Op-Ed: Democrats 2020: We Have A Lot of Death To Avenge
By Sam Youngman and Adam Parkhomenko
Let’s call it the John Wick election.
Republicans let 200,000 Americans die, they shit all over the last wishes of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and they’re trying to kill our democracy after they finish killing the postal service.
This November, it’s payback time.
Of course, there aren’t millions of Democrats in their basements, wearing bloody tank tops and pounding on the concrete floor with a sledgehammer to retrieve the enormous cache of gold and guns we buried there when we tried to turn over a new leaf and leave the Russian mafia. That’s really more the right’s thing.
But don’t be fooled: We are out for vengeance.
We’re really not trying to sound like 1980s action movie stars, but these are the cards we’ve been dealt by a Republican Party that calls itself pro-life but clearly works on the side of death. And more death is decidedly on the ticket this year.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing ripped a hole in us. That the GOP, completely devoid of humanity at this point, robbed us of the chance to grieve and honor how much she changed our world for the better only compounded a months-long mourning of a nation that is sick and dying.
And like any great movie villain who must be stopped, Republicans are proving daily that they have a thirst for death that cannot be quenched. Why else would they kill the Affordable Care Act? The New York Times tells us that 21 million Americans would lose their healthcare, 133 million could lose healthcare because of pre-existing conditions, 800,000 would lose opioid treatment, 2 million young adults would no longer be covered under their parents’ insurance and 60 million on Medicare would pay more for preventative treatments and prescriptions.
Oh and we forgot to mention the deadly pandemic that has completely destroyed our way of life, left millions unemployed and KILLED 200,000 AMERICANS. There is literally no Republican plan to stop it other than hope for a vaccine that Trump will probably make in his bunker out of bleach, orange make-up and chunks of Big Mac.
No wonder Mitch McConnell calls himself the Grim Reaper.
Well, America... (Takes off sunglasses slowly and dramatically and pauses)... Payback is a Mitch.
And like any good action stars, Democratic voters have been left to seek this vengeance on their own by a system that failed them.
That old crime fighter we all put our hopes in was past his prime, worried about upsetting the president and hamstrung by crooked bureaucrats at DOJ. The Mueller team didn’t even investigate Trump’s financial ties to Russians! And if they’re honest about it, House Democrats were hoping that Bob Mueller would do the dirty work for them. Because despite a very narrowly tailored and rushed impeachment aside, the folks we voted for in 2018 with high hopes for accountability have largely gone the same route as Mueller. We’ve heard a lot of excuses and seen very little action while the GOP only grew more emboldened audacious in their quest for power and the death toll grew higher.
So we’ve been beaten and abandoned. Many are dead. The country we love is in mortal danger. The Russians have infiltrated our government, a pandemic is ravaging the nation and we’re running out of time (It’s seriously crazy how much of the real world shit overlaps with preposterous action movie plots).
But now comes the part of the movie where our hero gives a fantastic speech that gets us fired up and focused and ready to avenge those taken from us. And as luck would have it, we have just the guy. He even looks good in aviators.
“We can’t lose the ability to feel the sorrow and the loss and the anger for so many lives lost,” our guy said. “We can’t let the numbers become statistics, a background noise, just a blur that we see on the nightly news.”
And what could make Joe Biden tougher and more dangerous than an ice cream-loving Rambo? Well, a partner of course. And there is nobody we’d rather be going into this fight with than Kamala Harris. Trump finally learned how to say her name. Now let’s make sure he doesn’t ever forget it.
Look, we’re Democrats, so we’re not going to put American flag bandanas on our heads, blast some Ted Nugent and strap gatling guns to ourselves. Maybe we just don’t have anything to compensate for. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t ready to go to war.
Did you see the lines outside polling places in Virginia last week? Did you know that voters gave more than $160 million to Democratic candidates and causes in the first few days after RBG’s passed away? Did you watch Joe’s fantastic speech Sunday?
This is a party that is hearing the theme music and ready to turn anger and sadness into a reckoning.
It’s not going to be easy. The people we’re up against are actual villains, so they’re throwing obstacles at us like filing lawsuits that make it harder to vote and destroying the postal service. But we’re the good guys in this movie, so we’re going to make a plan early and we’re not going to let that shit slow us down. Right?
The truth is there is nothing funny at all about all this death the Republican Party has unleashed and then ignored. There’s nothing funny about the way they stepped over Justice Ginsburg’s passing. And we’re not joking when we say it is imperative that Democrats avenge the deaths of so many.
So be an action hero, and vote. Text the Biden campaign and volunteer to text and make calls. If you can spare a few more bucks, send them to a competitive Senate race. If you’re low-risk for COVID, volunteer to work at a polling place. Action heroes take action.
And this November, vengeance will be ours.
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