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Jul. 1st, 2004
A Dear John Letter to the Republican Party
Jul. 1st, 2004 06:23 pmMy darling,
When we first met, I was very young and impressionable, looking for something to believe in. You came to me about the same time as Star Wars, Jesus and Norse mythology.
We were a pretty good fit in the beginning. We both liked Jerry Falwell. You reinforced the beliefs that I was being raised in. We had a blissful decade. Oh, sure there were problems. My best friend didn’t like you. I had a taste for “Bloom County.” But we were mostly all right. Under your guidance, I spent my teens as a jackbooted fascist thug who thought the Christian Right was too lenient. I read The Handmaid’s Tale not with fear but with the same grimly pleased expectation as I read the Revelations to John, 666, 1000 and Hal Lindsey.
In college, some disaffection started. I couldn’t understand why George Bush. But I soldiered along, secure in the promise that if I got my degree and made my $50K starting salary, you’d see to it that I never had to pay confiscatory taxes to support lazy freeloaders.
Marrying a socialist was not the best move I ever made in our romance, but he was socially conservative even while supporting larger social programs. He converted me to that to a degree. Especially when I started learning a few financial facts. Supporting prenatal care was actually fiscally conservative! Every $1 spent on a pregnant woman saved $3 in neonatal care. What a deal!
I enjoyed your Cyrano, Rush Limbaugh. He spoke so well for you. And he was right, for a while, as he pointed out the most egregious excesses of liberalism. As I was currently laboring under the rule of the Liberal Arts department, using very nasty forms of PC speech became my weapon.
But something changed after I had kids. The money you had promised if I got educated wasn’t there. Instead I got bills, bills and more bills. I spent a year starving and blamed the Democrats, whose watch it was. America seemed less like a land of opportunity and a lot more like a sinkhole we’d never get out of.
We finally got back on our feet, mainly by working 3 and 4 jobs between the two of us. I finally got something worthwhile, the school district started paying my husband closer to what he was worth (It’s still not the 50K we were promised in 1986, he’s making 30, with a MS)
And I decided you and I would be OK.
Then I started thinking about what I wanted for my kids. What I wanted out of my life. And I saw our goals had diverged. I was no longer an “Earth First, we’ll stripmine the other planets later.” I wanted clean air. I was tired of stepping out of my door to the stink of dogfood or the stench of refineries. I wanted drinkable water for my kids.
I had left behind the notion that “The poor deserve it because they’re lazy.” I knew that work was no guarantee of success. I never wanted another kid to go to bed hungry, with her mama in the kitchen crying because there just wasn’t any more food to give her. I’d been there, fed the kid her supper and most of mine, and was the mama in the kitchen.
I still believed abortion was a painful act of violence against women, an attitude backed up by an emergency midnight D&C. But we parted ways on birth control. I thought girls should be given a Malthusian drill starting at age 10. I thought it should be so ingrained, such second nature, that they would never forget. I knew sex-ed needed to be comprehensive and not just Plumbing 101 followed by “DON’T!” I agreed with you on the free condom thing, though. We always managed to find $5 for a box that would last us a month.
But kissing a girl was my biggest defection. I thought I could squelch that part of me, and be a good person. I have come to understand that while I don’t need to actively have lesbian sex, I want my option to do so open.
And as I observed my children, I began to wonder what would happen. Would they date the same or opposite sex partners? Or both? I wanted the both option open. And the more I thought about that, the more I wanted them to be able to marry.
That’s when I knew, we weren’t even close to on the same page.
While I don’t mind the dividend tax cut (after all, I already paid taxes on the money when I earned it), I wondered how many kids went without supper so I could have an extra $2 in my pocket every year.
When Iraq II: Hamlet in Action came around, I left you.
You want me back? Here’s the deal.
1) Return to being the party of Lincoln with “liberty and justice for all.” Gay, straight, black, white orange and purple. Rich and Poor. All.
2) Realize that “Promote the General Welfare” and “Secure the blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity” in the Constitution means an EDUCATED workforce, and not an end to public schools.
3) Get our service people home, with full pay, back pay for work missed in service to the country and full benefits.
4) Reduce the administrative overhead before you start cutting programs.
You had 16 years. You accomplished none of the moral goals you said you would. You broke every fiscal promise made to the Middle Class. I’m voting with my wallet. And yeah, with my conscience too.
On second thought, I’m not sure you can get me back.
It was a grand affair. You can keep my brown shirt. It doesn’t fit anymore anyway. And here’s my hat too. My mind expanded a whole lot, and it doesn’t fit either.
Have a nice death,
Angel
When we first met, I was very young and impressionable, looking for something to believe in. You came to me about the same time as Star Wars, Jesus and Norse mythology.
We were a pretty good fit in the beginning. We both liked Jerry Falwell. You reinforced the beliefs that I was being raised in. We had a blissful decade. Oh, sure there were problems. My best friend didn’t like you. I had a taste for “Bloom County.” But we were mostly all right. Under your guidance, I spent my teens as a jackbooted fascist thug who thought the Christian Right was too lenient. I read The Handmaid’s Tale not with fear but with the same grimly pleased expectation as I read the Revelations to John, 666, 1000 and Hal Lindsey.
In college, some disaffection started. I couldn’t understand why George Bush. But I soldiered along, secure in the promise that if I got my degree and made my $50K starting salary, you’d see to it that I never had to pay confiscatory taxes to support lazy freeloaders.
Marrying a socialist was not the best move I ever made in our romance, but he was socially conservative even while supporting larger social programs. He converted me to that to a degree. Especially when I started learning a few financial facts. Supporting prenatal care was actually fiscally conservative! Every $1 spent on a pregnant woman saved $3 in neonatal care. What a deal!
I enjoyed your Cyrano, Rush Limbaugh. He spoke so well for you. And he was right, for a while, as he pointed out the most egregious excesses of liberalism. As I was currently laboring under the rule of the Liberal Arts department, using very nasty forms of PC speech became my weapon.
But something changed after I had kids. The money you had promised if I got educated wasn’t there. Instead I got bills, bills and more bills. I spent a year starving and blamed the Democrats, whose watch it was. America seemed less like a land of opportunity and a lot more like a sinkhole we’d never get out of.
We finally got back on our feet, mainly by working 3 and 4 jobs between the two of us. I finally got something worthwhile, the school district started paying my husband closer to what he was worth (It’s still not the 50K we were promised in 1986, he’s making 30, with a MS)
And I decided you and I would be OK.
Then I started thinking about what I wanted for my kids. What I wanted out of my life. And I saw our goals had diverged. I was no longer an “Earth First, we’ll stripmine the other planets later.” I wanted clean air. I was tired of stepping out of my door to the stink of dogfood or the stench of refineries. I wanted drinkable water for my kids.
I had left behind the notion that “The poor deserve it because they’re lazy.” I knew that work was no guarantee of success. I never wanted another kid to go to bed hungry, with her mama in the kitchen crying because there just wasn’t any more food to give her. I’d been there, fed the kid her supper and most of mine, and was the mama in the kitchen.
I still believed abortion was a painful act of violence against women, an attitude backed up by an emergency midnight D&C. But we parted ways on birth control. I thought girls should be given a Malthusian drill starting at age 10. I thought it should be so ingrained, such second nature, that they would never forget. I knew sex-ed needed to be comprehensive and not just Plumbing 101 followed by “DON’T!” I agreed with you on the free condom thing, though. We always managed to find $5 for a box that would last us a month.
But kissing a girl was my biggest defection. I thought I could squelch that part of me, and be a good person. I have come to understand that while I don’t need to actively have lesbian sex, I want my option to do so open.
And as I observed my children, I began to wonder what would happen. Would they date the same or opposite sex partners? Or both? I wanted the both option open. And the more I thought about that, the more I wanted them to be able to marry.
That’s when I knew, we weren’t even close to on the same page.
While I don’t mind the dividend tax cut (after all, I already paid taxes on the money when I earned it), I wondered how many kids went without supper so I could have an extra $2 in my pocket every year.
When Iraq II: Hamlet in Action came around, I left you.
You want me back? Here’s the deal.
1) Return to being the party of Lincoln with “liberty and justice for all.” Gay, straight, black, white orange and purple. Rich and Poor. All.
2) Realize that “Promote the General Welfare” and “Secure the blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and Our Posterity” in the Constitution means an EDUCATED workforce, and not an end to public schools.
3) Get our service people home, with full pay, back pay for work missed in service to the country and full benefits.
4) Reduce the administrative overhead before you start cutting programs.
You had 16 years. You accomplished none of the moral goals you said you would. You broke every fiscal promise made to the Middle Class. I’m voting with my wallet. And yeah, with my conscience too.
On second thought, I’m not sure you can get me back.
It was a grand affair. You can keep my brown shirt. It doesn’t fit anymore anyway. And here’s my hat too. My mind expanded a whole lot, and it doesn’t fit either.
Have a nice death,
Angel