Saturday, February 24, 2018

Maybe I Should Have Remained a Republican.

When I first registered to vote, my dad explained the process and said I could choose Republican or Conservative. I chose Conservative, thinking at the time I might learn something about politics and get involved. I couldn't have been more wrong, and at some point I switched my party affiliation to Republican, so I could at least vote in primaries.

This was the pre-Fox Republican party. This was a time when Democrats and Republicans could talk politics and remain friends . . . when Congress members on both sides of the aisle discussed issues, compromised, and voted with their hearts and brains rather than out of some misguided knee-jerk sense of party loyalty. A time when they attended the same functions and actually socialized together.

I married a Republican who never watched TV and got his news from The Wall Street Journal and NPR. Yes, NPR. To those who are surprised because you assume NPR leans left, Joe felt "All Things Considered" offered the best in-depth, balanced news reporting. I agree.

Over the years I voted more like an Independent. Contrary to what a Social Studies teacher taught my high school class, I voted for the person, not the party. I didn't vote for Clinton. I did vote for Obama. Twice. But I was still a registered Republican, and one reason was that I could have lots of fun wearing my "Republicans for Obama" button.

But when a lying, cheating, stealing egomaniac moved into the White House last year I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't take him, I couldn't take his handlers, and I couldn't take the state of the Republican party. During the years when I hadn't been paying attention, many Republican members of Congress had turned into a bunch of self-serving suck-up lemmings. I wanted to distance myself from all of them, and all of it, as best I could, so I changed my party affiliation again and became a Democrat.

But now, when it's more important than ever to keep pressure on our elected officials, I have the feeling my new voting status will eliminate any possibility of a Republican Congressman taking my opinion seriously. I think they'll very likely say, "Oh. She's a Democrat. She's not going to vote for me anyway, so I don't care what she thinks." Or they'll think I'm stating the Democratic party line. Since they don't think for themselves, but parrot their party line, they probably think everyone else operates this way too.

Life was a great deal more pleasant when I never thought about politics and related issues. But once your eyes have been opened, it's hard to close them again.

20 comments:

Julia said...

Women should run the country. They are more family oriented and have more common sense than the male counterparts who are more about ego and getting the job done at any cost. Women are more for peace and are used to compromise in general. They are less for military strength and wars. Women are gaining in strength and if this world is to be saved, they are the ones to do it.

Voting for the right leader is more important than voting for the wrong party. I'm with you on that one. I liked Obama and he inherited a hell of a mess that would have taken more than 4 years to fix. Being a black man must have been more challenging on top of everything. This is only my opinion from what I have observed through the media. Integrity is sure lacking in politic.

HUgs, Julia

Susan said...

It sure is, Julia. Thank you for commenting. I agree with everything you said.

Mali said...

Sorry I missed this when you wrote it. I find the US system very restrictive, in that you seem to need to be registered as one party or another. (But don't get me commenting on the US system!)

If I was a member of a political party, it wouldn't in any way be public knowledge. As I've never been a member of a political party, neither party can assume which way I vote.

Susan said...

Mali, I could have registered as an Independent. It's not unusual. In any case, if someone wanted to know which way I vote, all they'd have to do is look at my Facebook posts. :-)

Susan R said...

Bravo Susan! Thank you for your wise and thoughtful words. I used to follow you years ago (I lost a child too) and I was browsing my bookmarks this morning and came across yours Blog. I'm so glad to see that you are well and still writing now and then.

Susan

Susan said...

Susan, thank you for saying this. "Now and then" was a tactful way to phrase my 7-month absence. Several friends from the 40-words-a-day blogging we did in 2006 got together this year to challenge each other to blog daily using assigned topics and word counts. If you'd like to take a look, you can find mine here. The monthly topics are listed in the right-hand column. January's was a serial story. Mine is largely true, with some fictional details (like giving myself a car of my dreams). :-)

I'm so sorry you lost a child. I hope you're doing okay. I'm told I'm resilient, but I think we all put one foot in front of the other and do what we can. I'm able to have fun, and I'm grateful for that. But even after 17 years there are times when I still get blindsided by profound grief.

Eulalia Benejam Cobb said...

You wrote this almost a year ago. I wonder how you've survived the intervening months? I, and most of the people I know, barely have. But the country spoke in the recent election, and it feels so odd to feel hope for a change.

Susan said...

Lali, it's good to hear from you. I hope you are well. My cousin and I were talking about the president, etc., the other night, and I said, "It must be a lot like being in a bad marriage: You can't get away from it." It really is a constant source of stress—very unhealthy. But I agree about the hope. My Christmas card showed a photo I took of clouds buffeted in every direction, along with a quote from Bob Dylan: "The winds of change are blowing wild and free."

Cedarwaxwing said...

For some reason I thought you were posting here more often this year than I was posting on my blog. I started out as a republican too, but changed to independent and then democrat.

Susan said...

Hi, Dona! Nope, I've been lax in the extreme about this blog, but plan to come back to it when I finally (!) finish up the 365/2018 project. Thank you for telling me about your switch. I've had moments of thinking independent might have made more sense than democrat, but I'm glad I did what I did.

crystal said...

Hey Susan, are you around?

Susan said...

Hi, Crystal! Yes, I'm very much around. I don't spend as much time on the computer as I used to because my neuro-Lyme makes it difficult, but I'm researching new monitors that might help. I'm not quite optimistic about it, but I'm willing to make the investment and at least try.

For most of last year I was a faithful blogger at 365 in 2018, along with several friends from 2006, when we did "40 words" blogs. The blog at my link was mine; they had their own versions. Mine petered out early because of the above issue, but I hope to finish. Thanks for thinking of me. I think of you too!

crystal said...

I'm sorry to hear the Lyme disease problem is giving you more trouble. With your family so near, I expect a lot of your time is spent with them too. It's good to know your still around :)

crystal said...

Susan, do you know how to access our old stories from the writers bbs?

Susan said...

Thanks to Maureen, I've used The Wayback Machine.

crystal said...

I've tried that but it didn't come up with anything. What did you enter for the search?

Susan said...

I'll have to ask Maureen. She sent me the links. I'll get back to you. I hope you're not dealing with mudslides, fires, whatever. Weather has become a lot more than just an idle topic of conversation.

crystal said...

Thanks, Susan. I's ok here in the central valley. Lots of rain and sometimes wind but no fires or mudslides.

Sabine said...

Hi Crystal! I'm sorry to take so long to get back to you. I had so much fun crawling through the old WBBS site and I hope you will too.

Here is a link to the wayback machine: https://archive.org/web/

Once there, you enter writersbbs.com into the search engine near the top of the page. It will take you to a page showing the years during which WBBS was around during the lifetime of the wayback machine, and how often it was "crawled" that year. You'll see that 2004 - 2006 were the years it saved the most information from that site.

If you click on a year (say 2005), it will give you a calendar showing which specific days it was on the site taking snapshots of pages. So you can click on August 29 (for example) and it will take you to a page that looks just like the old WBBS landing page. From there you can click on the links to go to different forums. The frustrating thing is that some links will work and some won't - it doesn't save every single page - but you might get lucky and find some that bring back a lot of memories.

Let me know if that explanation works for you.

Cheers from someone you knew many years ago! Maureen

crystal said...

Sabine,

Thanks you!!! I got your message at my blog and was able to access the old forums with your link. There's so much there to look through but I did already find one of my old stories. I miss that time and place and all the people :)