I’m never going to be a politician. I don’t have the nerve or the emotional control for it. Furthermore, as opinionated as I am (and as well-informed as I try to be), I don’t think I’m even worth a damn at engaging in political debate these days. This election season is making that painfully clear. I can’t seem to muster up a thick enough skin to deal with the meanness! Nasty comments make me want to cry, and I’m feeling a little wussy.
Now let me tell the truth: it’s not like I’m the world’s nicest person. I am capable of major bitchiness, but I really do try hard to avoid generalizations. I don’t like to refer to folks who look or think differently from me as “those people.” Tempting though it is from here in my safe little liberal enclave, I consciously avoid making derrogatory blanket statements about people whose political views may not align with mine. Now I’ll admit, I remember that a few years ago I MAY have said something about how voting Republican was easier than thinking…but you have to cut me a little slack. I think that’s as mean as I’ve ever gotten when it comes to politics.
Anywho, I find myself lurking in a several conservative spots online these days, working to find out where the other side is coming from. I used to get the opposing viewpoint fairly frequently, living in Texas. But up here I’m surrounded by a lot of like-minded individuals. My politics are left, left, left, in case you hadn’t guessed. Universal health care? I’m all for it. War in Iraq? Was definitely on the streets in cities across central Texas protesting it (and getting the finger pretty frequently, I might add!), and while I’m a navy brat and supportive of the troops, I don’t believe in sending them into harm’s way with no good reason and no strategy for bringing them out again. I’m pro-choice, pro gay marriage, against giving up on public schools, and I don’t find Ann Coulter to be anything but a highly-paid hate monger. (I love it when people tell me, “oh, she just says that stuff to stir people up! She’s an entertainer!” Yeah, hate speech, that’s entertainment!) There are millions of people in this country who don’t feel the way I do, and I believe it’s important to try to understand why and find common ground, maybe challenge others and be challenged myself. But I keep running into this wall of dismissive meanness on these sites and boards that makes it hard for me to read them, let along engage in any kind of thoughtful debate.
The nasty stuff folks say about Hilary, for example, is pervasive just about everywhere. She’s criticized for everything from what she wears to the shrillness of her voice. If she cries, she’s too soft to run the country. If she doesn’t, she’s some kind of heartless freak of nature. They call her pathetic for staying with an unfaithful husband. No, I don’t agree with a lot of her policies, and no, she’s not my choice for commander-in-chief, but I feel no desire to degrade her into a caricature. I don’t have any ill-will toward her, and I don’t believe she’s evil or even know enough about her to decide that she’s a bad person.
Now the crap about Obama is REALLY starting to piss me off, especially since a lot of the insults are being directed toward his supporters. I’ve heard and seen him referred to as “the Manchurian candidate,” implying that we supporters are brainwashed, mindless followers. People talk about his draw and charisma and say that they are troubled by it. They call him our “messiah.” I’ve even seen debates comparing his support with that received by Adolf Hitler. Seriously, people? Are we really going there? A guy is a good, motivational, inspirational speaker who has a lot of fans, and suddenly we’re on our way to a fascist regime? I think the very idea is insulting and completely out of line.
And it REALLY chaps me when his supporters are referred to as a bunch of latte-drinking, hybrid-driving Ivy League brats. I’ve seen dozens of online references to Obama supporters as people who “haven’t really gone through a lot”–we’re all first-time voters who are foolish idealists who don’t know what the real issues are. And we’re so pampered that we’ve never had to do without. We don’t know what we believe–we just carry out what our professors and the liberal media tell us to do.
That bullshit gets under my skin like nothing else. Generalizations like that are problematic because they simply aren’t true. I’ve been voting for over a decade, I went to a state university fully funded by financial aid and scholarship money, and I can’t afford a hybrid. My family has been on public assistance, and I’ve bounced more than one check in my adult life. I’ve also seen friends and family evicted because they had to choose between paying rent and paying hospital bills. I’ve driven through gutted factory towns (I live in Ohio, for heaven’s sake), abandoned thanks to “outsourcing.” I’ve watched a loved one die from a disease that is misunderstood and in need of embryonic stem cell research in order to help us find a cure. I am a military brat, the daughter of a veteran. I grew up in two border states, and have lived and worked with immigrants (both legal and otherwise) for most of my life. My feelings about these issues–health care, the economy, the war, welfare and taxation, and immigration–are not abstract, are not based on what my “liberal professors fed me”. They are informed by my life experiences. And I’m not a rarity. I know Obama supporters from all walks of life. Maybe the college kids do like him, because he’s the “cool” candidate. But with a youth vote that is underrepresented year after year, I think I’m the kind of voter to worry about.
The nasty comments hurt me, because they sound like anger and resentment disguised as a political position. I don’t know how to buck up and not take it all so personally.
I don’t believe that all right-wingers are evangelical crazies who hate gays and people of color. But I’m starting to believe that a lot of them aren’t concerned about watching their language or being in any way sensitive to the dangers of generalizing and stereotyping. I don’t think avoiding stereotypes and name-calling is “pc.” I just think it’s the right thing to do. Am I crazy?
