Who Are These People?

Who are these people?

The election night of 2004 will be one of those times when someone asks you, 20 years from now..where were you when Bush won the 2004 election? A collective depression lingers in the air today, less then a week after , and I certainly cant shake it. This has been the darkest year of my life, and certainly doesnt seem to be getting any better.
Just who voted for Bush, Democrats scratch their heads and ask..who are these people?
Let me enlighten you.
I was born in Indiana, Every one of my relatives voted for Bush. I am the black sheep, the outcast, the woman who chose to go my own way. My brothers and sisters are all republicans, and born again christians. They chose to embrace an ideology that , in their mind, not only protects their monied interests, such as the case of my youngest brother, who makes an ungodly amount of money as a banker, but my sister and other brother also love Bush...in their minds, Bush represents biblical morality.
Having read the Bible myself, all the way through many times, I find it amusing that my brothers and sister seem to think Bush has a stake in it. When Jesus speaks of the Golden Rule, or voices his gentleness in the beatitudes, it is directly in opposition to the policies of George Bush. There is a schizophrenic rift amongst Christians today, much of it due to the two different natures of the God of the Bible..the Old Testament God represents an angry, furious dictator hell bent on destruction, and the New Testament version of God represents a kind a compassionate God, a liberal , for all intents and purposes.
My brother's musings one day about how "AIDS is punishment for gay folks wickedness" simply floored me. How could I have been born into this family, and who are they? Why haven't they chosen to read, or look one moment further then the small towns they live in, in Indiana and Kentucky and Ohio? What possible explanation could lead them to NOT want to think for themselves, and vote for a man who murdered over 100,000 Iraqi civilians in a war based on lie after lie after lie? A man who, if you wanted to look it up, and took the time to do so, was born in Conneticut and was a drunken spoiled frat boy at Yale? Why did my relatives buy into the downhome PR small hick cowboy image so finely crafted by Rove and associates?
I can only guess as to their motivations. Fear, lack of education, and unparalleled laziness .
I was born into a lower middle class home, where my father earned very little, and yet somehow he put food on the table, and we survived in a large Catholic family. All the handwringing Dems do now about "how do we reach middle america?" is for naught, until middle america chooses to educate itself. Blaming the media is fine, I blame them too, but dont pin it all on the media. Some of us out here in the heartland. coming from heartland families, educated ourselves. We made a concious choice, as human beings, to LEARN. When I was 19 years old I saved a years worth of college tuition and went to college. My parents were very poor, and I never finished college because I was not able to keep up with the tuition, despite my 2-3 crappy jobs I worked . Nonetheless, I never stopped learning. I walked into every library I could find and devoured every book I could lay my hands on.
When the Republicans use their "intellectual elite" card against the Dems, they are sadly shmoozing people into thinking that everyone in the "heartland" is incapable of high high learning and educating themselves. It is actually an insult to me, a poor person from the heartland, who chose to learn despite my family's poverty, and it is an insult to every person living in middle america to tell them they are not capable of educating themselves.
Unfortunately, all the brouhaha about anti intellectualism is paying off. People in the heartland and the red states voted for Bush, based on the stereotypes they believed coming from the GOP. It also fed into people's inherent laziness, and laziness it is, of not wanting to go out and find the truth for themselves. Human laziness is letting your preacher or a radio host do your thinking for you. You don't even want to look at new ideas, meet new people, or open your mind to the wealth of information that is out there.
I never had much money, but libraries are free. Right now I am reading Ulysses again, by James Joyce. I can also fry catfish and make excellent cornbread. I know who Bertholt Brecht is, but I also know how to clip coupons to make it through the week. Why is it that I ended up wanting to delve into books, reading, art, music, new ideas, without fear, and my brothers and sisters chose to hide in their small villages and hold their thinking cards close to their chests, preferring Rush Limbaugh to visiting their local library, preferring their preacher explain the Bible to them, rather then studying the origins of the Bible, and going much further in those studies to include the Upanashads, the Vedas, and the Sumerian texts. What kept them from wanting to embrace a world of new thoughts and ideas, and made them hunker down in fear of anything new? We were all brought up in the same family, each one of us learned how to read. I was the only one who took off and embraced new ideas, and chose to question the status quo.
Fear is a large factor in much of this . Fear rises in people when new ideas surface. Small town USA is awash with fear, as manufacturing jobs disappear, as small towns struggle to survive. There are two places to turn in a small town for comfort. One is the local bar, the other is the local church. How many US citizens in small towns even know that alcohol is a depressant? The liqour cartel certainly isnt going to tell you that. Air America reaches the large cities, but you wont hear it in small town America. Small town America has a limited information plan, and the GOP prefers it stays that way. Radio hosts like Limbaugh prevail, and preachers in small churches shore up the rest of the information to the citizenry.
My mother voted for Bush. She voted for him with one position. Abortion. She has no clue, and I know her well, as to how many women are out there struggling to make ends meet. She voted against her own self interests, and ended up filing bankruptcy. She doesnt care, as long as Bush overturns Roe V Wade. I explained to her, once, that born again evangelicals actually detest Catholics, and think the pope is the anti-christ. That includes much of Bush's base.
She doesnt care. Her mind, and the minds of my brothers and sisters, are set. They want a world where women are second class, where negroes know their place, and where white protestant men rule the country, preferably with large caches of guns and ammo. Their preachers explain the Bible to them, its easier for them then actually reading it themselves. I find it amusing that there are numerous verses in the Bible about the sin of Gluttony , but no preacher ever brings up any of those verses for fear of losing most of his parishioners and much of the tithing. No, preachers prefer using the Bible to lambast the civil unions of gay folks, and the people who sit in church rarely question the authority of their preachers. Church is a social club, where you are greeted with open arms ONLY if you dont question anything, in many small towns.
I have pretty much cut myself off from my biological family. One thing I have learned in all of my 53 years on this earth is NOT to surround myself with people who are unhealthy for me, or who want my eventual destruction to occur because Im a liberal. That includes my relatives.
He who owns the medium owns the message, said Marchall MacLuhan. He was spot on. The media in small towns is right wing radio, holy rolling preachers, and television, the latter having sold out a long time ago to corporate shills.
Its disheartening , really, that so many US citizens were bamboozled and bought the PR show from the GOP, hook, line and sinker..sad, because its those same small towns whose sons and daughters will be blown up by IEDs in a war that was based on lie after lie after lie.
Again, people voted against their own self interests, as their children get hauled off to the never ending wars, they get to watch their own children come home in body bags , or as amputees, and how will they, in their minds, justify their vote for Bush after that? Eventually, the lies about this war and any other wars Bush starts for his corporate friends, will come out. How long can these people , this large swath of people like my relatives, who voted for Bush, live in denial?
Looking in the truth mirror is hard work for anyone, and most people avoid it. Better to be 'safe', then dig deeply for the real reasons this war was started..better to stay in denial then painfully look for the truth and follow the monied interests that started this war. People avoid emotional pain like the plague. Many, such as the swift boat Vets, have avoided the truth about US policies and corporate wars, all their lives. They live in some vacous state of adolescent machismo, and justify to themselves over and over that there was 'some' reason their own country would send them to a war. They cannot bear the truth that Vietnam, and Iraq, were and are wars that should have never occured, and that hundreds of thousands of people died for corporate interests and wealthy monied CEOs who have not a whit of compassion , empathy, or caring for anyone but their own bank accounts.
Where we go from here, I dont know. I know this country has never been so divided, and yet I am almost glad Bush slunk into the Oval Office again..it may take four years of Hell on Earth to finally wake up the US populace, so let Bush have at it. As jobs are shipped overseas, as the small towns fold up like dry leaves and blow away, as local taxes rise, as more bankruptcies and more debt destroy the infrastructure of the US, as the environment is raped and pillaged, and our grandchildren drink toxic waste, as more families struggle in debt and lose their homes, and livelihoods, maybe then the preachers mumblings will fall on deaf ears. Maybe then, people will say "I want to know more..I want to know why my government is doing this to my family.."
Maybe my own relatives will get off their cans and learn something, and stop relying on Rush Limbaugh to do their thinking for them.
Until then, the adage "one day at a time" holds quite a bit of meaning for the rest of us.

We are all trying to figure out where and how we came to this place and why some are where they are....Its a dark dark time in this country and sadly the minority of us see it....I wish I had answers right now...
:hi:

beautifuL and accurate.

thank you for the heaLthy read. :D

And, I agree that laziness (esp. intellectual laziness) is the cause. Thanks for sharing.

And I might add it's good to "see" you again! :D :D :D

but we need to expose these so-called Christians (right-wing only) for what they are. I can honestly say the first time I saw Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggert,Oral Roberts, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and George Bush, I knew they were as phoney as the day is long, and each and every one of them out for the money only. I don't even begin to understand the people who follow them and have absolutely no empathy for them. To me, they are insane, and their non-Christian actions should be exposed for all to see. True Christians, who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, need to be shown that all of these people at some time have broken more than one of the 10 commandments, and are no more Christian than Osama Bin Laden. Like I said, I don't know how to do this, but it needs to be done.

who believe in 'false prophets', as the old Biblical saying goes. They've fallen into the trap of going with whatever comforts them and whatever they think offers them the most protection from the toils and troubles of life. Where they ever got the idea that these people, these liars, have their best interests at heart is something I will NEVER understand. The bush* administration sees them as being just a living host to feed off of. They are a parasite on a dying body. The body is the American political/justice system, and they are perverting everything it was ever meant to mean. And these morans who think that big daddy bush* will protect them from the ugly realities of life, war, poverty and bigotry are too damn lazy tho stop and think that since they are the promoters of these policies they are most certainly not going to be the ones to offer them any protection. In fact, they are going to turn on them and bleed them dry. It's already starting. Social Security is one big example. These idiots have paid into that system for years, now they've given this guy the green light to pillage, plunder, and steal every last dime of their money (AND OURS).

Fear is a really interesting concept in this election. The biggest thing that the public really had to fear is the administration that they 'elected' for another go round. (Personally I don't believe the election results, but that's a story for another day).

I am so disgusted with the lazy assholes in this country who are so pathetically gutless that they don't, and won't, make an effort to even try to understand what another four years of this Godless bunch to control this country. There is no way that I'll ever accept this party, this corrupt administration, have any moral authority or any so called Christian beliefs. That's an absolute impossibility when you compare their actions to their rhetoric. And it's so damn obvious. But again, another example of the ignorance and laziness of the American people. If one half of them believed in the teachings of Christ like they pretend that they do, they'd be out in the streets marching and protesting the theft, death, and bigotry that the bush* cabal promotes.

I understand your feelings perfectly. My disgust with Joe Public is overwhelming. I cannot tolerate ignorace. And ignorance and bigotry, greed and death, are now the official policies of this government.

You can lead a horse to water etc. You can throw gobs of information at someone,
and if they don't want to know you will have no effect. This election certainly
proves that.

And I, for one, do not believe we should pander to people's ignorance and
bigotry. That ideas disgusts me, and it won't work anyway. If we turn on
our gay brothers and sisters, the opposition will just find another wedge
issue.

the right which is wrong. Expose the truth about their Archie Bunker version of right and wrong !

I also want to add that it isn't just intellectual laziness - it's physical laziness, too. Babies and children are encouraged to be physically lazy because Mom and Dad are too. I also am 53, Mari, and I want you to think back to your younger years and ask yourself if you remember seeing 5 and 6-year-olds in STROLLERS back then?? Or being dropped off at school by Mom, when school is 8 blocks away? Or being babysat by TV all afternoon instead of playing?

It's no wonder people are mentally lazy. They start out by being physically lazy.

EDITED: Cause I haven't had enough coffee to know where commas go in the subject line. :D

I have the same sort of biological family as you do. And I'm having a real hard time dealing with it. I've sat here for days just wondering "HOW could they?" And finally, like you, decided that the only good thing that came out of this election is that THEY own it now.

The biggest problem I have is that I'm still afraid that they will support Bush. My older sister WANTS a theocracy. She WANTS to be told what to do. She WANTS to have someone else to blame for the terrible decisions she's made financially. And she doesn't blame Bush. She blames the "godless" (i.e. educated). She's a Southern Baptist and real proud of the fact that our President is such a "good, god-fearing Christian". I'm so sick of hearing that term that I'm afraid I'm going to have a permanent dent in my forehead from bashing it on the wall.

I haven't talked to anyone in my family since the election. I can't. I don't know how my little sister voted, but she lives in a huge military area. She could have been influenced either way. But one comment she made during the Abu Ghraib scandal made me think that she might have voted for Bush, too. But her husband is a liberal, so he may have talked her out of it. The problem is, she didn't educate herself on the issues, either. She voted how someone else told her. And that's still very sad to me, even if she voted for Kerry.

My brother is in the Navy Reserves. He's been under constant threat of being deployed for 3 years. And I think he voted for Bush. He said he wouldn't tell me who he voted, so I think it means he knew I would be upset.

All three of my siblings have sons. I am the only one that had all girls. I've tried to talk to my older sister about her son and she feels that the military life is fine. If he gets killed, she will be sad, of course, but he'll be a hero. I didn't even bother with my brother. He's a great defender of the military. My little sister said she'd send her sons to Canada before she let them get drafted, so that's something any way.

I assume that others who are as blind as my older sister to what goes on around her apply the same sort of logic to their lives and therefore, voted for Bush. It just makes me sick that the other 49% of us are going to suffer right along with the 51% that deserve what they get. (Yes, there was voter suppression, I realize that. But, they can't steal an election unless it's so close that it's not unbelievable. The fact that it was close enough for them to attempt to steal it is sad enough by itself).

Mari, I don't know how you do it. I admire your GUTS in the face of so much opposition from your pro Bush relatives. :thumbsup:

Everybody has free choice, and I don't know WHY some individuals choose to do what they do. One of the great mysteries of life, I suppose. :(
How much more misery do the Bush supporters really want to take on? Talk about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face. :(

love's gonna live here again, no more loneliness, only happiness, love's gonna live here again.