Monday, November 19, 2007

The day I became a Republican

I just registered Republican for the first time in my life. I suppose it had to happen. I gave up on the Democrats in 1985 after I heard a rally in Ann Arbor where the woman at the mike blamed the Republicans for warmongering, said there would be money for decent public schools if the money wasn't being wasted for war and "interventions" all over ther world, and claimed that her reason for doing so was that so, at the end of the day, she could tell her children, "I tried."

I tried? That's all the Democrats have to offer? I was fourteen.

"That's terrifying," I admitted to myself.

Not to forget the 1.2 million people, the majority children under the age of five, who died because of Clinton's "sanctions regime" denying Iraq the right to chlorine to purify their water.

I shake my head, I fight back the tears. I can't think of anything to say about the Clintons.

I knew a woman who personally tried to talk to Hillary Clinton about the people dying in Iraq dying because of our foreign policy. Hillary gave her the "500,000 children's deaths are worth it for the sake of the US" type blather. The relief worker actually said to me she had to restrain herself from strangling Hillary Clinton. She had been to Iraq. With her own arms, she had picked up dying children from the side of the road. How many more children did you kill, Hillary Clinton? With your style of "permissiveness" towards your husband???

I heard a very loud thunderbolt the night the US first bombed Iraq, and I sat up in bed. I thought, "My country is going to hell." There must be some reason they are killing those people. They must know something that Bush doesn't want us to know. It must be Islam. Clearly Bush is with the anti-Christ. Whatever he is trying to destroy is probably what we need to study. So here I am suddenly a Muslim and I can't have sex unless I can get a guy to marry me. Shit!

Well that was a long time ago but the children in Iraq have not stopped dying by the thousands every month. The Bush administration has stopped charitable donations from being allowed to reach the children in Iraq due to pressure from Jewish special interest groups that somehow feel "safer" with the maximum of orphan starvation deaths in the Middle East.

OK so now I'm a Republican. I always knew I was a Republican. I have to admit I could never stomach late term abortion and the idea that anyone could defend it made me give up on Marxism and the Democrats. I have to admit it was too much for me.

And let me tell you why Americans should realize that Muslims are their natural allies.

I felt so betrayed by the Democrats. When I was fourteen years old, I told my parents I was sleeping over at my friend's house, and I hitched a ride to DC for my first peace march, with my friend's mother who had gone to peace marches in the 60s. My friend Susan told me she never realized her mother was cool before then. I was awed by the billowing leg hair and the contact lenses in rest stations. It totally changed my life.

But, somehow Susan, someone whom I smoked pot in my car with in our high school parking lot, became a Zionist. An ethnic nationalist. Trying to find some reason to live?? She betrayed everything I thought I knew about peace activists. I turned my back on the Democratic Party.

Growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, there was always peer pressure to adhere to the Democratic Party. The Klugers across the street were voting Democrat and my best friend Sharon told me that it was because the Democratic Party was concerned for minorities and the poor. My parents were voting for Reagan. I felt sick with shame. It was a weird childhood.

OK so now I'm a Republican like my father before me. People always assume I'm a Republican anyway. My husband and I had the weirdest experience at the Al-Awda convention in New York when we first met. No one under 65 would even greet us. I couldn't figure it out. Was my skirt too long? Did I look too heterosexual? I'm just here to support the Palestinians! We tried to engage with "End the Occupation," asking them what did they mean by that - the 1969 border or the 1948 border...well never mind, I got a pile of Rachel Corrie posters for free.

3 comments:

liberal white boy said...

Like it or not you are now linked to liberal white boy, because and only because you have been and will likely continue to be an interesting character.

Anonymous said...

Those sanctions you blame on the Clinton's began with Bush 41 & his arm twisting of the UN.
Over 1Million poor Iraqi's died, about half were young children, probably thousands of infants. The rogue ME policies initiated by right-wing regimes back to Reagans era have left us in this dark place. But to be more accurate, our problems in the ME began with our helping the Brit's overthrow Mossadegh in Tehran in 1953. Then Iranian Nat'L Oil, CO. is now BP. The Clintons were under attack everyday of their 8 yrs from a 'New Breed of vicious Republicans' coached, financed and pushed by the Zionists Paul Wolfowitz, Perle, Kagan, Feith,etc. All connected directly to Tel Aviv...and the Likudniks. I believe they now have Hillary in their pockets also, and the NY/LA Zionists have been backing her fiancially, as well as McCain..because thay are now--'Israeli Firsters'....abandoning the American people, and our constitution. But never skirt past the wealthy oil barons in power--when asserting blame for our present plight. Thank you--B'Shalom-Salaam

Anonymous said...

Please wake up. It has nothing to do with Democrat or Republican. Liberal or conservative, left or right. Those are all "controlled opposition". Read or re-read Orwell's 1984 to gain insights into the world we live in. Our reality is even a worse authoritarian plutocracy. Both Democrats and Republicans are enemies of the common people.

We are all slaves to a system that has no real regard for those who are not part of the upper 20% (economically) or so of the population. The global banking and money cartels (wall street, multi-national corps, and the whole financial sector are included) are a primary (if not sole) part of the problem and need to be held accountable for the suffering and genocide they have caused.

As Thomas Jefferson once said: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants."

That tree has gone too long without "water" and is nearly dead and may not be revived. Time will tell if we can bring back liberty to America.