i've posted this before. Twice, I think. I'm putting it up again for Zappa Fan, who hasn't seen it. I wrote this in a reaction to all the politics I was reading when I first came on the blogstream over 18 mos. ago. It is written mostly tongue in cheek, however, it's really how I feel so take it for what it's worth.
I want to make it clear, to any who might not know, that I know what I need to know to make an informed choice when I vote and I don't "hide behind" any pew, as I have been accused on the blogstream of doing. People who make that claim about me not only don't know me but must not read my blog. I have not been involved in "organized, established religion" in five years and I spent the first year I was on here talking about it in one form or another. After we got Gabriel, my blog became something else, but if you are interested in knowing what I think about what we refer to as "church" it's all in my history. I'll leave you with two words about that........house church....the Biblical model. Oops, sorry, that was five. *wink*
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Okay, I give up. I GIVE UP. I have never seen so much political
mumbo-jumbo anywhere in my whole life as I have on the blogstream since
I came on at the beginning of the New Year. I stand in awe of both
sides battling it out with a duel of words worthy of Aaron Burr and
Alexander Hamilton. Swords or pistols, anyone?
Well, lest one should think I am elevating myself above the fray let me graciously beg your indulgence, and have my humble say.
I
will give in, this one time, and am only going to go as far into it as
my anti-abortion, conscientious objector, small government, big private
charity, pentacostal, charismatic, leanings will allow me. Only this
once, mind you. Should you read another rambling piece of political
jargonism on my blog, you may arightly assume that I have gone out of
my head. Or at least into menopause. Okay, I know that was
unseemly....yet it is not untimely.
If turnabout is fair play
in this volley of words, then here is my lob. It might be an out, or it
might be ad-in, but after this, the game is over for me. My serve was
always my best shot anyway. After that it was just too much running
around for me. I got too hot and sweaty. I forfeit. I know, that’s
cheating, isn’t it? Playing until you feel like quitting and then just
walking away. Ah, yeah. My Dad wouldn’t allow it, but my friends
couldn’t stop it.
Well, since our eminently qualified Whitster
is posting scripture and asking for our cogent arguments about the
afterlife and eternal reward over there in The Whittier Whithood, so I
am going to, this one time, step out of my philosophical ivory tower,
far above the hustle and bustle of real life, which as you know by now
I do not condescend to do anything that could be construed as mundane
in my REAL life, and give you my caustically bland two cents on
politics on this side of the blogstream, in these decidedly NON-desperate housewife ‘burbs.
If you cannot comprehend the
ambiguous enigma that I am, you will have to get your daily devotions
elsewhere today. I’m sticking my head out of my imbued shell as far as
I’m gonna, and I ain’t getting it chopped off for nobody.
Wait a
minute, you say, I’ve been reading you a bit here and there... how can
you be BOTH anti-abortion AND conscientious objecting all in the same
breath? One is the mainstay of the political right. One is the
foundation of the ‘peace, baby, free luuuv, sixties’, the cornerstone
of today’s liberality. Oops. Politically incorrect once again! Can't
fit in on either side. Will I ever learn?
The answer is easy
if you could only see into my objurgatory yet conciliatory mind. I am
anti-death. Well, we all die sometime, don’t we? None of us get out of
here alive. Grow old or die young, I always say. However, let’s not
cause any more death on purpose than we need to.
My generous,
forgiving, magnanimous outward appearance conceals an irksome, tedious,
wearisome morality. eeeeesh. I have been called names such as unseemly,
ill-advised, impious, overly loquacious, and pertinacious by some who
purport to be way more important and wise than I will ever be. Well, at
least in their egomaniacal dreams. I have also been referred to as
garrulously mellifluous, docile, benevolent, eloquent and obeisant by
others. Yeah, I don’t know quite what to make of them either. Beauty is
in the eye of the beholder.
I have concluded this much from my
mundane musings about rules and reigns, monarchies, oligarchies,
dictatorships, and republics. I am too doveish to be a true elephant,
and yet not ‘peace at all cost’, ‘let ‘em bomb us and turn the other
cheek’ enough to be a true jacka…..,I mean, donkey, either.
The
only forced death I am in favor of is the death penalty in the
unfortunate circumstance that we have an unrepentant serial killer
among us. Does that fit into somebody’s neat little box for me? I hope
not. I’ve always aimed to be the model of servile perfection, but since
hitting the big 5-0 have embraced my inner indomitable child and am
circumspectly allowing a bit of her to emerge, but not so much that I
am summarily hammered into the ground.
I never claimed to be
uncomplicated. It’s kind of the unspoken right of a woman anyway, isn’t
it? To be complex and indecisive yet overbearing. Oooops, that was
sexist. Incorrect again. This is why I don’t spend much time on the
specifics. In my common little housewife life it doesn’t make that much
difference anyway. It’s all rhetoric and semantics.
Okay this is what I have to say:
Politics
is a beach full of constantly shifting sand, continually and
incessantly ready to ebb with society’s flows. If you don’t believe me,
consider this:
My parents, so Republican that my father took me
into the voting booth with him when he voted for Nixon over Kennedy in
1960, when I was seven, had to shift gears in the 1960’s, ‘70’s and
‘80’s when being a Republican became associated with anti-abortion
protestors, war hawks and other conservative leanings. It was really a
ponderous time for them. As Democrats were then and are now known for
big government, big spending, pro-welfare and other liberal platitudes
that they were not prepared to embrace, what were they to do? As far as
I know my parents have never claimed to be born-again Christians. My
mother worked for Planned Parenthood. What a quandary.
On the
other hand, my in-laws, who were much more politically active and
astute than my parents, running for offices, holding high estates, even
their volunteer work imminently noteworthy in local and state
newspapers on a substantially regular basis, were Democrats. Christian
Democrats. An oxymoron you say? You would be wrong. Not in the
political climate of the 1950’s and 60’s.
In those days religion
played little or no part in politics. Yeah, some people were a little
nervous that Kennedy was Catholic but so what, he was SO handsome,
wasn’t he? SO well-spoken, looked SO good on TV in the new age of
television politics, especially next to the sweating, stuttering, teary
and beady eyed Richard Nixon.
He did so well, indeed, that
even my so-called conservative mother was subtly taken with him in
spite of herself, not that she would ever admit to such renegade
heresy. Oh no. We are much too elegant and refined for such lack of
demurity.
Ah, the irony. She is four years older than Jackie and
resembled her more, with her high cheek bones, wide set eyes, and
strong jaw line, than Jackie’s own sister Lee Radziwill. We couldn’t go
anywhere in those days without someone remarking on the uncanny
resemblance.
JFK had the Boston political machine behind him
and it didn’t hurt that brother Bobby, who was quickly added to the
Cabinet after the election, had a moral compass, at least publicly,
that Jack couldn’t seem to follow or cover up. Ooooo, those Kennedys.
You couldn’t help but love them. They were just so goldarn pretty!
Camelot. What a dream. Imagine. Worthy of the theology of John Lennon
that we are all debating over in Whittierville.
These days,
these pseudo- cool, you da man, you dog, ruf-ruf-, oo-oo, wild-n-crazy
days, everything is like flipped, bro, like, you know, um, like flipped
upside freakin’ down. When did all this happen? Where did the change
come from?
Whoever heard of Christian Democrats? NO way, man, you zoopin’ me?
I
don’t think many would think ol’ Teddy, that slippery Chappaquidick
guy, would admit to being, even on his BEST day, a born-again, Bible
thumpin’, Falwell following, TBN televiewing,
Christian Coalition cohort. (Sorry, I was having too much fun there
with the alliterations and just couldn’t stop.)
Yet even HE
was against abortion before it was legalized and he had to suck up his
opinion ‘for the good of the party line’. So much for integrity.
Repeat
after me, “life’s a stage, POH, and all of us are merely players.
You got a bit role, bud, and it’s a non-speaking part,
and don't you forget it!”
Republicans
believing in the right to choose between life and death? Where does
this fit in? That’s as ludicrous as Alan Keyes and Rush Limbaugh even
dreaming that Hillary just MIGHT come over to the right side on that
one!
I’m a gonna give ya a piece of inside information on me
that even my best friends, for the most part, don’t know. Honest! I
asked my daughter, the political science/pre-law major (I told you I
was just a maze of irony), just this morning as I was writing this, if
she knew what I was registered. She said no and was perplexed to find
out the answer.
I’m a registered Democrat.
Ha, ha, haaaaaaaa.
Did I get ya on that one?
I have been since one year after I was old enough to vote.
Ahhhh, I just love gloating over the ironies of my common little life.
All
my children, the ones who are eligible to vote, that is, which is six,
soon to be seven, out of nine, are ALL registered Republican, along
with the two son-in-laws who decided that they would marry my daughters
even though they realized they would have to put up with a religiously
obstreperous, seditious about church, almost to the point of being
treasonous, mother-in-law.
I guess they figured out that my
daughters were the treasures that I always said they were, and married
them in spite of having to deal with me on a fairly regular basis, and
knowing that I would be the grandmother of their children.
I
don’t know, it’s just all too Family Ties for me. My kids are Alex and
my husband and I are Steven and Elyse. Well, not really. In name, if
not in practice. Besides, I'm not as pretty as Meredith Baxter.
It’s
really downright laziness, as in an ‘I really don’t care’ attitude, but
I think I’ve decided to leave it that way because in my old age I’m
just enjoying the dichotomy too much. There’s already so much paradox
in my life that this just makes one more interesting addition. Anyway,
it gives me something to throw at the people in small town America that
keep trying to shove my increasing girth into their tiny boxes.
That
common little born again, fundamental, charismatic, goody goody
housewife with the big opinions about God, abortion, and capital
punishment, is a DEMOCRAT?
Well, let me tell ya what happened up in here.
Way
back, when I was 18, back in the Stone Age, for the teenagers who read
my blog, I registered Independent. I didn’t completely agree with my
parents mostly unspoken views. We were not allowed to express opinions
about anything controversial at the dinner table, particularly politics
and religion. My father was a relatively quiet man but if you got him
riled up on something he could be loud and argumentative, so it was
better to say nothing at all than to say the wrong thing. We didn’t
know exactly what my parents believed but Walter just wouldn’t shut up
about the Vietnam War every night and the poor people of Southeast Asia
just kept showing up in front of our face all the time, and it was all
just so polarizing that no one could keep their mouth shut about it for
very long.
I didn’t completely agree with my future in-laws
political pontifications at the dinner table either, all that social
injustice stuff that didn’t seem relevant to my perfect little life at
the time. I mean, when my mother-in-law was the President of our large
city school board she actually got picketed! Right in front of her
house! Right on our respectable street in our upper middle class
neighborhood! How could this be? So what that she was for busing to end
what was essentially classest segregation. What’s wrong with these
people out there with their signs and loud voices, and why don’t they
go home already?! That was my take on the whole thing, but I will beg
off for being ignorant. You think a lot of stupid and ignorant things
when you are 18.
So I just up and went Indie on all of ‘em.
The
problem is that I didn’t take into consideration that I would not be
able to vote in the primaries. Bummer! So, I registered Democrat. Hey! It
was 1971. I wanted to vote, even in the primaries, in 1972. Big deal
what side I was signed up for, right? It made the husband happy. Who cared?
The lines weren’t that delineated. There wasn’t as much yelling over
Sunday dinner, even at the in-laws, about it back then.
Then
January 1973 rolled around. Uh-oh. Well, the lines were still sort of
blurred. Let’s face it Mommy and Daddy were still voting under the sign
of the elephant for the most part, and the in laws were still solidly
on the side of the jacka....I mean donkey. My mother-in-law personally
met ol' Jack through her political work. We have the picture of them
deep in conversation. Tough to walk away from that kind of headiness.
After he died, he became a martyr worthy of Fox himself. At least in
that house. Marilyn Monroe, notwithstanding.
I know I’m not a
Democrat, I never was, although once in a while I vote that way in my
hick town election for Mayor because I like the guy and what’s the
worst that can happen? He might approve re-paving Main Street? Gee, I
even let him put his little sign in the corner of my yard.
Okay,
this is probably the most politics I’ve discussed since I was twenty in
1973 and I know I’m still definitive yet waffling. Where’s the syrup?
Now, THERE, seeeee, I CAN pick a side…..I have to have Vermont Maid.
Nothing tastes quite the same. If I can’t have Vermont Maid I’m not
eatin', so there!
The legalization of abortion is the only issue
that ever got under my skin.....that still gets under my skin. Don’t
worry, I have been accused of being narrow minded by more intellectual
people than I’ve met on the blogstream before. It doesn’t bother me
anymore. Open mindedness is for people who haven’t researched the topic
and formulated their thesis yet. I’ve written the paper, handed it in
and got the grade.
“Connie, I don’t agree with what you’re saying but you have such a way with words.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah, whoopdedoodlededoo. Big deal. Words don’t save babies. In this country I’m not sure what does.
I've
never cared what party whoever is on and have always looked at the
issues only. I’m not anti-Hillary any more than I am pro-George. I like
both of ‘em. I don't agree with either of 'em.
Hillary came to
the small town next door to mine last year. Oops, one kudo for her. Bet
she wouldn’t have stooped to do that though if she wasn’t looking at
higher goals than the NY Senate.
George came to our big city
and gave a little speech in 2000. I shook his hand and got his
autograph. Ooooo, two kudos for him! Well, he's actually MADE it to the big
house, and not on his spouses coattails so his signature might be worth
more than hers, huh?
Oh, that ISN'T what it's all about? Well, at least
I have SOMETHING to tell my grandchildren from my common little
housewife life.
I personally think Hillary has got some good
ideas about health care, and with the crisis on that in this country
somebody better give it some thought, even if she does believe in out
right murder. As for me, I like doctors okay, but they aren’t God and
couldn’t heal me two years ago when I almost bled to death. If I don’t
have health insurance someday, I’ll just have to trust the Lord some
more. Ooops, she's back on GOD again.
Anyway, I think George is right on some stuff too although for the life of me it escapes me right now.
If
you think I’m waffling, that’s okay. I’m sure George and Hillary would
too, if they ever stopped by long enough to have breakfast with me.
Don’t EVEN get me going on the ketchup guy. At least Hillary has half
a brain in her head even if I don’t agree with most of it. I just never
did see what the attraction was with John and Theresa.
So,
that’s why I’m not a political analyst. On the blogstream or anywhere
else. A true politician plays both sides against the middle and I’m too
one track minded and set in my ways to ante up. I can sure go on a long
time about nothin’ though, huh?
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