This diary is about what comes of being the family misfit as regards politics, and why visible disability can really screw up your arguments and your activism. More below...
I have a relation. Said relative listens to Rush and (I presume) Fox is standard on their dial. In the last eight years, the chatty letters have turned more and more to politics, and name calling of the most hateful sort (not of me, but of some officeholders in DC that I happened to support)
Here's where it got personal. "Well, its obvious, isn't it? There isn't any real reason she thinks she's a liberal. One of those Democrat party people."
Was it because I was a recipient of entitlements? No.
"Her problems have gotten to her head, is all. Poor thing. She just must not know what she's saying."
Yeah sure. I'm one of those "animals," as a Congresscritter called liberals once on C-span.
I'm subhuman. I'm not a real American. I'm trying to destroy the country.
G*D***tt! Of course I know what I'm saying. I have a Master's degree (Library Science) and a bachelors and half masters,(History). At last test, an IQ of 130. I can get through a beach read in three hours, know a couple of languages...and have trained my memory to do serious information retention since my handwriting speed cannot keep up with conventional note or minute taking. [had to learn this prior to personal computers, of course]Since my hands are shot, I must be clueless. A power chair is my mode of motion, due to torn tendons and ataxic cerebral palsy that I've had since birth, so I must be mind numbingly stupid. I'm heavyset, so my braincase is obviously empty.
I know what I'm saying, and deciding I don't because I'm physically different...quite plainly...is bullshit.
I'm saying the same things many here say:
The political class are no longer first at being public servants, but their self absorption is clearly on display. A subset think the rules of decency do not apply to them. I have the impression that another larger subset are bought.
They've behaved like nasty twelve year-olds from what we used to call 'troubled homes,' with our economy, our defense, our educational system, and both sides of the aisle have begun to take long blades to our safety net.
And now we're down to twelve people with the power of the purse. Does anyone think its unsettling that that's the same number of folks as serve on juries? We're on trial as a country. This isn't the Roman Senate. Keep cutting down from twelve folks and we'll soon have a full fledged sanctioned Triumvirate running the place.
They believe themselves to be doing 'good works,' when they threaten to eliminate or shred those things that help their elders, and the poor, and persons with disabilities among us.
Glen Beck was never a 'news' guy, and David Barton the Preacher of Histories Reinvented knows nothing about primary source materials and how not to cut copy and paste such drivel to try and change the words of the Founders for political gain.
By the God you say you serve Rick Perry, how in the hell can you not call yourself a hypocrite, first wishing to secede from the hated Union, and then deciding you want to run it!
Ayn Rand, for the record, is not God, and probably would have freaked out if she were portrayed as God.
Science isn't the devils work. Neither are taxes.
And if we aren't a republic anymore...could somebody just come out and say it? Because the type of country we are seems to change from week to week now. I'm having trouble keeping up.
Oh, man,,,I wish the right would disagree instead of disavow and dismiss...but thats been too much to ask since the advent of Fox.
And why is it, (getting personal again) that when I'm the one saying these things, particularly offline, that my visible disabilities make it ok to discount all this shockingly obvious stuff? Is obvious truth only obvious truth when it comes from someone who is not different? How does truth change into nothing, simply based on the source?
but enough.
I do know what I'm saying. I do not know why it's so important for some folks with my DNA to tell me that I don't. I miss my very first Kos sig. It said:
"I'm smart. I'm watching. And I won't shut up," No matter if every word I say just vanishes in a cloud of smoke, all because I'm not an able bodied straight white guy.