Republicans should know better than to lunch with me

Republicans should know better than to lunch with me. - LONG!
by ultrageek
Sun Sep 5th, 2004 at 15:46:09 GMT

One of the hazards of having been in technology for nearly 30 years now is that most of my peers are older white males who are better off than the majority of the populace.  They are overwhelmingly Christian suburbanites.  They are (cue horror movie music) Republicans.

Which is fine.  Except when they challenge little ol Jewish lesbian me to a debate where they are absofuckinglutely sure that they will win and I will be reduced to snivelling in the corner.  Politics.

The last time someone tried we were just about to go into Iraq.  By the end of the afternoon, he was telling all his friends to vote for Howard Dean.

Well, I was asked out by a Republican for lunch, and within about 3 minutes, the discussion went into politics.  

You'll see the whole thing below the fold.

Diaries :: ultrageek's diary ::
He looked at me condescendingly and asked why someone as smart as I was would be a Democrat.  

H: The Democrats are the party of the weak looking for a hand-out.  The Republicans are the party of the strong and self-reliant.  You're smart and you've been in this field so long as a woman, you must be strong and self-reliant.  Are you just a Democrat because you're sentimental?

M:  I think you're misinformed.  The Republicans are the party of "the rich can never be rich enough".  They will destroy the environment and squander our natural resources, destroying our health and robbing future generations for the benefit of a few more dollars today.  They offshore our jobs, not to make their companies more profitable, but to line their own pockets.  In the meantime, American workers have to compete against the folks in China who get paid 12 yuan a day.

H:  As a Democrat, then, you think it's the government's responsibility to take care of everyone.

M:  As a Democrat, my overarching belief is that the government is my government.  I am part and parcel of my government.  The government budget is my budget.  I paid into it, and so did you, and hundreds of millions of other people, to address my priorities, and yours, and hundreds of millions of other people.  The parks are my parks.  The forests are my forests.  I paid for them, those trees are mine.  When some lumber company treks onto my land and chops down my trees and sells the timber to Japan and I get nothing for it, I think that's theft.  The banner that goes up in the morning, the flag, is my banner.  My blood goes through those red stripes on the flag, as does yours, and hundreds of millions of others.  Our parents and grandparents, and their parents before them, fought for that flag with their hearts and souls, so that we, and those who came later, would be free.

And because we are all part of this flag, we share a bond with all the other citizens in this great country.  Those schoolchildren are my children.  Those old people are my grandparents.  Those sick and infirmed are my charges, my wards.  Those soldiers are my fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters, and I thank God that they are willing to sacrifice their lives so that I don't have to.  Their sacrifice is worthy of my respect.  

And that's what Democrats believe.  We're all in this together.  The air that I breathe, you breathe.  Our fates are conjoined in ways that we do not understand.  The homeless guy on the street is part of the fabric of my being.  It injures me when the weakest among us are too weak to take care of themselves, so I, as a Democrat, step up to help them.

H:  Well, unemployment compensation, don't you Democrats want to pay people to sit and watch television all day while the rest of us...

M:  Unemployment compensation is there to help people up when they've stumbled.  While the corporate CEOs ship jobs overseas, there are more and more people who need that help while there are fewer and fewer of us who have the wherewithal to help them.  This is not the fault of the system of unemployment compensation, this is the fault of the greed of the richest of us that they are simply not rich enough.  When you fall, I am there to help pick you up.  When I fall, you are there to help pick me up.  When we both fall, neither of us can get up, and that is where the safety net falls apart.  The problem with society is that the safety net is being destroyed to ensure that those who need least get most.

H:  Well, Social Security, don't you think you'd be better off investing your own...

M:  Look, you're seeing the whole Social Security thing as a closed system, when it was designed to be an open system.  In your understanding, if someone gains, someone else loses, and maybe that's the way it is in the universe, maybe the universe is made up of finite matter in finite space, or maybe the universe is expanding.  The way Social Security was set up, the universe is expanding. (he looks confused).  Look, Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, right?  There are still WWII widows who are collecting Social Security who never paid in.  I'm paying so that some little old biddy in Ames, Iowa can spend the rest of her life not worrying about the most basic of her needs.  And I don't begrudge her a cent of it.  She is, after all, my grandmother.  Her loss of the love of her life in Normandy was the sacrifice of a brave man who died so that I could be free.  I thank him for his sacrifice and I am not going to take food from her plate.

But the thing about Social Security is that it was set up saying that there would be more children than parents, that the ones who work to shoulder the burden of our great society will always outnumber those of us who have already worked and are now unable to tend for ourselves.  Now, of course, with the birthrate slowing, and our elders living longer, that model is out of date.  But it still works if our children do better than we do, and we do better than our parents.  But if our children are going to have to compete with the people in China for 12 yuan a day, they aren't going to be able to help us when we are old.

The problem that needs to be addressed is that our wages need to be higher.  Our children need the best education they can get so that they can have nice high paying jobs to support us in our old age.  See?  Even if you are a Republican just because you're greedy, it pays to be a Democrat.  

If, instead of taking the money we all put into the federal budget and spending it on Bush's corporate supporters, we pay every homeless person $10/hr to pick up garbage on the streets or plant flowers by the sides of the road, or make sure our beaches are clean, then McDonalds would have to pay their people $15/hr just to keep them from picking garbage up off the streets.  And if McDonalds is paying $15/hr, then everything else goes up.  Secretaries are making $35/hr.  Bus drivers are making $70/hr.  Nurses are making $125/hr.  Psychologists are making $500/hr.  And what happens to our economy?  What happens to little stores like mine?  They go humming along.  Sure, we have to pay our employees more to keep them, but we make so much more it doesn't matter.  It's not a closed system, see?  If the homeless guy is making $10/hr, don't you think the Chairman of General Motors is going to be selling more cars?  We all do better when we help each other.  

H: (flustered)The war in Iraq...

M:  We spent, what?, $100 billion for that?  $200 billion?  And a thousand lives?  For what?  Cheaper oil?  I don't see cheaper oil.  Do you?  What if the government just took that money and sent $1000 to every person alive in the country and said "here.  let us pay for your gas for the summer.", it would cost the same amount of money and those thousand kids who gave their lives, and the tens of thousands who were injured, and all those poor Iraqis who died, none of that human misery would have happened.  And you would be money ahead on the gas bill, wouldn't you?

And that's when he asked me if all Democrats were like me.  Of course not.  We're the party of diversity.  But I think the underlying concepts are pretty well the same.

And friends, our ranks have grown by one.

Mission accomplished.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/5/11469/88941