Cafe Hitch-hike

2004-09-27

Hitch-hike's Political Rant

Back in my hometown, folks assumed because I was raised Catholic with a family of Hispanic decent that I'd be a bleeding heart liberal.

Two of the most frighteningly liberal people I've known believed the US should have socialized everything like England.

Life would be so much better if there was a safety net for everyone, they believed. The cost of welfare is small compared to giving people no sense of dignity or humanity through not caring or lack of assistance.

One who thought this was an Ivy-League WASP guy. The other was the son of a North Carolina State trooper, who spent 6 years in the Navy. Neither Hispanic, neither Catholic. Two people you'd least expect of liberal sentiment.

I was telling a German friend who lives in England the fuss over our health insurance. I put it simply: "if you're sick and you're uninsured, well, you just don't get any help."

"What?" he replied, "you're the most prosperous country in the world and you can't even give that basic to your people?"

Well, some people will say we are the most prosperous country in the world because we don't waste our resources giving basics to our people.

I live in a heavily Arab-populated area, and they voted for Bush in 2000. Now, they all hate him here. They are incensed that their people were targeted with the Patriot Act and those arrests without due process. Talk about the disappointment! They thought their allegiance to a party was the final required stamp to be a full American. Wrong. Such stamp can be revoked at will by the powers that be.

Besides, just because a group comes to America, sets up a business and makes a few bucks doesn't automatically entitle them to be a 'Publican.

No, what is required is to swear your complete allegiance. I know because I am from an area dominated by the president's party. I know these people and how they live and think. To be accepted, you are not to think unless it supports their processes. You are not to dissent under anything whatsoever. There is no such thing as a moderate. The president quoted his party's maxim when he told the world, "you are with us or against us." You don't express discontent with their leaders and you don't question them, either.

This is not a group of people who want to participate in a democracy. They are a group who wants to stifle it.

It doesn't take a Latino Catholic background to think this way. It takes noticing the world and its people, and seeing what is really happening, and feeling a mix of despair and anger.

I read this in the Detroit Free Press. Don't worry, it's not some ultra-liberal rag. It really made my hair curl when the numbers lined up with what I see in this city.

The truth here in Detroit is that everything is wrong for everyone. Anyone who says differently must be delusional.

Detroit, by the way, is a microcosm if not a lab experiment of the American urban city. What happens in Detroit often reflects what can happen in other places.

I'm registered to vote and I'm pleading with my relatives to make it to the polls. I'm not necessarily begging them to vote for the guy who rides a Harley. I'm begging them to unjam the mess that this oppressive and greedy adminstration has caused, and to get someone out who clearly lacks the character, experience, and intellectual fitness for the job.

downwind | upstream