Question: Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative?

I asked my friend from college: “Work! I thought you retired?”

“Yes, I do work. I took a couple of years off and went back to work as an auditor-appraiser for the county assessor office. I put values on personal property (boats/airplanes) and business equipment and hand the values over to the tax collector department that translates my value into a property tax much like the real estate tax. I get very other Friday off, plus I needed health care coverage. If I work 5 years, I can retire from the county and get a monthly check based on my salary.”

Did you guess liberal Democrat. He is a bureaucrat, after all, and looking forward to being on the public dole with the retirement. I guess we can’t fault him wanting health care.

Actually, he hates bureaucrats, thinks pensions for labor are destroying the country, and doesn’t understand why people are whining about health care. He has never voted for a Democrat. He also hates taxes which takes all this irony over the top since he is working for the tax assessor. You already know I think there may be a link between fundamentalist republicans and fundamentalist Christians. My friend is a fundamentalist Lutheran.

This is a true story. The quote is an actual quote. Obviously he doesn’t see any disconnect between what he is doing and what he believes. There is way too much of this in our society: the people who bitch about taxes and scream at politicians for not fixing the pot-holes; the people who hate government but want morality laws—government in the bedroom. I have to accept that they don’t see the inconsistency so I watch the Daily Show on Comedy Central with Jon Stewart to get a laugh rather than an aneurism.

Conversations with Republican friends have brought me to the generalization that Republicans are more likely to be fundamentalists in their religious beliefs than Democrats. These were conversations on politics, not religion.

A recent conversation began with agreement that we would like to see both parties work together. Why couldn’t they approach the idea or proposal of the other with a positive attitude? Then I mentioned the vote on the stimulus package put forward by President Obama and how I admired the three Republican senators who voted for it.

“Oh, we’re on opposite sides of that!” my Republican friend exclaimed.

“But isn’t that an example of cooperation?”

“Obama was the one who wasn’t cooperating. He rammed that through too fast without giving Republicans a chance to have their input.”

“Hey, wait a minute. Wasn’t there an urgency to get something done? All the experts on both sides said this was ‘uncharted waters’. Nobody came forward to say ‘this is the way out of this. This is what we must do to revive the economy.’ Nobody! No one claimed to have the answer. Wouldn’t it be better to say, ‘OK Mr. President, we’ll go with your plan’ especially since the President had listened to Republicans and had put a significant tax relief in it.”

“No. He just pushed it through so quickly no one had time to look at it critically.”

“What about the financial bailout pushed through a couple of months before Obama took office?”

“What bailout?”

“Remember the three page legislation that put $700 billion it Paulson’s hands to pretty much do with as he pleased? Remember how urgent it was to push that one through? Paulson got down on his knees to Congress and Bush signed it a week later. One week! Wasn’t that pushy?”

Republican amnesia on that one.

Fundamentalists take their dogma without question. Republican presidents and legislators are always right even if what they say today is a direct contradiction of what they said a month ago. Similarly The Bible is God’s word no matter that it is filled with contradictions. Could it be that being brought up to believe the Bible without question prepares them to accept whatever Republican leaders say no matter how nonsensical?

One more dialogue:

“I can’t stand Slick Willy.”

“What do you mean?”

“All his slick real estate dealings. He’s a crook.”

“Ken Star spent nearly $40 million investigating his ‘slick’ deals and found nothing.”

“He was impeached.”

“Yeah, for lying about getting a blow job, not for any slick dealings unless you call ejaculating on a red dress slick.”