9-19-04

Growing up in Oklahoma and being parented by enthusiastic Baptists, one does not truly have a choice but to be brought up a Republican. I have always been taught to believe, primarily, in the Bible. When it came to politics, I was briefed heavily in the Bible's grim predictions concerning mankind (Revelations). My father is/was a firm believer in protecting ourselves from a liberal government who wanted to take control from us and place it in the hands of government officials and their evil programs, further advancing Armageddon, rapture, and the like. So, as you can imagine, I was generally fearful, hateful, and uninformed towards politics and politicians (mostly the latter). In the most recent and more responsible years of my life, I have challenged and exercised my true beliefs, forcing me to think about them thoroughly.

On September 11, 2001, I was jolted out of my apathetic daze and prompted to feel. I did not know anyone who was lost and had never seen the buildings. But, like most people, I felt like I had lost something. I was confused, vulnerable, and desperately seeking someone or something to believe in. As the stories of heroism poured out from the incident, I was filled with patriotism and support for our country and, consequently, our president.

I decided to become informed. Listening to conservative talk radio, I found personalities that paralleled my "beliefs" in politics and from there I began to coagulate informed, but by no means educated, opinions on politics and contemporary applications of religious morals in society. Rush Limbaugh was my radio father, and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, my radio mother. With their powers combined, I became a walking, talking conservative poster child, accepting and regurgitating conservative opinions as fast as they could leave my car speaker and enter my huge head.

The reason that I had never enthusiastically delved into politics before was the intimidating amount of information I lacked to be able to form an understanding of the processes and the history behind current events. Every current event was begat by some previous event begat by some other event and so on until you were at the beginning. And the beginning was so far back that the space between seemed infinite. Fortunately for me, conservative radio is comprised of beefy opinions that are easy to understand because they are so casually calculated. The general formula for a Rush Limbaugh opinion might be: conservative opinion (a) is greater than but never equal to a liberal/democratic/moderate opinion (b) because (a) is always right and (b) is comprised of a bunch of democratic, overly sympathetic, politically correct, whiny-ass, sissy boys/girls. With this broadly applicable talk radio formula exercised so often, it is easy, as a listener, to accept these opinions, especially if you are a previously uninformed, Baptist raised, liberal hating, Oklahoma boy.

Why hate democrats? Good question. My impression of them was of a bunch of bleeding heart, hippy, all-inclusive, naysayers who can never get anything done because they want to make sure that the smallest whiny group was happy no matter what the popular opinion was. The republicans instilled a much more attractive impression. They were a group of tough, ballsy, rough riders who did what they said they would do and didn't need permission.

George W. Bush largely reinforced this idea. I admired him. I looked up to him. When my face was wet with tears after the attacks, I looked up and saw a bold, decisive figure that told me everything was going to be all right and that he would find and destroy those who were responsible. Perfect, I thought. Here was someone who could lead me. I closed my eyes and followed the sound of his voice through the war in Afghanistan. I applied a general stamp of agreement to just about anything he did. Patriot Act? Agreed. Weapons of Mass Destructions in Iraq? Agreed. UN doesn't want us to go into Iraq, but George W. Bush thinks we should? Fuck em, agreed.

When things started to go slowly sour in Iraq, I worried not, comfortable in my belief that George W. Bush was a good president with good intentions. This was an increasingly difficult stance to hold after I moved to LA. The general opinion is democratic. One day, a fellow employee, Bobby, whom I worked with at LAX International Airport, uncovered that I supported Bush and prompted an explanation. My response? "I just like him, that's all. He seems like a nice guy." That was pretty much my real opinion. I could not think of any policy or fact that I admired him for, because I had slipped back into a lackadaisical acceptance of political activities due to my trust in Bush. Bobby was adamant in his belief that Bush was genuinely evil and corrupt, but I was stubbornly unconvinced.

My beliefs began to blur as Los Angeles, emotional solitude, and the war in Iraq began to pull me into depression. But it was then that I met a beautiful friend. She was thoroughly versed in Politics, or at least had obtained an educated opinion on most every thing. We did not talk about politics except for the occasional tangent that would stray us from some other conversation, but she practiced such a rational display of democratic beliefs that I found myself opening up to the idea of a sympathetic means of government. Maybe a bleeding heart wasn't such a bad thing to have after all.

I slowly began to become aware that the country that I was living in wasn't necessarily the best country in the world as I had unquestionably thought. I'm not saying that I began to think the country was crap, but I started to question whether or not it was or was not of a crappy nature. I became attuned to poverty and the dog-eat-dog system in place to keep the poor impoverished. I realized that the US is the only developed countries to not provide it's citizens with free healthcare or at least healthcare at attainable prices.

With realizations like these, I began to reevaluate every comfortable belief that I possessed. Gun control, abortion rights, human rights, health care, the Patriot Act, Iraq, and taxes were all looked at in a different light. This was not an entirely comfortable and joyful realization. I felt like I had uncovered a secret kept from me while I meandered through people's lives looking like a bigot or a religious zealot. I felt bad for every person that had looked up to me at any time or offered an open ear for whatever political belief that I was passionate about at that point. I remembered the elections of 2000, when our US government allowed Bush to assume the presidency without having the popular vote, and how I shared enthusiasm simply because my team won. I cringed at the thought of celebrating a blatant injustice and manipulation of the system implemented to make sure that the people's country operates in a way that the people elect. I felt ashamed and embarrassed for being so naive and I divorced myself from the Republican Party.

Lastly, I looked at my President; the man who I had adored, supported, and respected. I had always found it unlikely that someone of power would take advantage of his or her country, but now I hold a special distaste for George W. Bush and his actions in the past four years. In a time when I cried for my country and needed some authoritative direction, there is an account of a man who manipulated my emotions to conjure support for wars and laws whose motives were not wholesome and heroic as they were presented. There is an account of a man who stood behind a likeable facade of an admirable good ol' boy from Texas, and used it to beguile a country into believing he represented their God and their good nature as he sent off our friends and family to fight a war - one which we now know every one of his initial premises for to be false (likely knowingly false).

Many people like to think that Bush is an imbecile who has inadvertently bumbled and fumbled his way through a presidency, dropping bombs on the way. I believe that this is a dangerous conclusion to come to. It's too easy to underestimate an ignorant archetype such as this. The worst to fear from an idiot in the White House is a half-assed attempt at governing that can be easily corrected with the checks and balances of our system. There is much more to fear in a decisive, manipulative, and intentional man of power who uses fear to sway you and your elected representatives into acting according to his geopolitical agenda. This is not to say that I believe that Bush is evil either, although that assumption might hold fewer repercussions. Perhaps we have elected a man who, due to extraordinary events, has come to think of himself as the embodiment of America. Maybe his intentions are all positive, but because he might consider himself the representative of good and freedom, his tactics are acceptable to him. There have been many wars committed in the name of a popular good (Christianity--cough!). Or maybe I'm wrong and he's just an evil bastard.