“Why I lean to the Left”
It gets tiring. It gets frustrating. Sometimes it just
hurts. You will be judged. You will be treated differently. Your opinion will
be ignored. You will be talked about behind your back. You will be assumed less
intelligent. What horrible affliction am I talking about? Leaning left in a big
red state. I do not consider myself a democrat, nor do I consider myself a
republican. I consider myself a concerned young woman in a desperate search for
some truth. I cast my vote for what I considered the least wretched of two
turds and now a large percentage of the population chooses to lump me into a
category of “freeloaders” and those wanting only a “handout.” Usually, I laugh
it off and move on because the people making the assumptions don’t actually
know me, nor do they know my past, nor do they know the determination that
keeps me pushing forward. The determination that keeps me pushing for women’s
rights. Pushing for LGBT rights. Pushing for the rights of the poor and
downtrodden. The disenfranchised. I think about the people who judge me and
what they don’t know about me…. So, here it is.
I grew up poor. I’m not talking we never went to Disneyland
poor. I’m talking…. There were nights I went to bed hungry, poor. My father had
a great job as the manager of a large cylinder manufacturing plant, but
manufacturing was outsourced and the plant eventually closed. Neither of my
parents had college educations. They both came from relatively wealthy families
and it was the 90’s, America was booming and prosperity seemed boundless…. Until
it wasn’t anymore. So that was it. At the tender age of eleven, I officially became
“goes to bed hungry at night” poor. My mother was too proud to accept help and
my father was in his own place, dealing with his own demons that haunted him
after his fall from financial grace. So, for all measureable purposes, it was
my mother and I for those years. The only reason we didn’t starve was because
she worked at the local pizza place that was within walking distance of our squalid
rental house and a grocery store. So that was it. We ate pizza because my
mother was too proud to accept food stamps and we walked to work because we
(usually) didn’t have a car. And I started working. At the age of 14, I started
working for my mother at the pizza place because we needed the income. I paid
the electricity bill. I’ve never admitted that before… but we were so poor that
my mother needed me to work to help her keep the lights on. Again, my mother
would not accept government assistance. She was a saintly woman and I will
quote her saying, “Government assistance is for people who really need it…. We have
food.” And… she was right. Usually, we had food. No, it probably wasn’t what I
wanted to eat (pizza almost every night) nor was it in any way healthy for me
(pizza every night) but I’m here today typing.
My parents also never cared for politics. They were
democrats in the 90s kind of “Things are good so don’t look below the surface”
kind of way. They never considered actual political issues. I remember my dad
saying, “The democrats look out for the underdog and that’s why I vote democrat”
Then, I began to experience the world for myself. I remember gay friends being
kicked out of their homes by their parents for being honest. I remember a gay
friend being bullied out of school. I remember a teacher calling a male friend
a “faggot” in front of the entire class and never being reprimanded. I remember
a close friend driving for hours and staging a covert operation so she could
have an abortion because she’d been raped and couldn’t tell her parents. I
remember a girl starving herself until she miscarried because she’d gotten
pregnant and couldn’t face the reality of being a teenage mom. I remember the
one kid, who was brave enough to admit to being an atheist, being punished
harshly by school officials for refusing to say “under god” in the pledge of
allegiance. So, I aligned myself with the people who claimed to stand for women’s
rights and LGBT rights, the people who claimed to stand for religious equality,
for the people who claimed to stand for the poor…. I voted democrat just like
my parents did… but for completely different reasons from my parents.
Here in Alabama, we
were brought up to believe that Jesus is a republican and liberals are nothing
but deviants and free loaders. I sought to burst through that image and prove
to the entire state of Alabama that I was not just another statistic…. But here
I am, trapped in the system, becoming another statistic. My husband and I are
poor. I always made excellent grades and got a scholarship out of high school,
but again… it was difficult to juggle working full-time to help pay the bills and
trying to maintain my scholarship. There were nights, days…. That I would not
sleep. I buckled and I lost my scholarship. My mother died of terminal cancer
and then, it was just me… alone to navigate this world. I live below the
poverty level. I made less than 100% of the poverty level last year. I am the
embodiment of people who need the ACA and yet, at the same time, I fit into the
category or people who are likely to get screwed by the ACA.
Robert Bentley
refuses to accept the Medicaid expansion offered by the feds and I don’t
qualify for the subsidy, because now that I’m back in school I didn’t make
11,500 last year (the amount necessary to qualify for the ACA subsidy) I made
just enough money to pay my bills (including a private insurance premium
because my employer’s insurance was worse than the poverty-level wages) I went
back to school, graduated junior college and got another scholarship. I’m now a
college senior, finally where my peers were able to be years ago because their
parents could afford to feed them while they were in college. Because they didn’t
have to work fifty hours a week to make ends meet at the age of 18. Here I am,
26 and finally a college senior. I’m not bitter about having been poor for most
of my life, so don’t misunderstand me on that point.
Where am I going with all of this? My point here, is simply
this. Those people who are judging me, who are calling me a freeloader, who are
saying I just want government handouts, those people who say “Obamacare is just
for people who don’t work and want to live off the government” These are the
people who have never once in their lives gone to bed hungry or had to mix
water with coffee creamer because mom didn’t have any money for milk for my
cereal. None of these people ever felt the pain of watching your best friend
slip into a dark depression caused by people at school, including teachers,
bullying her for being gay. None of these people have ever had to walk to work
or live in poverty or discomfort. These people never had to live in pain
because they couldn’t afford to go to the doctor. These people have never had
to heat water on their stove-top to take a hot bath, because the gas heat was
cut off.
But before you start saying hooray for the ACA or hooray for
this or Hooray that…. you know what I’ve realized? The democrats don’t care
about the poor, either. Now, don’t start a TEA party rally on me… those are the
people who have never felt poverty before. I almost pity them. Because if
things take a turn for the worst… they won’t know how to survive. They’ve never
had to be poor and they don’t know how to live and enjoy life when you are
poor. Who knows what could happen if our country defaults on its debts… we
could all find ourselves very poor, just like my childhood. So yes… I voted democrat…
but now I’ve realized. There is no hope for change on either side of the party
lines. The fat cats in Washington are willing to put all of our livelihoods on
the line to prove their bi-partisan points. It is bull shit and I’m fed up with
the entire thing. Where else can you pass laws that don’t apply to you and
enjoy pay while you furlough 800k workers? We elected these people. We allow
them to represent us. We let them pass legislation on our behalf and we allow
them to grow insanely rich while the American middle-class continues to
disappear.
I understand that the Republicans and the TEA party
Republicans want to blame this on President Obama and the democrats and I
understand the democrats want to blame this on the TEA party republicans… I get
that… but what I don’t get is, why are we, as Americans continuing to argue
with each other… alienating our friends, loved ones, daughter-in-laws… because
we believe so steadfast what my father said to me as a child, “I vote for X
because he looks out for the little guy” and my millionaire grandfather…. Of course
he votes Republican because he feels they look out for securing his millions of
dollars. When the truth of the matter is simply this… these people we've chosen
to represent us… they do not represent us. They don’t care about us or our
well being. Maybe there are the one or two politicians who truly are out there
fighting the good fight…. But it seems to me…. there are no democrats or
republicans in Washington, there are only millionaires and billionaires. Do you
really think John Boehner or President Obama really cares about your daily
life?
There was a time when I was naive
enough to believe that yes, maybe a few of them do. Now, I simply believe that
America has been ripped apart by a growing polarization that states “You’re
either with us or you’re against us” It is for that reason that I have written
this essay, disassociating myself with any political party. I am not a
democrat. I am certainly not a republican. I am a poor white girl struggling to
make her life better than the life her mother had. I am an intelligent, poor
white girl who has been dealt a difficult lot in life. I am an intelligent,
poor white girl who is fighting tooth and nail and draining myself emotionally…
for what? To fasten the gridlock our country has found itself in? Do I really
think I can make life better for one gay kid or one poor child or one
single-mother? So that’s it. I've become cynical and I've become jaded and I've
lost faith in our country. Boehner, Obama, you guys enjoy being rich beyond my
wildest dreams and I will continue to struggle to deal with whatever lot is
passed down to me from Washington.
I used to vote Democrat because I
believed in basic human rights. Now…. I simply would like to know how I’m going
to continue to pay for my health insurance, how I’m going to feed myself and my
husband… I would also like to know why more Americans don’t feel this way? Why
is incumbency so high if we are all so pissed off that the system has failed
us? Why do we alienate each other, while making Washington richer, steadying
their hold on us? Why can’t we see past these issues and vote these people out
of office? The truth seems to be that no honest person is sane enough to run
for office anymore. Or at least… that’s where the empirical evidence seems to
lead me…..
