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Perhaps
one of the more curious maladies related to this U.S. election
crisis is that a great deal of people who placed their votes with
gusto had as little political ideology as someone who voted for
any other reason--or not at all. Not everyone, but a great deal
of our leaders are elected and supported with snarls by people
who don't even know why they're a registered (Fill in the blank.)
This
insanely important and subtle election (not as bad as when Bush
Sr. or Reagan left office) is crucial to the Young Clinton Generation.
We partied in the nineties, had at least one nervous breakdown,
and are having our ninth and most Buddhist existence of our lifetimes.
Everything has to go well and right this time. We ride the line
between believing that it doesn't matter who's president of the
free world and that we better get involved and informed about how
the real world (with people who have real 401k's) navigate the real
world.
Some
of our socio-clannad hit it early; they've possessed money, stability
and respect (not to mention home ownership) for years. Many are
still totally lost, spiralling into 12-step meetings pondering the sentence
of G.W. Bush: an anti-choice, ill-experienced legislator. Definably,
we're the microcosm middle-class America to be.
So how
does someone like myself arrive at the decision to vote for Al Gore?
Why was it so difficult to get out and vote that I didn't even try?
Two
reasons: my parents.
Dad
had always been a New Jersey redneck who likes to shoot deer, fix
trucks and be left alone with his dogs and his undershorts. Mom
was always some intellectually liberal butterfly. Though she looked
more like Benny Hill in drag, she was some gadfly interloper in
our masculine world. Her desire to share the stories, books, experiences,
and worldly knowledge of her truncated life's education gave me
the open-mindedness that was unknowingly vital to survive the family
and culture I inherited.
Real
life was more of a sales convention for a company that I knew
nothing about.
Dad was a baby Archie Bunker, laughing at those horrible racist
jokes passed around gin-mills and gas-stations in those days;
using words like, 'queer', 'fruit', 'colored' and reading porn
at the dinner table in his underwear.
Mom
would tell me about the biographies she read obsessively, spurring
me to read them. I devoured stories about real people--great artists
who amounted to cultural phenomenons. It fed into my love of non-fiction,
tell it like it is, true crime books. She loved comedy of all sorts
and that too was a very liberal open-consciousness pursuit. She
adored scandal and that too provoked my ways of thinking about politics
and people from a young age. She didn't discourage my painting
and writing; sometimes she even bragged about it to others. Mother
was an agnostic, and dad was an atheist, having been hit in the
knuckles by a Catholic nun just once.
There
were a lot of old world influences about in my grandparents--who
lived until my early twenties--the Clinton years. There was actually
hope for me.
Every
three years brought a major change in the way I experienced the
adult world. Slowly, but surely, like everything you make the effort
to practice, my life-skills became measurably but indiscernibly
more steady.
I practiced
making big mistakes, then I focused on honing my reacting muscles.
My twenties
culminated in divorce, a mini-breakdown, remarriage, a career change,
and a baby; the synthesis is near enough to completion that I can
now call myself a student of life.
I can
teach more to my daughter than my mom ever blew-off explaining to
me. I can also promise not to close my mind and become victims
like my folks who have been barnstorming Republicans (though not
even registered for years) forcing their lives into a black hole
of poverty, illness, bad parenting, irresponsibility for basic things
in general and doomed to the disastrous fate they find themselves
in today. Despite that I am the most successful member of their
six person family … me, who has: one toddler, a one bedroom apartment,
one car, and reliant upon my husband's income--me.
I'm
a miracle if no one knows my name outside my landlord. Watching
beloved people die for 12 years and seeing how badly friends and
enemies alike can betray you teaches the willing student that life
isn't completely about being a star or heated swimming pool dreams.
You could be taken out tomorrow, but hope for the best. Plan smart
but live happily and splurge on love while you can. Have a big
but reasonable goal and exceed it because of your enthusiasm over
your own faith.
My parents
on the other hand, live hand to mouth, got further into debt, bailing
out two of my thirty year old brothers. Another brother is well
off, far from 'home' and has no idea what is going on because he
hasn't lived that punishing cycle of his twenties yet.
My parents'
house is literally condemnable with animal waste and garbage underfoot
in every room. A bathroom that rivals the community john at Riker's
Island in terms of untouchable filth. They've owned sick and improperly
cared-for but much-loved pets for years. Garbage and abandoned
refuse sprouted on their once pastoral acreage from the first week
they lived in nowhere man's land, Kentucky.
A film
of soot and dust, years thick, covers everything in the house.
Beams are exposed, floors unfinished, clothing is vile and there
is no way to keep food in that house to make it edible for even
the most lax and only the most desperate person. My parents cheer
the Republican party and their pundits. From Rush Limbaugh and
Dr. Laura all the way to George Bush Sr., they've promoted almost
nothing in their lives except right-wing party members. More so
than they regaled their own children.
They
didn't plan for their future and squandered what money my dad made
fixing cars. Their only large scale investments were: their outstanding
mortgage, overwhelming credit card and medical bill debts, guns,
professional quality tools, and some beat-up vehicles. They served
society in their life, worked hard, and had lots of problems--always.
Despite their Republican leanings, they assumed that when they got
too tired and infirm to coast anymore that the government would
just start picking up the tab. They were blown away as everyone
around them, in their Kentucky county, manipulated by the 'Democratic'
system. New immigrants, people lying about disabilities and workman's
comp claims and fake car accidents were the associates they had
experience with who lived the lives of many Rileys on the government's
tab. My parents couldn't get a nickel, not more than a whopping
bill of unpaid taxes from the I.R.S. My folks were too lazy to
file bankruptcy and many of their bills are outside the protection
of that cheapskate way out anyway.
They
still continued to be generous to a fault to people in and out of
their family--mother not telling father what she's doing with the
bills; dad not wanting to know anyway as long as he had $600 of
mad money in his pocket. Now they have less than nothing. Now
mom has had her second stroke in two years. Because she had no
adequate health care options, no insurance, no social worker to
make sure she's cared for, no will to get up and do for herself,
and no sense of responsibility for miles around, she lies in a nursing
home bed all day now.
Her
sons enjoy life's amenities and they have done-so-within walking
distance of my folks' home--all their lives. My adult brothers
even moved from New Jersey to Kentucky to be near my parents, continuing
the Big Mooch as if they'd be 15years old forever. I went the opposite
way, living on the other end of the country. I still got financial
help, but at least I was trying to have a real life outside their
nestled jingoism.
So my
folks are left with absolutely nothing but debt, while whining about
how the government has ignored their long years of hard labor.
When my dad had bypass surgery four years ago, they forgot a good
soul kept them insured under their company and irresponsibly threw
out all their disability and insurance paperwork. The end was nearer
than ever. They used their blood money to bail out my pathetic
grown brothers, all the while saying that they'd rather die than
be Democrat.
All
the while, my ultra ditto-head mother argued over the phone, in
her convoluted stroke enhanced negativity about how the Democrats
and lyin' Clinton types had screwed them blind. Nothing about how
they threw away money for decades on helpless, ungrateful sons--or
let their only asset, their property, go to weed. It was all Clinton's
fault. Things would be better if Reagan was back in office because
he did things for the better even if people hurt as a result.
My folks
were jealous that losers who ripped-off social services had an easier
ride. They were furious that the government sent them bills for
taxes they failed to file. What they missed was that because of
what little Democratic leanings that existed in those times, my
parents both got life saving medical treatment despite not having
a pot to hold, much less piss-in.
Here
they exist, die hard Republicans; living in vast American countryside,
spread out far from the compact cities where Bill Mahr perfectly
defined as being people forced to live and communicate atop each
other. Here they are, broke, living in crap, clutching their guns
in their rigor mortised knuckles, waiting for hunting season and
loving red meat. Here they are, at the mercy of sons who learned
nothing who have more and at the behest of government agencies that
asked for their basic fair share. My folks would die saying things
about those damn Democrats while they starved to death.
I wonder
how they'll further fare from G.W. Bush's new regime. Under a man
who refused to put his name on his own state's patient bill of rights.
Under the auspices of a man who can't wait to destroy Alaskan wildlife
in the name of American oil-independence. I wonder what George
Bush Jr.'s cabinet will dictate for folks who've stupidly worked
their asses off in a blue-collar way while supporting equally blue-collar
kids. I know that Bush's government will not address the vital
need for government-sponsored hospice-care. My mother will die
alone in a nursing home, getting the minimum care eligible under
the state's mandates. My father will lose his home or die there
in his sleep or at the end of his favorite shotgun. My brothers
will take and reap and move on. I will remain 2,000 miles away,
unable to affect any impact on their care, their paperwork, their
bills or anything that would help me sleep at night.
My parents
will die a sorely unfair, miserable, and lonely death during George
Bush's tenure as president. Partially because I am limited through
my distance from them. Mostly because the states are left to deal
with their manual labor as they choose through Republican thinking.
While Viagra is covered by most insurance companies, dying will
not be. While state assistance with life is restricted to scam
artists and savvy loophole magicians, my parents and brothers will
fall through the gaping holes to their dark demises. Someday, I
fully expect to walk the beach, and see the Statue of Liberty crowning
from a shabby finger of beach, as I fight for my last breath.
Copyright
© 2000 Viki Reed. All Rights Reserved.
Viki
Reed is a regular contributor to *spark-online.
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