Around election time, I always lament that there is no political party for me. I often end up picking the lesser of the two evils.
Right now there is a guy from my neighborhood who is running for state representative. I’ve met him a couple of times. Once at a neighborhood picnic. And then again when he was going door to door last month right after my son pulled out a drawer too fast. It hit him in the face, and he was a hot mess. In other words, the worst time for a politician to stop by asking for you to vote for him. With the baby (I’m reluctant to call him a toddler, although I think he technically is, since he’s toddling and all) screaming in the background, my husband told the candidate our son had an accident, this wasn’t a good time, and we kind of shut the door in his face. A few days later, we got a card from him saying how sorry he was to have come by at such an inconvenient moment, and how he hoped our son was OK. I was like, “Bam, you have my vote, sir.” That kind of consideration is rarely heard of these days, especially from wannabe politicians. He’d also sent us something about how much he was going to work to make public schools better. But later that week, we got a mailer from his campaign all about how much he loves guns. You know, those killing machines that make America and its ridiculous violent crime rates the laughingstock of the rest of the civilized world. So he seems like a super nice guy who wants to increase school funding, and I’d really like to vote for a nice guy, but I don’t want to vote for someone who is going to move to make guns as available as candy.
And there is my dilemma. I feel really strongly about things on both sides of the aisle.
Why can’t there be a party that loves unborn babies AND hates guns?
It seems like both of those stances are pro-life. Anyway, I’ve already said what I think about guns. But here’s what I think about unborn babies. After having one in me (who later came out of me, but at that point he was a newborn, not unborn), I can’t be anything but pro-life. I had significant bleeding when I was 11 weeks pregnant. It was terrifying. I got sent for an ultrasound, and I was sure they were going to tell me I’d lost the baby. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case. But I got to see this thing inside me, and it was a complete person. At just 11 weeks. Before my pants even got snug. He had every finger and every toe. I could see individual vertebrae. Earlier, at eight weeks, I’d heard his heart beat. He already was a person, and “getting rid” of him seemed so unconscionable. But a lot of the argument could be avoided altogether with better contraceptive accessibility and education.
That cares for the poor AND supports a flat tax rate?
Our tax code is redonkulous. There are tens of thousands of people whose career is just to interpret it and to help us commonfolk make sure the government gets enough of our money every year. And then there are the ridiculously low capital gains taxes and other handy loopholes for the rich to become richer. Also, there’s the whole issue of people who hardly pay any taxes at all because of their low income getting tax returns that are like $10,000. I pay probably ten times the taxes they do, and I get just enough back to make an extra mortgage payment. So let’s just make it fair across the board. Everyone pays a certain percentage of their income, and it’s the same. For rich people, poor people, small businesses, big businesses. And businesses HAVE to be a part of it. Even if they’re headquartered in another country. If they do business here, they have to pay taxes here. Which pretty much means no politician will ever champion this because then where would their campaign donations come from?
But we still need to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves. Children born into poverty. The elderly on fixed incomes. Those with debilitating illnesses. And yeah, down-on-their-luck immigrants. I am so very OK with my tax money helping all those types of people out. I don’t know how you can’t be, but those politicians who purport to be Christians are the ones who speak most loudly against it. They conveniently forget that part of the Bible where Jesus says to care for the widows, orphans and aliens. They’d rather focus on all that stuff he said about gay people. Wait a minute…
That champions individual responsibility AND the environment?
However, I’ve seen the system not just abused, but beaten senseless. People complaining at the pharmacy that they have a 4-cent copay on their medication that Medicaid didn’t quite cover. Complaining about four cents! I heard this happen! I had to pay $200 for a crazy antibiotic to kill my strep face a few years ago, and it ended up giving me panic attacks. But I just sucked it up and swiped my debit card. There’s a whole unit of the police department I work for that investigates disability fraud, and they have found some doozy fakers. And also, good people I know who have been on public assistance have told me that the system creates dependency. If they get even a part-time job, they lose their food stamps. So work or keep getting free food? The choice seems obvious. And do you know what food stamps can buy? Like, anything. Bathtubs full of soda. Bushels of candy. The cut-off isn’t whether it’s junky - it’s whether it’s hot. Seriously. So you can’t buy a rotisserie chicken with food stamps, but you can buy a cart full of Oreos and Doritos. I just want something that makes sense. Something that helps people who need it but encourages them to become self-supporting.
So can I get that along with a party that cares about the environment? That believes global warming is a thing and that some regulations on stuff like manufacturing and energy production are OK so that there’s still an Antarctica for my grandchildren (and for the freaking adorable penguins)? That realizes what we’ve done to food through GMOs and factory farming not only is bad for our earth but bad for us (and maybe is why everyone’s gotten so fat and allergic to everything recently [but they need to leave Cheez-Its alone. Also, I eat McDonald’s chicken McNuggets once a year, don’t judge.])?
Also, I’m for universal health care, strong public schools - including universities, taking excellent care of our society’s most vulnerable (including animals), solid infrastructure, revising the FMLA and just enough defense to keep us safe.
I think adding all those things together makes me a flaming moderate. Maybe a little socialist. I think the point is that I don’t fall into any political category, and it makes me so frustrated. I don’t have the time, passion or thick enough skin to run for office myself, so like a true patriot, I’ll just whine about it on a blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment