Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child

[NanceGreggs]

I did everything I was supposed to do – encouraged to do, nurtured to do – and now I’m out in the cold, abandoned by those who raised me to be what I am.

I don’t know where I went wrong.

I listened to Limbaugh. I ignored the fact that he was a drug-addled lunatic, and got on-board with his mindless prattlings.

I watched Glenn Beck. I even taught myself how to write words like “Obama” and “Fascist Muslim Communist” on a blackboard, with the appropriate arrows pointing from one to the other, thereby proving the connection beyond a CSI-TV-show-forensics-team shadow of a doubt.

I attended the Town Hall meetings. I displayed my ignorance by insisting I wanted the government to stay out of programs like Medicaid – and I demonstrated my lack of class by shouting what I had to say, instead of engaging in serious discussion with those who held differing views.

I have spent a fortune on flag pins and bumperstickers, under the impression that such paraphernalia would confirm my patriotism – my behavior to the contrary.

I have signed petitions to keep my children from hearing the president talk about working hard in school, because I’ve been told such talk could lead to my kids becoming ”socialtists" (whatever that is, but it don’t seem like anything good.)

I have fought tirelessly against my neighbors (who, I have to say, seem like really nice fellas) from being married because if they’re allowed such, my eighteen-year marriage to my husband will be immediately jeopardized – and I don’t even understand how that works, but I went along with the concept just the same.

I ignored the oh-so-obvious fact that I was being encouraged to vote against my own best interests, to ignore the Christian teachin’s I was raised on – like “as you do to the least among you, so you do unto me” – to embrace the idea that insurance companies have a God-given right to make a profit off the sick and dyin’, to hate anyone who is of a different skin color or religion, or whose first language is other than English – all the while I was being told that my mis-spelled protest signs would be a sure-fire demonstration of my down-home, grass-roots origins – whatever the hell that all means.

So I followed all the rules – and where am I now? Well, I’ll tell ya. I’m now being singled out as part of the “lunatic fringe” by the very people who cheered me on to be exactly what I’ve become. They don’t want to know me now – now that me and those like me are becoming an “embarrassment” to the Party - yes, that SAME party that couldn’t get enough of us when they wanted us to vote for that Sarah Palin chick, what with her "I can see Russia from my front porch” credentials and all.

Well, I.Am.Pissed. Yup, good and proper pissed. I’m an embarrassment? I’m humiliating you? I’m making you look bad every time I open my mouth and spew the bullshit you’ve fed me until I want to gag?

A few months ago you were all, “Oh, yeah, bring it on. Go to the streets and protest everything from Obama smilin’ too damned much to a tax on soda pop.” Now you’re all, “We don’t even know these idiots, or where they got their ridiculous ideas from.”

You want to “distance yourself” from the lunatic fringe? Too bad, too late. You taught us how to be lunatics. You encouraged us to abandon all decorum, all intelligence, all common sense, all behavior that might lend itself to passing ourselves off in public as rational, well-informed, even slightly coherent citizens.

We ARE your children – born of your rhetoric, raised in the light of your bigotry, taught at your knee to spread prejudice and espouse violence, nurtured (when convenient) to act like idiots when it served your cause.

Dismiss us if you will. Distance yourself, as best you can, from everything WE, your offspring, have become at your insistence.

Deny you ever knew us, or ever contributed to our upbringing.

But we all know – as does the world – that WE are your children, and our actions are now, and always will be, the result of your poisonous parentage.

Guess what, Mom and Dad? We're all YOURS - and we're going to be recognized as part of your dysfunctional family no matter what.

You were once anxious to own us - now WE own you.

Learn to live with it - it's not like you have a choice.