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I’m a mixed chick who has always dealt with boxes. I tried for years to push myself out of those pesky things only to find myself in another one. The wiser, older me realizes the battles served a purpose, though. Now I know it’s natural for folks to categorize and organize people they don’t understand. We all learned in psych 101 that people tend to stereotype like a mutha trucker in order to process large amounts of information quickly. Example number one: ole boy is carrying a knife while twitching and screaming at me that his mom wore white granny pants and he’d like to take me home and rub white terry cloth towels on my body…my stereotyping quick witted mind tells me this is a serial weirdo and I should run while screaming I’m allergic to underwear.See! Stereotyping can be a good thing. That’s exactly why I started boxing and organizing political parties. When confused, start to learn and lump. Learn…and then lump. For this post, we’ll start with the Republican party. (smiles)
Here’s how I see it. There are four Republican boxes. In the first box we have Jesus’ homies. These are the beautiful people who don’t really know a lot about politics and silly little things like the hopper and who has power in the House and Senate. They just want to know who goes to church and who wants to vote on ridding the world of Harry Potters and Lady Gagas.
The second box holds the money pimps. MPs are down with Dubya and the green stuff. They make lots of money and want to keep that money. They care not if the roads have potholes. They have private jets bitches and they’re not afraid to use them. LL Cool J is in this group and proudly helps these folks shout how mama’s gonna knock them out if they tax their one more penny on their yachts.
The third box contains the WWMDs. What would mommy do folks don’t really care about politics. They just know their parents were Republican so they did the brain work for them. Instead of busting a brain cell, they’ll just hang out in the safe and familiar. These folks also tuck their napkins into their collars and don’t date until they’re 40.
The last group is in the box that I hope will save me from being choked out by the red ties. These folks are conservatives (yeah, sorry I couldn’t think of anything after the red tie bit) and they actually know what about their party and politics in general. They know the names of the hands gripping the necks of the head that runs the country. I had the pleasure of talking to one of these rare informed citizens. Patrick listened to my lovely little box descriptions and then shared the following:
… My parents are baby-boomers who voted liberal (AKA Democrat) until 1980. Jimmy Carter was the wakeup call that told them Liberalism does not stand for what they believed was freedom. My mother's family was a group of Italian immigrants. They believed in self-reliance and a greater good--charity from their heart and soul--not a government which forces them to give up part of their production ($$) and dole it out as others see fit. My father's family goes back to the founding of New Hampshire’s colonization. They were very liberal.
My religion is Catholicism which is a Bastian of the ideas of social justice and liberalism (and not the true American idea of equal justice with equal opportunity and no guarantee of equal outcomes). Religion did not shape my political ideology. I went to a Jesuit High School and a Jesuit University that were as liberal as liberal can get.
Socially, I am very accepting of everything that does not harm someone else. I keep my nose out of other peoples’ lives. In return, I’d appreciate it if the government stayed out of mine and my neighbor's.
As for the money box, Capitalism is an ideal and a way of looking at things much the same as Marxism. It is not a system, but simply a filter. I believe that Capitalism can set a society free. Only the free production and exchange of goods and services that people want, need and desire; unhindered by overregulation; unburdened by the use of force by a government to tax and seize part of that production to spread out to others; and unimpeded by the over abuse of the interstate commerce clause is how we keep Capitalism alive in America. I am middle class and at the short end of the stick when it would come to living in a Marxist ideal. (So he doesn’t fist bump with LL.)
In a nutshell, these people are philosophy pimps and drop old school knowledge on me until my head bursts out of confusion…”But that sounds so rational…and I did enjoy Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged…Should I be a Republican?! Gasp!”
After I put my little group of Republicans into their boxes I feel safe and calm. It’s only at that point I can interact with other human beings without biting, stabbing or burping the Star Spangled Banner. I realize the times are a changing though…I know this because the twitches usually reserved for wire hangers has started up again. With dirty words like moderate and tea party freak spewing out of mouths I don’t know what to do with myself.
That’s where ya’ll come in. How would you classify those with red ties? How about the Dems…or even more fun, how would you group the pinky up tea party crew?
