As I write, I am sitting in Fiumincino Airport in Rome waiting for my flight back to New York, but I do not want to get on that plane. I do not want to accept the reason I am going home. You’ll excuse me if this diary sounds rather incoherent.
Yesterday morning I was awaken to news that shattered my otherwise quiet life. My little brother, with whom I tirelessly worked with on last year’s campaign in Virginia and North Carolina, with whom I celebrated last year’s election victories, and with whom I have always had a close relationship that began when, at age 5, my mother sat me on the couch and placed him, as a newborn, in my arms, collapsed and died on the front stoop of the Queens home we grew up in. My father, the only person in the family who can manage a word, tells me he died at age 25 of a severe asthma attack he suffered after running home from a friend’s house. He had always had a bad asthma problem.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t partially believe this is a joke meant to get me to move back home and when I get off the plane in New York, my brother will be standing here laughing. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know that wasn’t going to happen, but thinking it is what is keeping me from falling hysterical in the middle of this airport.
What does this tragedy have to do with politics? Not much, except my brother was one of those who felt the world changing beneath his feet after last November, and no matter who difficult it looked or how much it seemed the change wasn’t happening fast enough, he was always excited about the possibility.
My brother blogged only but once, on DailyKos last summer, before they ran him off for some reason. He was banned from there and threw in the towel on blogging from then on.
“I don’t know need a blog to tell me what’s going on.” He said to me once, “I can just talk to people.”
These last few hours, trying to cope with the reality that my brother will not live to see the successes he was so excited to see, I am reminded of what’s really important in life.
Not battling for hours with people who feel they know more than the people they elected on long comment threads that go nowhere. Not trying to fight off trolls and dead enders, bitter PUMAs and bruhs.
From Italy, I watch this healthcare debate and I laugh. “Obama must do this, Obama must do that. Obama must come up with a plan. Obama must demand the public option!”
Because Obama can push Congress to do whatever he wants? The same Congress to told them to go f*ck himself on Gitmo and cramdown?
I don’t personally have the faith my brother did in the future of my country. I don’t think Obama will get reelected, I think the liberals will either force a ideological purity on the Democratic Party that will render it a minority, or the party will splinter badly. I don’t think the Democratic Party can effectively govern the country, there is too much division in it.
When I suggested this to my brother, he’d laugh at me. Tell me to get my head out of the blogs, take a walk, talk to people. He had an incredible optimism. Must be what the haters and cynicals referred to as “drinking the kool-aid”
I’m not sure if you’ll see me around too much anymore. It’s just not worth the heartache. Things will fall how they will fall. They will happene as fate intended.
Friday, I will bury my little brother, then I will move on with my life…knowing that my baby brother died with an unyielding optimism that made him happy until his last moments.
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