Dear Voters

Dear Voters:

Sometimes you almost have me in despair! You don’t read enough. You don’t pay enough attention to facts. You’re too emotional. You don’t vote often enough, for goodness sake! You are pathetically uninformed.

And, yet! YOU are the good guys! You do vote!!! Voters vote!!!

Of course, for reasons completely unknown and completely illogical, Republicans turn out in larger numbers than Democrats. This causes me deep and abiding grief and sorrow. Oh, I forgot. It’s because Republicans are by nature more fearful. Get quaking, Dems. Start quaking in your boots!

BUT, I do love voters more than... new born kitties. More than puppies. More than cupcakes. More than... you get it already!

Any way... Voters, I love you and I have been deeply pondering the metaphor that we use more than any other in politics: comparing country and family. Republicans are especially fond of this metaphor, but we all use it.

Voters do you think of our country as a family?

This is the Republican metaphor. But, is this really how your family lives and believes:
It’s a dog eat dog world. Make and take everything you can.
Spend as little as possible on others--especially slackers such as children.
No sharing. Everyone is responsible for h/erself.
Seek success--and seek power over each other. Keep it at all cost.
Invest as little as possible in your infrastructure and surroundings..
Seek to implement your religion very aggressively--everywhere.

Uhhhhhh...  Nope! Didn’t think so!

Voters. Republicans are silly to even think about using family metaphors!

But, Democrats should! Oh, yes we should!

My parents were exceedingly authoritarian, but other than that they make great examples of why the family metaphor holds up. Here were some of our rules:
Everyone works as they are able.
Everyone shares!
Everyone cooperates and no back-talk about it.
Families members invest in each other and the children! [Mother finishs college and graduate school after having children. Go Mom! Yes, children have art supplies, music lessons, toys, books, etc--all within the budget--but, no one is deprived of the basics!]
All children go to college, get a job, and have a retirement plan. Or else.
All children have health care. No matter how much over-time it takes.
Family members do not seek power over each other--or they will be punished.
Families invest in their personal infrastructure & their communities: homes, cars, drives, lawns, schools, communities, neighbors, etc.
And, no, we never ever in a  million years insult anyone else’s religion, politics, sexuality... ! [Jesus H. Christ! What is wrong with people. Were they raised in caves by wolves?]

Because, if we don’t invest in ourselves and if we shit in our own nest, we end up with a ratty shitty nest! 

The 1% may not care what happens to the United States. They have homes in other countries. They have yachts, jets, and live in gated communities. 

[My dear Republican friends, quit implying you are in the 1%. I have known you your entire lives and you are NOT RICH!]

But, voters we have to live here. Probably forever.

AFTER Republicans have destroyed our public schools, stopped the average person from going to college, stopped the average person from receiving health care, and exported more jobs to Asia, the United States will effectively be a third world country.

We will be an illiterate, unhealthy, country making ten bucks an hour. [OH, but, by God, Wisconsin Republicans showed those uppity teachers, didn’t they? Funny, how so many Republicans are envious of teachers but not of Romney & Ryan????]

Fewer people are able to go to college; fewer people have health care; and, there are vastly fewer manufacturing jobs in the United States in my life time. I witnessed that happen.

I witnessed college and health care become unaffordable and unavailable and I witnessed thousands and thousands of jobs leave the United States.

Wake up Dear Voters! You are going to have to stop watching Fox News or network news and start reading independent and foreign press--or you are not going to know what has already hit you.

All my love.

Your friend,

Vivian