I Think I Hear Violins

– Posted in: Green Living, Mean People, Politics, World Gone Crazy, Worst Mom Rants

Over the last ten years, I’ve joked — sometimes in a not so jokey way — about moving to Canada. I’m not sure why I assume all the lumberjacks, professional curlers, and comedians up there are liberals. They’re probably all stockpiling guns, reading Sarah Palin books, and planning their secession from Quebec.

Political/sociological classification-wise, I guess I’m a yippie (a yuppie/hippie hybrid). I like my food healthy but not exclusively organic, my toys cadmium and lead-free, and my presidents left-leaning moderates. I’d love to have an electric car and a net-zero house, but I’m not willing to go broke to get them. My kids watch very little TV and go to a school where no one wears characters on their clothes, but I’ll buy my daughter Hello Kitty paraphernalia ’til the cows come home. You’ll probably never catch me drinking goat’s milk, going more than a couple of days without shaving, or knitting with free-trade yarn (or knitting, for that matter). But you might find my husband digging in his organic garden or getting ready for his latest building project by pulling our Honda Pilot (not exactly a Prius but not a Hummer either) out of the three-car garage of our too-big house that we should downsize from because it uses way too much energy.

Suffice to say, we’re “weird” compared to our neighbors. But after this week, I’m starting to really think that we’re weirder than most of the country. The thing is, we’ve always felt a little different. We live in a fairly conservative area, and it’s been challenging to find “our people.” But now I’m wondering if “our people” are going to have to start migrating to Canada (the liberal, Utopian Canada) or just plain go into hiding. For the first time, I’ve actually considered taking the Obama sticker off my car because I’m slightly afraid someone in a large, old truck or maybe a shiny, newly washed Escalade is going to run me off the road.

The other day, when the healthcare bill passed, I drove past my neighbor who is, ironically, a staunch conservative, a construction worker who used to be self-employed, and the father of a child with a pre-existing condition. If anyone should be for this bill, it should be him. But as we passed on the street, he actually seemed to scowl at me. I’d chalk it up to my overly active imagination if Tenzin didn’t tell me the same thing happened to him. So now I’m wondering, is this how it’s going to be? Neighbors hating neighbors? An entire party acting like 3-year-olds and bringing the House and Senate to a grinding halt because it didn’t get its way for once? Members of Congress standing by — no, actually stoking the fires — as crazy people threaten the lives of their colleagues on the other side of the aisle?

I just have to say that one more time: people are threatening to kill our legally elected representatives for legally passing legislation (using, by the way, a parliamentary procedure that was used seventeen times during the Bush administration).

If Nero were alive, I think he’d be tuning up the old fiddle for his second set.

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