Call Me Leisure Suit Lefty...

I've recently been reading and responding to my Uber-Conservative friend's Facebook notes regarding election material (mainly consisting, and I apologize for the bluntness, Friend, of close-minded, rich white-man thoughts). I respect the fact that my friend's opinions differ from mine, albeit mostly when money is the prime topic, and I appreciate that he offers his insight to the world as an educated person, standing strong with his beliefs. I also appreciate that he makes my decision this fall that much easier. You see, I'm not sure I consider myself affiliated with any single party. In fact, I find the idea of our nation's political power mostly deposited into just two entities disturbing and offensive to my humanity. Yet, when I discuss politics with my friend, a white male brought up in a middle-class community, himself on the upper end of the spectrum, who attended decent schools and learned from many other "successful" white males, and who (I believe) finds equal measure of happiness in both nature as well as material goods, I cannot help but feel his views are limited merely to a mirrored effect of his rich, white male predecessors.

I am somewhat disappointed by his take on certain issues, especially when it comes to decisions that are good for the "people." My friend is a creative minded individual--the son of an architect, who I can still remember when bringing in a fully-functional hover craft he had built for some project in school--which makes me question whether he decided his views or if they were decided for him.

Obviously, we were torn from different cloths, but I still find it hard to believe that two people, raised in the same area, attending the same, mediocre schools, and subjected to the same media grow to have such opposed views. As many Republicans do, he refers to Liberals as "leftys," a seemingly neutral term turned offensive when preceded by "those" or "stupid" or "ignorant." As most children are, we are molded by our parents to, in essence, become our parents, political ideologies and all. It is this reasoning that explains my friend's political endeavors to me. I can only assume that a person as creative as him, who was always thinking outside the box in school, who was always the first to offer assistance to those who needed it, who is extremely pleasant to be around, hold conversations with, and who, for the life of me, I can't remember ever truly wronging any human being, must simply be abiding by the rituals of his parents, most likely his father, accepting the greedy, power-hungry, poor-suppressing, conservative ways of the right wings, hoarding wealth and defending it at all costs, even if it means loosing a little bit of humanity in the process.

So be it, I suppose, but I would have hoped that our school systems hadn't failed us that much, to not teach us to question the motives of others, and especially our own. I'm not saying the outcome would be different; in fact I believe some individuals would still find their choices to be much the same, but I just think that if even the creative-thinkers in this world are manipulated, brain-washed, and not challenged, what is left? A bunch of right-wing, anti-female, money-grubbers who allow for the free flow of big business at the cost of a 3-tiered class system? Doesn't sound like much to me.

And that is just what is happening--our wondrous class divides are quickly and quite literally becoming a melting pot, with the middle class fading into the lower class while the "ever-so-ethically-earning-every-cent" upper class gets, well, up-er. But of course, my friend, is in the upper levels of the balcony, looking down at those who scrabble in the dirt frantically trying to find jobs just to pay for their children's health care, not to mention the grandfathers and grandmothers pushing carts and taking your orders in fast food lines because our Social Security is down the drain...but go ahead and spend your millions of dollars on wolf hunting or whatever "economy-changing" plans our potential vice president has to offer. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Friend, I think I'll take a humane realist over a candidate with dollar signs and oil leaking from his eyes any day. I'll put my vote towards a middle class, and hopefully, smaller gaps between humans, both literal and metaphorical. But keep on believing, keep on writing, and keep on arguing--otherwise where is the fun in politics? I mean, it's not called polite-ics.........right?