When I was growing up in the Peoples Republic of
Taxachusetts (Massachusetts for everyone not from New England), there used to
be an old political joke passed around; "A Republican is a Democrat who's been
mugged." Of course there was some truth
to the statement and it came about when Michael Dukakis was running for
president in 1988; the state's bills weren't being paid, money was being tucked
away in bank accounts "creating" a false surplus. The state then paid dearly for the next three
years in economic terms with a horrible downturn.
Lately I've been questioning where I fit in the political
spectrum. I started out as a liberal who
was always protesting one thing or another.
When it came to the 1988 election cycle, I voted for Kerry and Kennedy
for the Senate, but George 41 for president.
In 1992 I had a hard time pulling the lever for Bush, and instead gave a
protest nod to Ross Perot. In 1996, I
held my nose and gave a party nod to Bob Dole, wondering the entire time "is
this the BEST they could've done against Clinton?" By 2000 I had been living in Texas for a few
years, knowing that if Bush 43 got tapped to run, our state would be in rolling
in the pork barrel cash projects and I wouldn't be worrying about the
unemployment lines for at least four years.
In 2004, I held my nose and winced hard when it came to voting Bush 43
into a second term; he had left Texas so dry of economic prosperity, the
buildings were crumbling and blowing away like tumbleweeds. I had voted Kerry in once and I refused to
make that mistake again on such a grand scale.
I can no longer say I'm a republican, and I'm certainly not
a democrat. To checkmark "independent"
is useless because there are no good candidates due to the republicans and
democrats squeezing out the third party options. I don't believe I'm a libertarian because I
don't like some of the issues they stand for.
I do think I'm one of a growing number of voters who are sick and tired
of not having real choices. How come I
can have it "my way" at Burger King as a customer, but I become a slave under
the government with no real choice when these guys are my employees? My post tax dollars mean more to a burger
joint than my employees? What a poor
commentary on the system.
Remember the good old days when democrats used to tax and
spend your money away like drunken sailors on a 48-hour pass in Bangkok while
the republicans cried in their beers, dreaming of the day they'd turn it all
around. "We'd fix the entire system if
we had a majority in the House and Senate!"
This may have been true when it came to the rank and file foot soldier,
but not for the elected republicans who never starved despite being out of
power.
Yesterday's drunken sailor with a 48-hour pass looks at
today's Republican party and muses quietly, "They've got it better than I ever
had it!" Everyone's tied to the Jack
Abramoff scandal. Cheney's got himself
wrapped up in Halliburton and Lockheed Martin.
Rumsfeld's got his war profiteering nest egg with his stock in
Tamiflu.
The GOP scandals are
being logged in scorecard formats.
If all that's not sour enough on your taste buds, knowing the
President's for torture and domestic spying should sufficiently frost your
cake.
I'm still at a loss to figure out what happened to my
party. The neo-conservatives seem to
have sprung up out of nowhere like a poison ivy patch. I keep hearing that old fifties' song,"...you'll be scratching like a hound, the minute you start to mess
around....poison ivy....poison ivy...late at night while you're sleeping, poison ivy
comes a creepin' around." The more you
politically itch, the worse the special prosecutor has to scratch, and this
kind of rash spreads everywhere.
I still can't figure out what happened in the 1990's that
quietly gave birth to this political kudzu of sorts. We like to self medicate ourselves into
believing it happened post 9/11/01, but politicians rarely move that fast or
are that organized; even midnight pay raises take some wrangling. We were set up with the right wing media
blitz that ran a classic "hail Mary" pass in the name of equal time on the
radio.
