Politics

I have always been political. My family is political. Some of my fondest childhood memories concern election nights and waiting up to hear on the radio about who won. I remember when Truman won one year I was in the 9th grade. We were so happy. We are died in the wool Democrats although during the Civil Rights Era my mother, born and bred in Mississippi, turned Republican. I don't know about Daddy; he wouldn't say. I was always a 'blue dog' Democrat. My young niece called Mama a racist. Well, she was raised in the Mississippi Delta when Grandpapa was a doctor and a Methodist preacher He would ride out with a medical bag on one side and his Bible on the other. Many days he never saw another white face. She tells stories about the times when the farm hands would come in for breakfast of flap jacks, dozens of large black men filling their bellies with flap jacks and thick molasses, laughing and talking together at the long tables in the back yard. Try ti tell her about equality and school de-segregation. Of course she was a racist but there was great love there too. Later when I was at junior college my yankee friends said their parents didn't want to hire blacks to come into their houses and clean. Now that to me is racist. When we had black girls come out to clean, Mama would walk them to the bus stop in fear that these white men in cars would give them a hard time which they did! Is that racist? I remember a white couple we had once living in the cottage. Her name was Elvira. They were non descript and I never tried to interact with them because they weren't very friendly. Annie Mae and Rosalie were my friends, my surrogate mothers which I g lamed on to because Mama wasn't very affectionate and I was sort of a needy child, emotionally needy. If you all have read that best selling book, 'Help' it's kind of my story. To this day I have an immediate feeling of love in my heart towards black people. I'm sort of prejudiced but pro not con.

But this blog was supposed to be about politics wasn't it. This senior housing facility is a polling place and so I voted the other day in a municipal election mostly because the man who volunteers at our little store has a brother who is on the city council. He won, maybe my vote helped. I didn't even ask if he were a republican and when I found out he was, I laughed and said I'd never voted for one before and that this would be the last time. Then things polarized rapidly into a shouting match. I said 'you people want to take our entitlements away' and he said that was just Democratic propaganda. I hope I can keep my mouth shut from now on as the election heats up. I wouldn't want to be lynched or anything. I am definitely in the minority here in a Florida senior community. They all listen to FOX news and are very conservative. I said, 'well I'm conservative too, a conservative Democrat.' Actually I'm too conservative to be out there in the park with a 'Occupy Wall Street' sign but feel guilty because I'm not. I believe that the 0ne percent has controlled the rest of us for far too long. But I think they should be in Washington occupying this tea bagger congress because they make the laws which govern Wall Street...maybe. But again, maybe Wall Street is above the law and governs Congress. I suppose the Occupiers will form a third party eventually as the tea baggers have. Then I won't be a blue dog Democat anymore.