I was poor, but a GOP die-hard: How I finally left the politics of shame

[eridani]

http://www.salon.com/2014/07/16/i_was_poor_but_a_gop_die_hard_how_i_finally_left_the_politics_of_shame/

By the financial meltdown of 2008, I was out of the military and living in Reno, Nevada — a state hard hit by the downturn. I voted libertarian that election year, even though the utter failure of the free market was obvious. The financial crisis proved that rich people are no better than me, and in fact, are often inferior to average people. They crash companies, loot pensions and destroy banks, and when they hit a snag, they scream to be rescued by government largess. By contrast, I continued to pay my oversize mortgage for years, even as my home lost more than half its value. I viewed my bad investment as yet another moral failure. When it comes to voting and investing, rich people make calculated decisions, while regular people make “emotional” and “moral” ones. Despite growing self-awareness, I pushed away reality for another election cycle.

In 2010, I couldn’t support my own Tea Party candidate for Senate because Sharron Angle was an obvious lunatic. I instead sent money to the Rand Paul campaign. Immediately the Tea Party-led Congress pushed drastic cuts in government spending that prolonged the economic pain. The jobs crisis in my own city was exacerbated by the needless gutting of government employment. The people who crashed the economy — bankers and business people — screamed about government spending and exploited Tea Party outrage to get their own taxes lowered. Just months after the Tea Party victory, I realized my mistake, but I could only watch as the people I supported inflicted massive, unnecessary pain on the economy through government shutdowns, spending cuts and gleeful cruelty.

I finally “got it.” In 2012, I shunned my self-destructive voting habits and supported Obama. I only wished there were a major party more liberal than the Democrats for whom I could vote. Even as I saw the folly of my own lifelong voting record, many of my friends and family moved further into the Tea Party embrace, even as conservative policies made their lives worse.

I have a close friend on permanent disability. He votes reliably for the most extreme conservative in every election. Although he’s a Nevadan, he lives just across the border in California, because that progressive state provides better social safety nets for its disabled. He always votes for the person most likely to slash the program he depends on daily for his own survival. It’s like clinging to the end of a thin rope and voting for the rope-cutting razor party.

[marym625]

1. K&R!

[Nite Owl]

2. I couldn't get the article

(Probably my iPad) but I think a lot of people are waking up to this---voting against there own needs. The tide is hopefully changing. The GOP has nothing to offer them and neither do the dem Third Wayers. We the people pay the taxes and get nothing.

[Enthusiast]

5. +1

[Kalidurga]

3. I remember him from way back.

I can't remember what sent me to my twitter account or how his story got there. But, this is a good example of how our cultural attitude of letting people sink or swim or pull themselves up by their bootstraps doesn't really work in the real world. Nearly everyone who has achieved anything in life financially has had the structure of a family that already has money. No doubt he was raised in a conservative family and it's likely his brain is wired like many conservative brains and there is nothing terribly wrong with that if you don't end up in a crisis situation. But, if you do it's dangerous. I have been there with my family and it's not pretty when help is needed but the adults are too proud to take it.

[Enthusiast]

4. Any one of us can end up in a crisis situation at any given moment of our lives.

Life is unpredictable. It is sad that so few recognize this until it happens to them. Been there, done that.

[Kalidurga]

6. Yes anyone can and that is why we need a real safety net

the one we have now is shredded and it's not so much a net, it's more like a brick to the head.