Well, I Just Found Another One Of "Them"

ChoppinBroccoli

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Sat Dec-04-10 10:15 PM
Original message

Well, I Just Found Another One Of "Them"

One of my very good friends is a dyed-in-the-wool, Rush/Hannity/Dr. Laura listening (and parroting), Bush-loving, right-wing mouth-breather. Overall, he's a super nice guy and a good friend, but he just has some really f'ed up views of the world. He and I used to have some knock-down-drag-out debates whenever politics would come up, and I ended up getting the best of him so many times that he simply gave up. He generally won't even bring up political issues around me any more because he knows that he's ill-equipped to argue their merits against me, because I'm more informed and more educated on the issues than most people out there, plus I argue for a living and, if I might toot my own horn for just a moment, I'm damn good at what I do.

First a little background on him. He grew up rich, with a father who was a college professor, and he was handed everything in his life until he was around his mid-20s. His parents paid for his education and everything he needed. They even bought the house next door to theirs when it was put up for sale and allowed him to move into it and live there rent-free after college (the trade-off was that they got to use the front room as their "office" for a home-based business and could come and go as they pleased). He never had to pay a bill while he lived there except for his personal credit card bills. When he bought his first car, he paid for it in cash, so he's never had a car payment. When he got into his late-20s, he decided he wanted to start looking for a career, so he went to school to become a teacher and got a job teaching high school. He has since decided he wants to get his PhD and teach college like his father did, so he's moved off to another State, and I rarely hear from him anymore.

One more little tidbit just to show you what we're dealing with here. When he was still teaching high school, there was an important vote on a school levy for his district. The levy money would have affected him DIRECTLY, because it was one of those desperation levies, that if it didn't pass, they were going to have to start cutting funding for extracurriculars (which he was involved with), classroom extras (which he used a ton of), and they were even threatening to fire some of the teachers of lesser seniority (which would have been him). The night of the election, we were talking on the phone. He asked me if I voted for this and that, and I answered him. Then he asked me if I voted for my school district's levy (I live in a different district from the one where he worked). I told him that I'm big on education, and that despite the fact that my kids were not yet in school, I ALWAYS vote yes on school levies. He told me he voted no on HIS OWN LEVY. When I asked him how he could possibly justify that, he simply said, "Hey, my taxes are high enough." So he voted to cut his own throat KNOWINGLY. This is how deeply ingrained the right-wing ideology is in this guy. It runs so deep that he votes his ideology even when he KNOWS that he, himself is being harmed by it. Whether or not that makes him a "Teabagger" or just your average, run-of-the-mill idiot right-winger, I have no idea, but that's who he is.

OK, fast forward to just recently. I got a phone call from this friend, who is now in Illinois pursuing his education. He moved out to Illinois with his wife and two children to go to school for his Master's, and then his PhD. He's living in his deceased grandmother's house (so, once again, rent-free), but he does have bills now. His wife doesn't work and he doesn't work because he's a full-time student. He called because he needed some legal advice (which I am more than happy to give, but the conversation revealed some very interesting tidbits of information). Over the course of our conversation, I told him that he had kind of a complex legal matter, and that he probably needed to talk to somebody versed in Illinois law in order to get better answers than I was able to give him. He asked if he could go down to Legal Aid and get representation for free. I told him that he could try, but that he would have to "screen" (meaning, he would have to meet their financial requirements), and I figured he probably made too much money to qualify. That's when he laid this little gem on me. He's on public assistance AND gets food stamps. Mr. I Hate Taxes, Mr. The Government Is Too Big, Mr. Get The Government Out Of My Life, Mr. Anti-Socialism, Mr. Welfare Queens And The Unemployed Are Deadbeats is on public assistance. I nearly fell out of my chair. I desperately wanted to point out his hypocrisy to him, but I figured it wasn't the time or place. Besides, this gives me a huge weapon to use the next time he starts in on one of his "no big government" screeds.

So, chalk up another one for people who have run into "them." The ones who bemoan big government, but are still on the dole. You know how every person who is against extending unemployment knows somebody who is cheating the system? It certainly seems from reading this board that pretty much everyone here knows a Teabagger who is accepting taxpayer-funded government services too. Maybe we should start squawking about THAT a little bit louder.