 |
| Political elephant and donkey logos. Image source. |
The first election I voted in was 2008, Obama vs McCain. I was a conservative Christian and therefore generally supported Republicans, but I felt that I shouldn't blindly follow any one political party. I shouldn't vote for a candidate solely because they are Republican or Democrat; I should carefully look at the specific candidate's plans and decide based on that.
As I recall, it was hard to know how to make a good decision. I liked Obama, but there was the issue of abortion- this was back when I was "pro-life" and had never actually heard any arguments supporting the pro-choice side. I saw it in a very oversimplified way; I wondered "how could anyone think it's okay to kill their baby?" (Here, here's a post on that: What Pregnancy Taught Me About Being Pro-Choice.) So in the end, I voted for McCain.
That was my thinking back then. Being very skeptical about identifying as a member of a political party. And, related to that, I didn't really have a concept of what the difference was between the Republican and Democratic parties. Both candidates were talking about "here are the things I want to do that will help Americans." It was a matter of judging which plans would actually work better to help Americans. The two parties felt very different, but I couldn't put my finger on how exactly they were different.
If I had to explain it now, what the Democrat and Republican parties stood for back in 2008, I would explain it like so:
- Democrat ideology is about helping groups within society which have not been treated fairly. (Poor people, people of color, women, LGBTQ people, etc.) The government should spend money to make sure poor people's needs are met- food, medical care, access to education, etc.
- Republican ideology says that society works correctly now: If you work hard, save up your money, send your kids to college, don't have children before you're married and financially secure- if you are "responsible" and do all these things the "right" way, then you will have a good life. You won't have to worry about not having enough money. That's how society currently works. We can't change it because that would mess things up for the responsible people who did things the right way. Yeah, you may think "the government should give more money to help poor people" because it sounds like a nice thing to do, but it's going to cost too much money and cause a lot of societal/economic problems. Yes, it's good to help poor people, but in a patchwork, unreliable, temporary way, a way that makes it clear you're doing it out of pity and not because you think society actually has a responsibility to help them.
So, while Democrats may argue that we should raise the minimum wage, Republicans would say we shouldn't do that because it will screw up the whole economy and that won't be fair to the hardworking people who did things the right way. Sure, if a Republican personally knows someone who's trying to raise kids on a minimum-wage income, maybe they would help that family out occasionally, cooking or babysitting for them, for example- but the Republican perspective says that the problem is this person didn't go to college and get a well-paying job before having kids. We mustn't raise the minimum wage to a point where it's actually doable to have a good life on a minimum-wage income, because that sends the message that it's actually okay for people to live that way. And if more and more people start believing that, they'll be lazy and it will mess up the entire economy.
That's what the Republican party was about back then, I think. And when I was younger, I really did think that society already was fair. In school we learned about the civil rights movement- we learned that in the past, there was slavery and Jim Crow, and that was obviously wrong, but that was history and now things are fine. Then in college, I started reading blogs, and that's how I found out about feminism, and how some groups within society are oppressed, and the world isn't fair.
Now the Republican party is, I don't even know. It's Trump. It's a personality cult. It's a constant stream of lies about how immigrants are violent criminals, and schools are trying to do trans surgeries on your kids, and black people existing in public is "woke" and therefore bad (??????). It's completely untethered from reality. It's all about hate.
And I've seen people make the argument that this was inevitable- the racism and hate were always there, as the deeper motivation behind Republican thinking, and it was inevitable that it would lead to Trumpism. I can't speak to whether that's true or not. These changes happened at the same time I was growing up and changing my own views, so it's difficult to say how much of the difference I'm perceiving is a change in society and how much is a change in myself. But the thing I wonder is... if you think society already works correctly, there could be 2 different reasons for that, right? Either you're ignorant and you don't know about the reality of racism, sexism, etc, or you do know about those things and you think they are part of what it means that society "works correctly" because you are racist/sexist/etc. Those are the 2 options, right? When I was a teenager, I was in the first category- but people who are adults should know better.
Politicians should know better, because it's their job, right? It's their job to be informed about these things so they can make policies that truly benefit people, right? (Or is their job just to... do and say whatever is going to get them elected?) So maybe that does mean that, at least at the highest level of leadership, the Republican party really was about racism and hate, even before Trump took it over.
What's my point here? Well, I'm thinking about how it's been 3 election cycles now where we all had to vote against Trump. 8 years of him defining what the Republican party is about. At the beginning, it was shocking, but now it's just normal, and I hate that. Now every day, you have "right-wing" people talking about whatever the latest urban legend or conspiracy theory is, being pushed by Fox and Republican politicians, and people are getting all worked up about it, even though these things are completely false, and... that's just how it is now. It's like, why would I even bother saying "that's not true"- it won't make any difference at all. Maybe in 2016, people cared about what was true, but those days are long gone. Now we just take it for granted that the Republican party is a propaganda machine for hateful and racist lies. That's just how it is.
I remember in 2015 when Trump mocked a disabled reporter. That should have been the end of his campaign, right then and there. I remember when the tape leaked where he said "grab 'em by the pussy" and the way that Republicans all lined up to say "I have a daughter, I have a sister, and this kind of talk is despicable" and somehow he still got enough votes to be elected president. I guess back then it was shocking, but now he says and does over-the-top offensive and hateful things on a regular basis, and the top Republican politicians are now those without enough of a soul to be embarrassed by him.
It's been 8 years of this.
I'm very interested in never hearing about him ever again.
Back in 2008, I thought I shouldn't follow a political party; I should do research into each individual candidate to make a decision, and maybe that would result in voting for different party's candidates in different elections (or even voting for one party's candidate for president, and the other party's candidate for state-level elections). Now I'm wondering how much that really made sense, though. If you are able to articulate what each party's overall perspective is, and they're so different, won't it be easy to see which one you are closer to? Is being an "independent" or "undecided" voter about believing that politics is confusing and it's just not possible to sum up each party's point of view in a way that meaningfully applies to the candidates that I'm trying to choose from? Maybe that used to be true, but not now? It would be nice to view it like "here are the candidates, hmm I wonder how to pick one, let's think this through carefully" rather than "I will be FIRST IN LINE to vote against this guy"- was it *actually* like that before, or was that just my own privilege and ignorance?
Anyway, I guess that's all I have to say about that. Vote vote vote.
---
Related:
No comments:
Post a Comment