For the un-Yiddish among you, mensch is a word that literally translates to human being, but is most often used in reference to someone who does a great service for another person or persons. Listen to the following and tell me if you don’t think Booker’s picture should be next to the definition in the Yiddish English dictionary:

After hour upon hour of Repugnicant repugnant lies and innuendo and smears and (let’s call it what it was cause it sure wasn’t dignified questioning of a potential member of the Supreme Court of the United States) bullshit, finally Cory Booker stood up for what was right and dignified in the truly American story of Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The words that keep coming back to me are “they loved America when America didn’t love them back”. That’s the story of the entire history of this country. This country was built by the men and women who the country didn’t love, the one’s who, as the poet says:

They died building the railroads, they worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re still dying now
Their hands that built the country we’re always trying to keep out

The tacky tact the Repugnicant Party has taken with Judge Jackson’s hearing has done more to show the American people what this so called political party is all about these days. They aren’t leaders, they aren’t people with ideas or even an idea of a pathway for all Americans. They care only about one thing: getting re-elected. Forget what is best for their constituents, forget what is best for the country, hell they say forget about what is best for the human race. They care only that their grasp on power is institutionalized to the point where they can never be out of power. And once that is established the only ones they will work for are the ones who are paying them.

Kinda like their hero did in Russia.

It astounds me that any working man or woman in this country would vote so often against their own best interests. Democrats say let’s have a living wage, or make sure the environment is clean, or not get involved in wars your children will be fighting long after you are gone. Repugnicants say you’ll lose your job if the minimum wage is raised or the environment is cleaned up or we don’t fight off some tin pot dictator thousands of miles from home. They say your children will turn gay if they are told there are gay people in the world or they will think of themselves (and you) as inferior if the true history of this country is taught. They cry about how they want to support “the family” but they never want to vote for any law that would actually help families. Instead they say they want to make it illegal to have a choice as to where and when to have a family. And then they cry and weep how tough it is to be a white male Christian in today’s world.

That is until a mensch like Cory Booker starts to speak.

Not only did he defend Judge Jackson and tell her he has her back, he told the Repugnicants to their faces that they are nothing more than cynical racists trying to score political points. He told her he would stand up for her and in doing that he was telling all Americans he would stand up for them as well. And he did that because one way or another we are all the product of our forefathers who were exploited, used, beaten, but who eventually found their small piece of the American Dream.

Compare that to the worst of the bunch who isn’t even on the Senate Judiciary Committee. No, he’s Senator Mike Braun of Indiana who, in the middle of the confirmation hearings for a Black woman married to a White man, mused that the Supreme Court shouldn’t have legalized interracial marriage. They shouldn’t have HAD to legalize it. Actually what they said in the Loving Decision (yes, that really is the name of the case) is that it is unconstitutional for the government, any government, to say two people can’t get married because they are of different races. They said it was an infringement of their civil rights. I would contend it was in infringement of their human rights.

Of course once the comment made news Senator Foot In Mouth did the thing Repugnicants are best at: he ran away from it, insisting…I don’t know maybe he was insisting he didn’t speak English. I think perhaps someone in his office might have whispered in his ear that the only current African American on the court is also married to a white person. What he really did was inadvertently expose just what he and his political party really do stand for.

But I suppose that’s only fair. After all, Cory Booker eloquently, respectfully, and in a dignified manner said what his political party stands for.

Let’s go out with that poet and poem quoted above.

Shapiro Out