I am involved in an argument on Facebook with a high school acquaintance over the usual...he is a teabagger who is self-employed and thinks all government is bad. ( I have another diary about that for later!)
So, I check my email, and find a copy of a letter to the editor, written by my boyfriend's brother. He lives in Eastern Washington and fights the good fight in a sea of red all around him. His letter made me stand up and cheer.
With his permission, here is his letter to the editor:
A couple of friends of mine are admitted teabaggers. Let's take a walk with them. They are both students of colleges that are publicly-funded, studying on federal loan money. They are both unemployed, having lost their jobs in 2006 when their employers off-shored their positions to get a fat tax break. They have both received unemployment insurance in the past (which they found was impossible to live on), and they also receive federal food subsidies to keep the fridge semi-full (but they say the money doesn't go far enough). He is on state medical aid, because he's never been able to afford our amazing, for-profit private insurance (he's mad because the state keeps flirting with eliminating the funding for his current services). She's a disabled vet, utilizing the services of the VA on a regular basis for a chronic condition (they are both certain that socialized medicine is evil, and that every country that has what they believe is socialized care is failing, but they have never been to another country and experienced those services themselves). Because of the increased costs of gas to go to school, and the books to buy there, they are genuinely worried about paying their rent of $575/month, so they're applying for federal aid to cover some of that cost (but they are angered that Habitat for Humanity is going to ruin "their" neighborhood by building a house up the street)
To quote them, "We've done fine in this country for generations without socialism, and we won't allow it to start here, not now."
They still drive our streets that tax dollars paved. They have a sidewalk out front, and a working fire hydrant on the corner. When they saw a neighbor's house being burglarized, they called their area 911 service, and the cops showed up quickly. Their neighborhood elementary school around the block, while aged and in need of a roof that doesn't leak, has a high number of teachers who've won achievement awards for excellence. When a water main broke a few years back, their municipal water department responded quickly, and had services restored to the citizens with minimal interruption. The nice elderly man living across the street from them, whom I had the pleasure to meet this year, fell and broke his hip on his porch this winter- it was a publicly funded, not-for-profit EMS that arrived to care for him and transport him safely to the hospital. Teabaggers want to take all of that away, but see no problem with unfunded military occupations that are helping no one, except the oil and gas industry, and defense contractors..
I am so tired of The Teabag Whine. As long as they have what they need, that is all that is important. The rest of the world can go to hell, as far as they are concerned.
Well, if the government shuts down tomorrow...let's see how long it takes before they start howling when their government support stops arriving in the mailbox.