I "should" be a Republican. Why am I not? [View all]

[scheming daemons]

I am a 45-year-old white heterosexual male.

I make $96,000 per year. My wife make $105,000 per year.

I have a nice 4-bedroom house in an upper-middle class suburb of Pittsburgh.

I was raised Roman Catholic, but have gone to my wife's protestant church for 20 years... Although not much during spring and summer because I golf every Sunday.

Based on every demographic one can measure, I should be a died-in-the-wool conservative and reliable Romney voter.


So why am I not?

I have thought about this a lot and I think the simplest answer is that I give a shit.

I haven't forgotten that my grandfather was the son of an immigrant and became a steel mill foreman and union officer. I haven't forgotten that he worked his ass off so my dad could be the first in his family to graduate from college.

I haven't forgotten how it was growing up listening to the bigotry of my older relatives towards blacks, gays, jews, you name it. I know how these people think about the "other" and it disgusts me.

My world view has morphed toward atheism, but I still go to church with my family to "keep the peace". I keep my lack of religious beliefs to myself. But I see these people in church who have abdicated their free thinking to the church leaders and they disgust me.

I remember my gay cousin being ostrasized by his parents and other relatives to the point that he ran away in 1980 as a 17 year old and we haven't seen him since. And that disgusts me.

I see people secretly paying for their teenage daughters to get abortions while putting prolife bumper stickers on their cars and their hypocrisy disgusts me.

I have been blessed in this life and I think I am a smart and hard worker, but I know that I didn't get here by myself. My immigrant grandparents and my hardworking parents laid the foundation for me. By accident of birth, I was lucky. I got opportunities that others didn't have... And I am self aware enough to realize that, but for the luck of the draw, I could be much worse off.

Winston Churchill famously said that a person who is young and not a liberal has no heart, and a person who is older and not a conservative has no mind. Or something like that.

Well... The older I've gotten, the more liberal I have become. Reality really DOES have a liberal bias. The more truth I discover in this world, the more liberal my world view becomes.

So....

Tax me more, Mr President. I can afford it and shit needs to be paid for.

Keep working to clean the environment, Mr President. I want my grandchildren to live in a beautiful, safe, and clean world.

Keep working to bring civil rights to everyone, Mr President. If two people love each other, let them marry regardless of their genders.

Keep working to advance science and keep superstition at bay, Mr President. The religious nuts need to be fought back against.


I should be a Republican. I should be in Romney's wheelhouse.

But I am not because I am not insane and I give a shit about people less fortunate than myself.

Gobama.