The treatment I have and many like me have endured over the past 3 weeks or so has been shameful, even by Berkeley standards. Confronted with, “Embrace the Revolution! Have an Obama/Biden campaign sticker!” I calmly replied, “I support John McCain in this election” and was promptly spat at. On a separate occasion, when I identified myself as conservative – not a Republican, mind you, but conservative – the girl I was talking to called me a Nazi. (I wish I could say that was the first time I’d faced that charge in Berkeley.) When I told an older Obamanaut that I supported equal rights for gay people (all people) but “[didn’t] really care” about whether or not the civil union was termed a “marriage” or not, she called me a cancer on society.
Cancer kills people. I’m society’s cancer. Ergo, I, Judah Joshua Mirvish, am killing society.
Even I, by far my harshest and least forgiving critic, feel I deserve way better than this. In all of these and upwards of 10 other incidents I can recall over the last 3 weeks, I was – even speaking as objectively as I can – quiet, calm, polite, and even unassertive; and yet, I am a contemptible murderer; I am a terminal illness; I am a spittoon. Among other things. That I cannot identify myself as right-leaning even to the degree that I am without being spat on (literally, for fuck’s sake!) is an unqualified disgrace. The very tolerance and open-mindedness preached by Berkeley’s political left is entirely absent in that political left, and the hypocrisy has disgusted me to the point that if I had a car, I’d leave the Bay Area for a few days. But it goes beyond saying one thing and doing another: basic human decency should transcend party lines, and I can tell you assuredly that even in heated debates with hard-line Republicans about why I believe in the existence of a welfare system, that line has never nearly been crossed, much less defecated on as we zoomed by it as it has of late, when it has happened without even perfunctory discussion.
What really breaks my heart and makes me wish I lived elsewhere is that in my (unequivocally vast) experience, the Berkeley liberal that does not fit this mold is the exception, not the rule. Even the average Berkeley liberal that doesn’t go so far as to attempt to publicly shame me or deny my humanity automatically looks down on me once they discover any hint of my affiliation. Yet I will always actually believe in open-mindedness, and so I extend to members of the Democratic Religion the benefit of the doubt they’ve so heartlessly robbed of me: I listen to, respect, and even whole-heartedly love many Dems. So to any liberals who’ve defied the stereotype and actually read to this point, parting pleas in the wake of Senator Obama’s election:
Don’t go partying in the streets, rioting, or even hooting and hollering. It’s tasteless; we still have brave men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Don’t join the “Obama as Messiah” cult. I am willing to give a man I do not believe in the chance so many “If that geriatric piece of shit gets elected I’m moving to Canada” Democrats wouldn’t have given John McCain, and more; but the man is an ordinary one, a politician, and to my mind, an unremarkable, Party-oriented one like so many others, on both sides. He may rise above this in his tenure – it’s all I can pray for – but even if he does, he will still be a man like any other, and he, like the so many who’ve preceded him and the rare one of those to have been a true American hero, will inevitably fail to fix all of America’s problems. The economy will improve, in part thanks to his programs and in part because it’s going to anyway, as it has time and time again throughout our history (see the Panic of 1837, the Great Depression, the Energy Crisis of 1979, and the one we suffered earlier this decade); despite the genuinely wonderful, long overdue election of a black President, racism will continue to exist; the list goes on. Look to the future with reasonable expectations, because it’s more than likely there will still be endless things to complain about in 2012, and with hope, because things may drastically improve. And if Barack Obama goes on to be the best president the United States has ever had, you’ll find none more thankful than me.Extend human kindness to those different from you. Don’t rub this victory in the faces of people who voted for John McCain, like your compatriots did when the party took the House in 2006 or like they’ll be doing for the next few days to weeks. Practice (or, with any luck, continue to practice) the open-mindedness the liberal aesthetic preaches. Equally – perhaps more – important, when you see something shitty going down – like a gentle, harmless man driven quite honestly to the brink of the brutal violence he’s physically, if not temperamentally, capable of – don’t just promise to yourself to never do something like that (which you fucking better be doing anyway), but interfere! Stand up for your fellow man under any and all undue oppression, even if it means ignoring an opinion you don’t agree with.
I have no right to preach. I make no pretension of being a paragon of morality, and I frankly don’t consider myself good enough a person that I can go telling people I don’t know how to behave. I also, unlike many of the people I’ve ranted against in the preceding diatribe, fully appreciate the amazing country I live in, and am not only willing but thankful to put up with the occasional inconveniences that our various freedoms engender. But I have had enough, and, thankful those of you who care enough about me to have read this far, ask you to remember this PMS-y rant. And to be damn proud that America has elected a black president.
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