Way back in 1985 Sting, lead singer of the rock band The police, released his first solo album, “The Dream of The Blue Turtles.” The biggest hit single off of the record was a song called “Russians”, an overly earnest commentary about the Cold War and a plea to find another road to peace besides mutually assured destruction. If released today it would probably be derided as “woke” and there would be all kinds of confusing hashtags about boycotting The Police but it remains a haunting song with a pretty melody that holds up pretty well.
Almost forty years later the Russians are back to being the bad guys and the threat of nuclear war is probably higher than it has been in a long time but many people in this county remain convinced that the biggest threat to America is the politicians with a different little letter describing their affiliation and the friends and neighbors that vote for these people.
It would be hypocritical to pretend that I am completely innocent of this partisanship. I like to call myself a moderate and try to consume as much news as possible from non-biased sources but that can be easier said than practiced. The truth is that the majority of those in power who are farthest from the ideals and principals that I support are members of the Republican Party. This includes the person that I consider one of the most despisable members of the US Senate, Ted Cruz.
I don’t actually know Mr Cruz but I know that he has two daughters that I assume he loves very much. I also assume that it isn’t easy being his daughter, something that the oldest, 14 year old Caroline has admitted on her Tik Tok channel. She’s also stated that she is bi-sexual, something that people on the Internet seem to have latched onto as the reason for a reported attempt at self harm last month.
The numbers are different depending on where you look but its established fact that LGBQT youth have a significantly higher rate of self harm and suicidal thoughts than their hetero peers so it’s not a huge reach to think that this might have been a factor but the glee that some seem to be taking in this situation disgusts me. Like many in his party Cruz is against same sex marriage but also supports overturning Texas’s anti-sodomy law. What he really believes and what he says publicly to retain the support of his voters might be two totally different things. It’s one of the reasons why we used to all universally dislike politicians and not fly flags with their names and faces on them.
There is an old saying that states that a parent is only as happy as his saddest child. I don’t know what is going on with Ted Cruz’s daughter but I feel bad for her and I feel bad for him. I would assume that he’s already blaming himself for what has happened because that’s what parents do. An Internet full of strangers also blaming him must be terrible.
One of the reasons that I support more Democrats than Republicans is that in my opinion they are more often the party of compassion. In this instance I’d like to see more of that. Taking joy in the pain of another person because you believe it’s karma or something that they brought onto themselves is pretty gross. We need to be better than that or this country really is doomed.
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This post was previously published on Thirsty Daddy and republished on Medium.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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