"How can anyone who gets a paycheck be a liberal?"

[kpete]

"How can anyone who gets a paycheck be a liberal?" - My night with the tea party
by RiotLibrarian
Sun Oct 10, 2010 at 05:56:06 PM PDT

..............

"And you are a liberal," she said. "So....you don't work?"

"Yes, I work," I said. "Very hard, in fact."

"But how can anyone who gets a paycheck be a liberal?" she said. "You must work for the government?"

"No." I replied. "I work for the small business that my father started. We just celebrated our 15 year anniversary."

...........................

The smile was gone, and her brow was knitted again. "But it doesn't make any sense! Do you mind if I ask what you do?"

"Engineering consulting," I said.

"Ah-ha!" she said, happy again. "Engineers mainly do big infrastructure work for the government. So, all engineers basically work for the government. It makes sense now."

......................

"Well," she said, sweeping her arm to her chest dramatically and bowing her head in faux humility, "I am a millionaire."

She didn't look up to see if I was impressed. I think she just assumed I would be looking at her in awe. I wasn't.

"My father was a millionaire, but he didn't leave me anything because he thought I was just to go marry some man," she continued. "But I made it on my own, the old-fashioned way, as did my husband. As more people would, if the government weren't just going around giving them handouts," she said giving me a stern look. "Now my husband is dead and I have three sons that are all teenagers or in college."

She then looked at me again. "You'll be conservative when you have kids," she said, with a condescending smile.

"I have two," I answered.

much more:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/10/10/909277/-How-can-anyone-who-gets-a-paycheck-be-a-liberalMy-night-with-the-tea-party

[BrklynLiberal]

1. How could anyone getting Medicare, Medicaid and/or Social Security be a tbagger...?

[barbtries]

2. i often wonder

i think this kind of speaks to what the right's all about. they just don't give a rat's ass about anything or anybody but themselves and their "own" - and that belief system is so entrenched they think everybody is the same way. concerns for all of humanity, or for the planet, well they just don't share them, and they don't think anyone really does either. otherwise i can't explain this person's statement.

signed, a paycheck earning far left liberal.

[demosincebirth]

7. Low IQ ?

[ismnotwasm]

3. I'm a nurse

I work for the state and I get a paycheck. I've taken care of a few teabaggers. I give them the the excellent standard of nursing care I hold myself to, the facility I work for holds me to, the profession of nursing holds me to, same as I do anyone else.

Those are Liberal values.

Teabaggers would pervert those values into leaving a choice as to who is more deserving of care.


Assholes.

[meowomon]

10. Hi sister/brother nurse!!

Soak your feet. Get a massage. Take care of yourself. You can't take care of others if you don't take care of yourself first!!

Oh yeh, keep your hands washed. LOL

[HawkerHurricane]

4. On the contrary...

How can anyone who works for a living be a Republican? It's like a chicken voting for Col. Sanders.

[crazylikafox]

5. +1

[Lugnut]

6. +100 n/t

[prolesunited]

8. Yes, the only thing stopping more people

from becoming millionaires is $300 in food stamps or a 30% discount on a crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood. They see people living large on TV and deliberately choose to live in poverty.

Take away the meager help they receive just to stay alive and suddenly we'll have millions more millionaires.

The wealthy should be happy with the small price they have to pay to not have to worry about being terrorized by a desperate population unable to feed their children. People have tasted what it's like to have small pleasures in life. They are not going to be turned into peasants quietly.

[Warpy]

9. Oh, I loved this one

"Her tone was one that I am very used to as a Southerner. Thick, sugary, and lined with a bit of malice."

Any of us who have lived in the south know that one very well.

Well, bless her heart, and I do mean that in the southern sense.

[pinboy3niner]

11. Yes. Bless her LITTLE heart.

:)

[StandingInLeftField]

12. After reading the original article I am impressed.

MIGHTILY impressed with Riott Librarian's strength, courage and wit. More power to her.

[BrklynLiberal]

13. Once again.."like the French revolution, only in reverse"

http://markmaynard.com/?p=7501

<snip>
The best part of the article is the contribution by Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Here’s a highlight:

….Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

“You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining… It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And here, according to the author of the article, is the big takeaway message from all of this… “If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.”

<snip>