Terry the Socialist

Well, we made it through the election. People all over the blog-a-sphere are sharing their experiences. Obama's changed the world! I'll never forget where I was the minute I heard that he won! It's a night I'll remember for my entire lifetime! It's the beginning of a new age! I still can't believe we're really getting rid of Bush!

All true, and all rather bland -- no personal detail. No individual spin. It's been a momentous election cycle and everyone seems to have a story or two to tell. I think that's what finally convinced me to start this blog. When I started hearing about some of the numbnuts in blog-land who were making their voices hear, I thought: Well Hell! Even I can do that!

So ... here's my first try ...

Terry the Socialist takes on Kansas ... One person at a time.

How do I respond when someone with a red state of mind accuses me of being a Socialist?

It happened more times in the last few months than I can recall. By now I've got my answer down pat. Yeah, I tell 'em, with a smile creeping across my lips. Compared to you I'm a freakin' Commie Pinko. And to be perfectly honest, I don't consider your accusation all that slanderous.

This usually confounds them. What do you mean? they gasp. You think it's OK for lazy people to take money from hard-working folks so they can lay around all day and drive Cadillacs?

No, I'd typically respond. I don't think it's OK at all. But I do think it's OK for people who earn over $250,000 a year to pay more in taxes than I do. And I wouldn't mind paying 50% in taxes if it meant that I and everyone I love had health care from the moment they were born to the minute they died. Or if it meant that everyone in the country could go to college if they wanted to. Or, if it meant that people who've worked hard all their lives could stop working when they celebrated their 62nd birthday.

By now, most people who dared start the conversation with me were standing there totally dumbfounded. They just can't believe what they were hearing.They're totally incredulous with the mere idea that someone they actually know -- someone they maybe even like -- might believe such blasphemy.

At first these blank stares made me uncomfortable. People who thought they were about to get-my-goat are typically shocked when I agreed with them. Yup, I'd say again. I'm a Socialist.

I'd explain to my red-stater-friends that I'm the child of a union organizer. It's not really a lie -- I don't think. Family mythology says Pop almost didn't get his tenure because he had the audacity to be a unionizing-kike-from-New-York who brought the dreaded union to the white-mans-club at the university where he taught. I don't know if it's true (mythology rarely is, after all), but the realization that I more or less inherited these deviant tenancies usually bought about an ah-ha moment from the person I'd just bowled over with my admission of proud guilt.

You could see them working it all out in their heads. After all, people in Kansas understand the notion that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Dad was a farmer, they say proudly. And while I'm no farmer, they go on to explain, you're damn right! I listen to country music.

People have long memories in Kansas. Everyone knows where their people came from and how they relate to the long line of relatives that came before and will come after them. And so when I told them that I was -- more or less -- following in my father's footsteps they seem to back-down a bit.

Oddly enough, though, as the months wore on leading up to the election I began to care less and less if they understood how I developed my notions of social-responsibility. After a while all I really cared about was that they come to understand that I don't consider my redistributionist-tenancies to be something for which I should be ashamed (like how I worked that little McCain-ism in there?). To be honest, I just sorta stopped caring if they cared.

Get over it, I'd tell them. Different opinions make the world go 'round. It's why I'm American. I have the right to believe differently than you do.

At that point they'd usually nod knowingly. My guess is that they were thinking something like: Poor girl. She can't help it. It's how she was raised.

So, at this point I can either get mad because they're pitying me, or I can just get over it -- like I'm telling them to do. I don't care if they like it and I don't even care if they feel sorry for me and my misguided judgment. I just care that they accept the fact for what it is -- the way it is. I believe differently than they do. And even they have to admit that it's OK.

It is, after all, what we can all agree makes being an American so damn worthwhile.