Sometimes I have the bad luck to have to talk to a Republican about politics. It’s an awful and surreal experience, similar to Alice’s time at that tea party, as they spout off bullshit talking points they read on Drudge and say things like ‘Obama’s the most liberal senator’ as if that’s supposed to make me go screaming to Joe McCarthy’s satanic embrace. But what it always boils down to, once they realize that I have a soul and their right wing social values only disgust me, is taxes.
‘Blargh blargh taxes,’ they say.
Let’s ignore for a moment that Obama’s tax plan will not raise my taxes and, unless CHUD suddenly overtakes Google in page views, John McCain’s tax plan will not benefit me. Let’s just focus on this one thing: greed.
Greed is what all non-fundamentalist Christian Republican voters are about. And that’s it. All they care about is money.
This maybe made sense a decade or two ago. I mean, I don’t think it ever did, frankly, but at least a decade or two ago America was riding pretty high and doing pretty well. Comparatively. I mean, global warming was still just the cute little Greenhouse Effect back then! But anyway, it was a time when things were looking bright and we all had the free time to actually debate whether or not Heather Has Two Mommies belonged in a school library. Oh the frolicsome days gone by!
But now it’s all in the shitter. This country has come to the end of its period of dominance. We’re about to see the first emigration generation of America, kids moving overseas in search of a better life just as their ancestors once did, but in the opposite direction. We’re mired in an unjust, shitty, stupid and evil war, we’ve lost all of our international credibility, our economy is about to discover if there really are giant alligators in the sewer and our very planet is on the brink of irrevocable environmental disaster. We are about to be in a place so bad that we’ll be able to dig up our Depression and WWII era parents and outdo their stories of hardship.
And all these Republican voters care about is their taxes.
They need to be able to buy a big screen HDTV, you know. They need another car (but not an SUV, that’s too gauche now, at least until gas prices stabilize). They have to give Ashley and Track the best clothes to wear to school this semester. They have a luxury lifestyle they’re accustomed to, and if you threaten that by possibly hiking their taxes so that POOR people can get medical care… watch out! Sure, they bought all those power tools just to hang them in the garage to show off when the neighbors come over, but they’re not afraid to use them on you, Karl Marx.
Here’s the thing: it’s all fucked up. Your taxes are the least of your worries. And it’s funny when you tell me that you know how to spend your money better than the government does (although I do assume you won’t be spending it billions at a time on an unwinnable, illegal war, so maybe you have a point). You’re living on credit card debt out the asshole, so I don’t think you know how to spend your money at all.
And beyond that, you’re too happy to use the fruits of those tax dollars when it pleases you. You expect the cops to show up right away and the fire department to put out that fire in your den. You get pissed off when the roads are filled with potholes, and you want that border wall built and you don’t make a peep about billions being spent on war planes and… Well, let’s put it this way:
You only get mad about tax money when it’s being spent on someone who is not you.
I’m so sick of people justifying voting for an evil, doddering old fuck and an ignorant backwoods cunt because they want lower taxes (which they will not get from these two, but whatever, you’re voting Republican so you’ve already ceded the War of Intellects). You know what? If paying more taxes meant that this nation could come back from the crumbling edge of that cliff and once again become a world leader, a country that set an example for everyone else and lead the way with a shining torch of decency and optimism, I’d fucking hand those tax dollars over in cash personally.
See, at the end of the day, we’re all in this together. When you’re voting based only on your own narrow set of interests, you’re leaving everybody else out to dry. Maybe you don’t care about that today, because you’re a greedy, self-centered son of a bitch, but someday you’re going to need the rest of society, and you’ll have thrown them all away.
Every man for himself politics of greed got us where we are today. They won’t make things any better, that’s for sure.