I've started a few blog posts (and diary entries on DailyKos) trying to get a handle on my thoughts and feelings about this nomination and then deleted them. Thinking about Alberto Gonzales makes me clench my teeth together until my jaw aches.
Everything in my heart wants to feel good, proud even, about the elevation of Gonzales. His story is the American dream -- right down to the huge family and the burning desire to make good. He's Mexican American (I would say Chicano, but doubt he'd agree), the child of farmworkers, the only one in his family to attend college. And he looks like my father; they could be brothers. No one who looks like him (or me) has ever been nominated for so high an office before by any president from either party.
Gonzales also wrote that the Geneva Convention is "quaint," that torture can be justified. He's got to go down. Though, of course given the composition of the Senate, he probably won't go down. But he'll most likely be raked over the coals. With justification.
But I won't enjoy watching. Democrats who oppose him are going to look ugly -- a group of white or mostly white men pilloring a latino man. Damn Gonzales. Damn Bush.
But most of all, damn the democratic party. It makes me angry that my own party hasn't seen fit to reward Mexican American loyalty and achievment. Maybe this would be easier for me to take if Gonzales wasn't the first.
