I can't help that I'm young, but I choose to be liberal.

When did looking out for the other guy become a bad thing? When did protecting the earth from longterm, irreparable damage become a leftist political agenda? When did idealism and hope for a better world become cause for contempt and condemnation?

There are not too many things that get me riled. For the most part I am a moderate person, content to keep the peace and agree to disagree on certain issues. But there are a few things that I cannot help but react to. One of those things is being made to feel as though my opinion is less valid because I am young (or because I am a girl, that one pisses me off too). I cannot help that I young. I cannot help that I have limited experience of the world when compared to someone my parents or grandparents age. That does not mean however, that my opinions are not carefully weighed and decided on after first making an effort to see all sides. So I am idealistic, so what? Does that make me stupid or easily duped? Does that make what I have to say less important? No. In fact, the last time I checked, many people my parents age long for their youth, and the optimism that comes with it.

When people look down their noses at me and say, "Just wait, you'll change your mind." it makes me want to scream. Maybe I will maybe I won't! Maybe because you are old and jaded, everything you see, touch and feel is poisoned with cynicism. Maybe you are so caught in your ways and unwilling to see things from a different perspective that anything even remotely different is "wrong".

Don't you remember when you were my age, you couldn't help being 23 either. And you became incensed when your parents would say... "Just wait Johnny, you'll see, you'll change your mind." Didn't you just want to throttle them?! And now here you are, doing the same thing. It is ok to learn from experience, to gain wisdom with your years, to change your mind about things as you experience more of the world, but that doesn't mean you didn't have important things to say when you were young.

It is the young that rattle the cages of age and tradition for tradition's sake. It was the young that marched to stop the Vietnam war and "give peace a chance" It was the young that fought tooth and nail for civil rights and the desegregation of schools. And you're going to tell me that my liberal, save the earth, everyone should have health care, the rich shouldn't be getting special tax breaks, ideas are less valid simply because they come the mouth of someone who isn't 55+? Well pardon my language, but fuck that.

Ok, now that you know where I stand on this particular issue, there is a point to my rant. I got an email from my dad today, you'll see it below, and I could not stop myself from responding. I may have sounded like a crazy lady, but honestly , I couldn't help myself. So for your reading pleasure, I now give you Trina on one of her more potent varieties of "She's real pissed" crack. Enjoy!


The email:

Subject: Father and Daughter Talk


A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like
so many others her age, she considered herself to be a very liberal
Democrat, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support more government programs, in other words, redistribution of wealth.

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch
Republican, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt
that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher
taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The
self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and
she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA,
and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?"

She replied, "Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy
classes, she never studies, and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular
on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the
parties, and lots of times she doesn't even sh ow up for classes because she's too hung over."

Her father asked her, "Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend Audrey, who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly
that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, "That's a crazy idea. How would that be fair? I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work. Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!"

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to the Republican Party."


My dad wrote at the top of this forward:

"hmmmmmm I wonder......................"



To which I replied to all:

To the fathers that sent this to their democrat daughters with smirks on their faces and the thought of "a little reality check will do them good" running through their heads:

I knowingly and willingly fall prey to your email with the obvious intent of getting a rise out of me.... and I will reply in kind. :)

Though I know you would love for me to scoot on over to the "other side" what the father forgets to mention, and the daughter forgets to retort, is that unlike working hard for good grades, hard work in the job world does not equate to higher pay. A single mom working three jobs at minimum wage, I would venture to say, works at jobs more physically taxing and often more emotionally degrading than say a doctor, lawyer, stockbroker or CEO, and still makes probably less than a 1/4 of their income. She is still barely able to fill the mouths of her three kids, make rent, and keep the heat on. Her situation is not something easily changed. She probably grew up in a family similar to the one she has herself, with no parents around because they worked long hours out of necessity, there might even have been drug abuse and domestic violence in her immediate environment. She saw her older sister, her best friend and her cousin pregnant by 17, and the idea of college was never mentioned, let alone considered because when you have mouths to feed, a college education, even at a community college, is out of the question. Though poverty at times is a choice made by those who don't want to work, it is more often a vicious cycle of circumstances and environments people grow up in, a lack of education, and a minimum wage that doesn't even come close to a living wage.

I don't think the rich should be taxed more than everyone else, they should be taxed equally. If you make more, you pay more, that is just how the math works. The rich shouldn't be getting special tax breaks to keep their already inflated bank rolls even fatter. That is called greed. There is a limit to the number of cars you should have parked in your driveway and the number of $300 pairs of jeans hanging in your closet. Those are not needs. Maybe a few rides should be taken in those $65,000 cars to the other side of the tracks where more than 1/2 of Americans live, to find out what real needs are. Donating $100 at Christmas cannot be the only "make myself feel better for my excessive lifestyle" donation that is made. It's like like Mr. Smith says in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, "I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if behind them they didn't have a bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness--and a little looking out for the other fella too." Poverty isn't a sin, doing nothing about it, is.

Tell me I am too serious and too liberal, too left, too hard on the rich, too democrat. But for the record, I would vote for a Republican if he/she were the better candidate. It's just that the republican party on the whole has turned into a something of a greed machine. And that is not to say the democrats are much better. If you ask me, democracy has become less about the people it claims to represent and more about the agendas (pockets) of the people in power, so they can keep their power, get more power, and pass on the power to the few they deem deserving of it (aka, their friends). Oh, and most of these people are not actually people, they go by the names of Corporations and the three or four parent companies that own the whole lot of them. Isn't it great to know that the ones in charge of whether or not Betty gets her cancer medication are the same "people" (insurance companies) that would rather not give it to her because it means they can save a few bucks. I know I am comforted by that. But that is just a young whipper snappers naive and inexperienced opinion. I guess I should leave the real politics to some stodgy old white men who haven't done their own laundry in... oh right, ever. Cheers :)


And that was that!