The world is upside down. Arizona, a place I have loved, has lost its soul. In the new AZ, education is bad. Guns and, inevitably, shooting people with them is good. People who look different than you are bad and should be sent away. People who speak a different language than you are bad and should be sent away. People who believe in a different version of God are bad and should be sent away. Rich people are good, but allowing poor people a chance to become rich, or even middle class, is bad. People who love someone that the power brokers don't think you should love is bad. Any idea that comes from somewhere else, particularly east of, say, Houston is automatically bad, so bad, in fact, we should ignore it, despite the clear Constitutional conflict that incurs.
The Republican Party has been overrun by the worst form of reactionary sludge, the so-called Tea Party. These are the people who propagate the nonsense I just detailed. The Republican Party I proudly registered for and of which I was a voting member for nearly 10 years, no longer exists. Stupidity and ignorance is valued. Truth, especially truth with scientific support, is denied. I have been called a terrorist by a previous Secretary of Education and by a 2016 presidential hopeful for the crime of being a public school teacher. I dedicate more of my life to the public service of education than I do to my own family, and I am compared to ISIS. Literally. I am tired of it. I don't even have the energy to fight, outside my own vote.
The bad guys have won. The only time I have been hopeful in my adult life, politically speaking, was on the night of the 2008 presidential election, and the awful Tea Party people ruined that optimism. I am more depressed today than I remember being in a very long time. Politics matters. when the bad people win, bad things happen and the voices of good people are ignored, including the hundreds and thousands who have protested the way things are now. I really don't know what to do. I am usually a positive person, but I am without hope today. I need to go grade 180+ tests, write my lesson plans, and care about all those kids, which makes me Public Enemy Number 1.
The problem I have with our two party system is that it far too often seems to me that the voting process just comes down to voting for who is the lesser of the two evils.
ReplyDeleteAs much as politics matter, my whole voting experience has almost been fueled out of fear. If the Tea party/extremist republicans win, only the few rich white old men prosper. It's sad to think that the political system has come to a point where I vote not for who I want, but vote to keep these extremists out.