Unlike Lady GaGa, I wasn’t born
this way. I was a disaffected Republican long before I became what I am today,
a disaffected Democrat. What follows is obviously incomplete, despite its
length. My apologies because the point probably gets made well before the piece
more stops than ends; perhaps this will eventually become a chapter in my
autobiographical memoir.
Although my (moderately) conservative/Republican roots
run deep, I am the outlier in my family. My father probably never voted for a
Democrat in his life. In his later years at Friendship Village, he was a
regular at meetings of the Concerned Conservative Citizens (aka Cranky Old
White Boys Club). My brothers probably tilt farther right than I do left. But my
final paper in my senior year of high school (1966) was an earnest assessment
of the Republican Party and who in it could best return the country to their
leadership. The first group I tried to join at the prep-school dominated
Hamilton (named for Alex while he was still alive – old ivy on those walls)
College was the Young Republicans.
So how did a white bread
suburban boy (from the originally solid Republican Webster Groves) end up inhabiting the left side of the political spectrum? Because I reject simple and simplistic
explanations and solutions, you may not be surprised to learn that I believe
there are multiple reasons for my evolution and leftward shift.
• Child of the ‘60s: Civil
Rights Movement, Vietnam, Bob Dylan. Conservatives who now control the
Republican Party have been consistent opponents to the expansion of civil
rights for minorities and women since the ‘60s; Nixon’s “southern strategy”
politically solidified that stance. Karl Rove put it in concrete with rebar
reinforcements.
• First Job: Orderly on the
men’s ward of old St. Luke’s on Delmar, lots of black patients and co-workers.
Spare time reading the St. Louis American. God forbid I actually do any of the assigned
reading required by UM-St. Louis!
• Marriage to an intelligent
woman (met and worked with at the aforementioned St. Luke’s); father to an intelligent daughter,
who has since given birth to an intelligent granddaughter. The goals of the
women’s movement were/are obviously important – and personal. (My mother was
born too soon and frustrated by the limited roles available to her. That added
to the movement’s appeal.)
• Public school teacher in a
district that served a population that did not share many of the advantages of
their more affluent neighbors, including those in schools I had attended
(Webster Groves and Ladue). This changed me on at least three different levels.
°
I found myself almost immediately thrust into the nascent teacher union
movement. Let’s just say that conservatives were not supportive of teachers having
any power to advocate for themselves or their students. That being said, it was
not always a Republican/Democrat dichotomy, and I voted for several Republican
state representatives and state senators. Union endorsements tilted Blue, but were
not exclusive by any means, at least not at first. In fact, as I set out in
1976 to find a candidate to support for state representative, Republicans were
my first choice because the WG then was reliably Republican and I wanted to
back a winner; WG, too, has shifted away from the new Republican Party; those denizens who remain are often derisively referred to as RINOs. As union
power grew within the Democrat party, the Republican party countered by moving the
right and becoming even less friendly, sometimes seemingly antagonistic, to the concerns of public
education and educators (where it remains), as well as unions and workers in general.
°
The word “underprivileged” rubs many of my formers the wrong way; one reason may
be that “privilege” has taken on a different, more politically charged, meaning in the modern lexicon. Maybe they perceive the term as some kind of condescension that discounts what
they’ve accomplished in life. Perhaps a preferable term is “disadvantaged.”
Those students didn’t understand (and some still don’t, it seems to me) how badly the
system is rigged, stacked against them. That many manage to beat the rigged game and still overcome those disadvantages
speaks loudly to their resilience, but does not negate the existence of those obstacles
they had to conquer to do so.
°
While it is not a job requirement, per se, most teachers, or at least most of
the best I know, are empathetic; we know that no one is solely responsible for either success or failure. Most of us have no trouble with the expression,
“There, but for the grace of God, go I.” Empathy has become a dirty word to
modern day Republicans; and Trumpists, well, that’s a rant for another day, leading to....
• A growing belief that just
because something is not MY problem does not keep it from
being A problem. I find the left more accommodating of that POV than
the right. In my dotage I have greatly narrowed the focus of the problems on which I
concentrate, but that does NOT mean I can’t recognize the importance
of the oh so many others faced by my fellow citizens. I have used the analogy before, but conservatives’ version of a social safety net is a leftover rope
and the admonition to “Pull yourself up.” While liberals seemingly want to solve every problem, no matter how few people it affects, often devising overly
complex (and often ineffective) systems that validate the Law of Unintended
Consequences, they at least generally recognize that complex problems require more than simplistic solutions.
Finally, or at least my final
point, is conservative resistance to the concept that health care is, or should
be, a right of all citizens, and not limited by jobs or economic status. I have
a daughter and granddaughter afflicted, through no fault of their own, with
auto-immune diseases that could block them from affordable access to the health
care system without the current protections for those with pre-existing
conditions that conservatives want to strip from current law, so this is obviously extremely personal.
As the parties themselves become
increasingly tribal, polar and partisan, I am disaffected, and often disgusted, by both.
That’s my story and so here I stand, with clowns to left of me and jokers to
the right; I certainly lean left now, but really see myself as stuck in the
middle (hopefully with you).
Disclaimer: This deliberately provocative title to grab attention does NOT constitute permission to aim such an offensive insult at any other person or group; that would include me.
Disclaimer: This deliberately provocative title to grab attention does NOT constitute permission to aim such an offensive insult at any other person or group; that would include me.
