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She's 17 And Wants To Be A Politician. Her Dad Says He Won't Vote For Her.
On the eve of President Donald Trump’s first anniversary in office, teenage girls and their fathers are facing off in the most divided political climate since Vietnam. How one family fights through it.Source: Buzz Feed News
The pizza they’ve ordered is half cheese and half meat-lovers, and that on its own says something about Lily Miller, a 17-year-old girl living in Waterloo, Iowa, and her 49-year-old father, Mike.
She’s a vegetarian. He loves meat. She wanted Sen. Bernie Sanders to become the 45th president of the United States. He voted for Donald Trump. They can’t agree on anything — not a singular pizza topping, nor Lily’s political future.
“More power to her,” Mike says when I ask him about Lily’s plan to run for office someday. “Because whether she agrees with me or not, her time spent with me is going to rub off on her, is going to affect how she makes decisions in the future.”
Mike thinks Black Lives Matter demonstrators are terrorists dividing the country. Lily supports the movement wholeheartedly. He thinks Hillary Clinton should be imprisoned. She volunteered for the Clinton campaign after Sanders was defeated in the Democratic primary. They argue about gun control, immigration and education reform, and Trump’s proposed border wall.
Now, for lunch, they’re eating a pie sliced down the middle by their disagreements, at a wholesome sports-bar restaurant playing ‘80s hits at one decibel too loud for a Saturday afternoon. Across the street is West High School, where Lily is a junior. Mike graduated from the school 30 years ago. He was born and raised in the Waterloo-Cedar Falls area, two hours northeast of Des Moines, and so was Lily. She is, almost predictably, bored by it. She yearns to pack up her political ambitions and her robust garage-sale vintage jewelry collection and head to one of the US coasts for college. Her dad wants her to go to school in the South.
...
Young, progressive women like Lily have spent the last year adjusting to a world in which a man they believe to be a misogynist holds the highest office, and their male parent helped put him there. Dads like Mike have had to adjust to a world in which their daughters, who broke down crying on election night, seem to suddenly and inexplicably identify with socialism, social justice, and snowflakes [grr
].Read more: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/shes-17-and-wants-to-be-a-politician-her-dad-says-he-wont?utm_term=.ntJM3372G#.sd7PZZ3VD
Well worth the read... Lily sounds like a phenomenal young woman.
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