Politics

When I started my “political journey,” I initially registered as a Democrat as soon as I could (while filing my 1997 taxes). Don’t get on me; I was 17, pro-choice, pro-gay, and Clinton was in office. I don’t think too many people are gonna fault me there. Over time, I started shifting more conservative, and after a really shitty two years dealing with a ton of personal dramz, decided to switch my voter reg to Republican. No, those sentences are not related, I swear! A few years into that dark time of my life, Ronald Reagan kicked the bucket and my head was gonna fucking explode if I read one more proclamation of “omg! I’m totally, like, liberal, but like, The Gipper looks like he’d give you a bear hug!” I promptly switched back to the Democratic Party.

I stuck it out with the Democrats for a few more years, until a high-ranking member of PA College Democrats decided – along with several other members of my university’s chapter – to screw me out of a leadership position. Of course, I completely had a ton of two-faced bullshit pulled on me; I guess the high-ranking member thought she had scared everyone out of telling me, because I didn’t find out the complete story until a year or so after the fact. I get the feeling it’s because, even on the collegiate level, the party doesn’t want anyone with an inkling of radicalism in a leadership position and would rather have weak-willed individuals who will simply parrot off the party line. That experience completely killed any further desire I had to remain in the “gee, I really hope shit begins to change really soon” party. (My decision was solidified in late 2009, when history replayed itself in a situation involving another former active DNC member.)

I got sick of the hypocrisy and the claims that Democrats were so omg! different! from Republicans. I got sick of the claims that they don’t pull the same scummy shit. I got sick of the thought that Republicans are the only ones who act in a hypocritical manner. And the biggest punch to the balls about that whole mess is that it proved to me that low level arms of the party are nothing but a microcosm of the national level DNC.

In between then and now, I registered as a Green and tried to work within the clusterfuck of a party. Since the Green party is nothing but complete and utter chaos and I didn’t totally fit there, either, I kept my options open. At the core, though, my decision to register as a Green was to signify a shift in my politics and to make it known that I was breaking all ties with the Republocrats. Well, and I was also a little sick of various former acquaintances using politics as a way of controlling their “friends.” I still kept things a little flexible to myself, and never threw any one third party political idea out.

Flash forward about a year to the spring of 2009. At this time, I began attending local LP meetings with Libertarian Boyfriend, where we have a grand old time of snarky commentary and beer. (I’m not going to lie, the beer helped seal the deal.) After a few months of going to meetings and reading Lew Rockwell and Reason over his shoulder, I realized that I am too “fuck the law” to not be a libertarian to some extent and I needed to suck it up. I’m also too much of a loud-mouthed, opinionated bitch who is not functionally retarded to not begin carving out more of a feminist-libertarian niche in the world.

The less tl;dr version of this is: once I change my voter reg, that means my political journey has taken me to the Democratic, Republican, back to Democratic, Green and Libertarian parties. It will also make me the third attractive woman to join the party and the eighth woman total to join the party. (I kid, I kid! There’s plenty of fellow libertarian hotties!)

So wtf does that all mean?

It sounds nice and flowery (or, if you’re a member of the DNC, critical, cunty, and omg! like, drama stirring!), but it still carries a general amount of politician-speak. To break it down quickly, I am pro-the government staying out of my biz and out of everyone else’s biz. I know, that has come to mean “Glenn Beck loving neo-con freak who discovered pot last weekend.”

I’m not hep on wasteful government programs – whether proposed or in effect. This includes, but is not limited to spending money on the following: a nationalized health care plan, war, police departments, the war on drugs, the war against the LGBT community, policies which support institutionalized sexism and racism, keeping Gitmo open, homeland “security,” and basically anything covered under the PATRIOT Act (I yearn for the days when I could buy a box of Claritin without my friggin ID). I’m also not too hep on anything that screws the poor, i.e., cigarette, soda, fast food, property, or VAT taxes, as well as eminent domain laws, mandatory minimums, and three strikes and you’re out laws.

Unlike many libertarians, I think that harping on the 10th Amendment is frankly, pretty retarded. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can oppress me just as well as the United States government, and the City of Philadelphia can also oppress me as well as the Commonwealth can. It’s not much consolation to a queer woman to hear people yapping about how wonderful states’ rights are. I also understand that overturning Supreme Court precedent such as Roe v. Wade (under the guise of “states’ rights”) is stupid and detrimental. Given that Roe v. Wade was founded upon an implied right to privacy, overturning the court case would have horrendous impact on every American’s life. Even if you hate abortion with every little fiber of your pro-life heart, you need to understand that overturning the court case sets an even scarier precedent.

Additionally, there seems to be a common theme with many libertarians that the government is evil, but if a business were to implement the same policies, that’s okie-dokie. No, I’m sorry, but I considered it just as intrusive for me to piss in a cup for Target as I would if Ed Rendell were requiring it of me. The same goes for many libertarians’ treatment of Wal-Mart, an evil, evil company for too many reasons (that I might expand on in this, but given that I’m fearing this is really venturing into tl;dr territory, I’ll probably just save it for a series of blog posts). I mean seriously, guiz, Wal-mart played a large part in bankrupting the state of California via welfare fraud, has been accused of shutting down competition via predatory pricing and other scummy practices and let’s not forget that nasty little love affair the company has with eminent domain. This is NOT proof of the free market working; this is an example of a scummy business exploiting legal loopholes and working the system in order to create a competitive advantage over other businesses, thereby driving out every competitor they possibly can.

In my utopia, everyone is on equal ground, and the little guy has just as much room and ability to compete for customers as Wal-mart does. Why not try to usher in an era of business innovation instead of the crap we pass off as omg! capitalism! (which also sucks; fuck that “anarcho-capitalism” horseshit).