My background has been pretty well documented here. I was born, the illegitimate child of two
hippie parents. My dad, a haunted
Vietnam veteran, the youngest son of a Methodist minister. My mom, the “privileged” child of a wealthy
diplomatic and wildly abusive home. They
were both looking for something different than the atrocities they had
experienced in war and privilege. And,
in their search, they both associated themselves with a movement that, for all
intents and purposes, was fighting the good fight against government control
and manipulation. My parents’ politics,
clearly, shaped my social outlook. I
realize that as soon as I identify myself as a hippie, most people conjure
images of me sitting in the forest, sucking on acid tabs, formulating drug
induced plots to discredit the United States government, without running water
or deodorant. But, you all know
better. You know that I live on the
outside of a small ag town in Northern California. You know that I drive, every morning, to a job
where I get paid, albeit indirectly, by the federal government. AND, this part you may not know, but I shaved
my legs, this very morning, while in the shower. When I talk about being a hippie, I’m not
talking about the stereotype that politicians attached to a generation of
people who chose to live a counterculture existence in the hopes of creating a
social utopia. I’m not talking about the
lunatic conspiracy theorists you think of, with long hair and glazed eyes. I’m not talking about ungroomed tree huggers, living in communes. Although, in all honestly, hugging trees and living in a
commune are pretty fucking awesome. I
know we aren’t all in agreement on that.
So, with all of this hippie upbringing I had, it seemed
natural that I relate myself with the liberal ideology. So, I did that. I have voted for Democrats and/or Green party
candidates in every election I have voted in since I was 18. The first time I voted, it was in a
California primary, one week after I turned 18.
I voted for Gray Davis. He later
became governor of California. Later
than that, even, he was recalled from office.
He was replaced by Arnold Schwarzenegger. I clearly did NOT cast my ballot for that guy. AND, for what it’s worth, to this day, I will
stand by my position that that was the MOST embarrassing demonstration of
electoral decision making in this country’s history. And then it happened again. Even more embarrassing. Actually, in that election, I voted for
Arianna Huffington. That’s neither here
nor there, but if you do a little research, she may have been the best
candidate out of the 135 names on the special election ballot. Obviously, she did not win, nor did she
capture enough votes to even be a notable mention in that election. So, after that, I aligned myself even further
with the perceived left.
A few months before I left California to study Government at
George Mason University, a large state school just outside the beltway I sat
in my living room on a really hot summer night.
I had basic cable. When basic
cable still meant you got C-SPAN. During the coverage of the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the convention
that would nominate John Kerry as the party’s Presidential candidate, I
listened to a young lawyer from the State of Illinois speak. He was the keynote speaker at the
convention. A man nobody had heard of
until he threw his hat in the ring as a candidate for a senator’s seat in
Illinois. That’s what I thought at the
time, anyway. As he spoke, as he delivered
a speech so inspirational and unprecedented, I began to cry. I sobbed, uncontrollably, while I listened to
him speak of the “Audacity of Hope.” I
watched how he commanded his audience, I listened to all of the talk about
unity and equality. I hung on every word
as he explained “…There is no liberal America and no conservative America—there
is the United States of America. There
is not a black America and a White America and a Latino America and and Asian
America---there’s the United States of America.” And I believed it all. I KNEW that one day, he would be President of
the United States. The president who was
going to save us.
I was so convinced that he was going to be President of the
United States, that I pretty much became a subject matter expert on the man who
because the junior senator from the State of Illinois. When I got to George Mason, I changed my
major from Government to Political Communication. Yes.
That’s a real major. (By the bye,
it’s not as glamorous as it sounds. It
gets you a job as a medical records clerk, so I don’t recommend it, kids.) But, when I started studying communication, I
had to take a lot of classes about politics and rhetoric. Classes called Rhetorical Communication and
The Rhetoric of Social Movements. You know, stuff like that. So, as a result, I had to write papers about
rhetoric. I wrote a lot about Barack
Obama. That Audacity of Hope thing
really stuck with me. I wrote
papers. Lots of them. Good papers.
One , even, won an award and got me nominated for a national
something-or-other. That was all in the
2005-06ish time frame. I believed then.
Needless to say, I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, and then
again in 2012. And I cried as I held my
11-month old that November evening in 2008.
I looked at him and I said “I have hope for your future now. I have hope that you will grow up in a
society that sees all people as equals. I
have FAITH that that hate and inequality won’t even be a part of your
vocabulary.” Of course, all mothers say
that when they look in the innocent and hopeful faces of their children. But in that moment, I believed with every
fiber of my being that it was true.
Believe me, it wasn’t just me. A
lot of other people felt like that, too.
I knew people who had never, ever, EVER voted to the left of center, who
voted for President Obama. They felt the
same way. They felt the same hope and
believed in humanity as much as I did in that very moment. Election years do that to us. Well, they don’t do it to me, anymore. But they used to.
I’m going to stop here with my discussion about the
President. While I do not agree with his
policies, I do not agree with his ethics, I do know that he is as much a talking
head as the guy before him, and they guy before that. And the other five guys that came before. It’s not our money that is paying their
salaries. We DO NOT have enough money as
a WHOLE to pay politicians what they are being paid by individual interest
groups. Barack Obama is NOT the
problem. George W. Bush was NOT the
problem. All those guys since 1968, were
NOT the problem. The problem is
greed. The problem is the inequality
that greed perpetuates. The problem is
the disinformation that greed propagandizes.
While I still believe in the Audacity of Hope, I’m having a hard time
believing that there aren’t two different Americas. In fact, there are more than that. We are more ethnically divided than we should
be. We are more religiously divided than
we should be. We are more politically
divided than we should be. But why? Why are we divided?
We are divided because we are being fed social positions
that are politically divisive about shit that DOES. NOT. HAVE. MERIT. No value.
No worth. NOTHING. For example.
God. Why is this a political
issue? We all have the right to worship. It’s a very private matter. How you worship is your own. You don’t’ like abortion or gays or stem cell
research? So be it. Don’t participate. But those are religious issues, not political
issues. Those are issues big money and
big politics use to divide us. And guess
what? People on both side of the aisle
have faith. Spirituality isn’t a party
value. It’s a human value. You want to fight about guns? Well, I kind of think that defeats the
purpose, but here’s an anecdote about gun control. It’s rights control. And it’s not a conservative value, it’s a
constitutional right. Yes, we can talk
all day about the context of the constitution.
But my own hippie mother pays dues to the NRA. Yeah.
The self-identified pacifist. The
same woman who looked at me when I was born and said “No more wars. That’s all done now.” Do you know why she is a member of the NRA
when she doesn’t own a gun? I didn’t at
first either. But this is why. It’s not about gun rights. It’s about all the rights. It’s about the Bill of Rights. She couldn't fire a gun if she wanted to. But she believes in the freedom to do
so.
How about that guy, Edward Snowden. Do you know that name? The NSA’s whistle blower who told the
American people that their tax dollars were being spent to pay some pervert to read
their emails and text messages? The one,
currently exiled to Russia, because Russia is a safer place for him than the
United States? I first learned about it
on Democracy NOW! But as I look around,
it’s not just leftist hippies that are mad about it. In fact, conservatives are more upset about
it than anyone. When I first heard the
story, I thought “who cares? I’ve got
nothing to hide.” But it’s not about
that. At all. It’s about having your privacy infringed on
without warrant. That is also a
constitutional right. To have a
conversation in your own home without the government coming to take you away
and lock you up because they don’t like what you say, under the guise of
national security.
Back to my mom and this pink NRA shirt with a picture of an automatic rifle on it. I think it goes without saying that I was astonished when she told me about this NRA thing. But as
she started talking about her reasoning, about how infringing on one right only
leads to more violations. Of course, she
grew up fighting for her first amendment right to speak out against her
government and to peacefully assemble.
As she has watched, through her 60 years of life, the foundation of our
democracy crumble, she made a decision to affiliate herself with the only
rights-based organization that has a voice on the Hill. Say what you want about her decision, but it
makes sense. She tells me all the time, what is it going to take to get people
so mad, they find a voice again? I
always respond “I don’t know, mommy. I
really don’t know.”
But I do now!
Californians are fixing to hand Sea World their ass over this Blackfish thing. Most people have know how heinous it is to
put an Orca in a tank and train it to do tricks. But
somebody made this movie about the disgusting truth about marine mammals in
captivity. And guess what. No more Shamu show. It was a documentary that some guy made when
he wondered why people weren’t paying attention. Then, they started paying attention.
Time to get pissed, people.
Pay attention. Get pissed. It’s not a party problem. It’s a greed problem. We all want the same thing. We all want to feel safe. We all want to take care of our families. We all want to live in a community that takes
care of each other. We’re not
sheep. We are smarter than what they are
giving us credit for. It’s not about God. Or guns.
Or gays. It’s about standing up
for ourselves. It’s about standing up
for those around us. It’s about standing
up for our rights. We still have
rights. Read the constitution. And I’m not talking about the constitution
the media tells you about. The actual
constitution.
-Inner Peas
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