Feel Free to Spare Us - Updated

Spare us your sympathy.

Spare us your understanding of “what we must be going through.”

Also spare us the less condescending form of that sentiment. If you feel inclined to express your understanding of what we are going through… spare us.

Spare us your calls for “unity.” Lines have been crossed that can’t be uncrossed. Hatred – vicious, vitriol-dripping misogyny, bullying derision and murderous rage – has been thrown around like confetti.

Spare us your apologies.

Spare us your appreciations for Hillary Clinton’s accomplishment in her “historic” campaign – with or without hedges about how “unfortunate” some aspects of her conduct were.

Spare us your “reflections” on the state of feminism – such as your “discovery” of a generational divide.

Spare us your lectures on how no “real feminist” could do anything but try to defeat John McCain.

Spare us your appeals to the institution of the Democratic Party – the institution whose base you have aggressively sought to throw out and whose values you have trashed, the institution that you have dragged into the sewer of disenfranchisement, whose principles and integrity you have soiled, in order to win.

Spare us your assurances that Hillary’s supporters will “come around.”

Spare us any mention of Kubler-Ross, or any stage of anything.

Oh, and Dr. Dean – spare us any future fund-raising appeals for the DNC. We do plan to work our asses off for Democrats running for the House, the Senate and in state and local races – but for the purposes of the presidential race, we’re Independents for now.

Clear enough?

Okay, now that you’re free from those feelings of responsibility, or guilt, or whatever gets you through the night, let us tell you some of the things we’d be happy to hear and see.

Please, don’t hold back on your most sincere frat-boy, triumphalist thoughts and feelings. Feel free to give them full-throated voice. (And Camille, have a ball.)

Feel free to drop your PC inhibitions on how fed up you are with all this feminist crap. In fact, feel free to use the following terms liberally: bitch, cunt, whore, slut, pussy, screech, witch, castrator, dyke, lesbo, frigid, and so on.

Feel free to spread your poetic and metaphoric wings. Feel free to surf the ocean of world literature, myth and pop culture for examples of monstrosity, soullessness, inhumanity and all manner of evil. (Suggestion: There are many cultures whose canons and myths remain unplumbed in this dialogue. I, for one, have hoped for imaginative analogies to such figures as Grendel's mother, Shiva, Medea, Hecate and Lady Macbeth, for starters.)

Feel free to blame Hillary -- even better, prospectively (check out the comments to this TPM post) -- and her dead-ender supporters for handing the election to McSame.

Feel free to chuckle over -- or provide deeply sincere and concerned advice to -- Hillary the Loser.

Feel free to shake your sober editorial head over her many jaw-dropping excesses.

Feel free to compose concerned or helpful lists of “what went wrong” with Hillary’s campaign.

Feel free to complain off-the-record to journalists about how Hillary is just going through the motions, and isn’t really supporting Obama’s candidacy.

Feel free to ask, all puzzled and hurt-like, “Can anyone explain to me how Obama’s campaign was sexist? I really want to know”

Feel free as the breeze to exult in the wonderfulness of The Movement.

And, oh yeah, feel free, once all this is over – once the damage done to the Democratic Party is clear, once we have lost an election that couldn’t be lost, once the tide of Beatlemania has ebbed, and the “passions of the moment” have cooled – feel free to grow up.

Then feel free to give us a call. We’ll be here.

Update: I'll continue to add links that demonstrate the points of this post.