power will respond to reason.
I've read what Republicans say, and I've seen what they do. I've gazed into the eyes of their thugs and saw bruising contempt. In that ugly West Palm Beach 2000 encounter, it was brutally obvious I was no one to them - as it was obvious long ago that a creep went out of his way to harm a captive animal.
It's odd to equate the noble elephant with fear, but remember: The Republican Party has proved itself to be one callous herd. In fact, I hear the thundering hooves of condescension rounding the bend now.
by Reggie Morrisey
See
The Path to Florida, Vanity Fair 2004
Who Caused the Economic Crisis? - FactCheck.org
Drone Photos of Quaker Resist Event
Year 2000 Protesters Demand Vote Count in Florida
Drone Photo of Florida Quakers 2017 Resist Event on Gulf of Mexico