"R" and I have been friends since we met in 1970. At the time we were part of a close-knit group of DFHs, and we have kept in touch for all these years. There are few people in this world I consider as close a friend as R.
But politically, we are far apart. He listens to Faux News and Limbaugh. As you will see below, he is a true RW crazy when it comes to politics. But I also know he would do anything for me and for any of our friends.
We exchanged a few political emails this year, with little result except to develop animosity towards one another. For a while, we quit sending them to one another in order to save our friendship.
Then, last week, he copied me on an email claiming Obama was going to raise taxes. I responded by pointing out that Obama would only raise taxes on those making over $250K per year. He sent me the email below in response. And I am posting my reply.
A little background: R is currently retired from a successful career in sales with a large telecom company. He is 58 years old. I am a public high school English teacher who returned to teaching three years ago after a 16-year stint in insurance and financial sales and service. I will be 57 next month.
I apologize in advance for the length of this diary, but stay with me if you can. I would like your input.
[Dragon5616],
Here is the deal, I am and many of my friends are impacted by income taxes above $250K. I have been in that category several times in the last five years and expect to be with in the future with what I am taxed on in withdrawing $$ from my IRA, exercised stock options and future wages (yes in these tough times I am planning on returning to the workforce). I am not rich, but have worked very hard, invested fairly wisely, and been very prudent in both saving and spending. I do not want to fund inner city entitlement programs for the lazy and uneducated single mothers and welfare families who continue to have children because the gov't will pay them for each additional one of them. Nor do I want to pay for any gov't sponsored health care. One it doesn't work, check out Canada, seriously ill people die because they can't get in the long line to see an Doctor. More importantly the quality of health care goes down exponentially. If Doc's can't make a very substantial income, why would anyone spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, rack up student loans in that same amount, and spend seven to ten years after college an becoming a Doc or Specialist, and work 80-100 hour weeks in residency to work for what the gov't decides they should earn. This is NOT a socialistic country YET! You are aware that if you live in Canada, and can afford it, you come to the US for your major medical needs.
So, having said that, raising any income tax on your so called wealthy is wrong. Ten percent of today's top income earners pay almost fifty percent of all income tax. That is bullshit. This country is not thirteenth century England where Robin Hood was a hero!! I favor a flat tax or even better, no income tax, but rather a gov't tax on ALL purchases every citizen makes. That would be fair for everybody. Buy a ten dollar bottle of wine, at two % tax, the gov't gets twenty cents. Buy a $50,000 car, the gov't gets $1000. Buy a million dollar boat or home, the gov't gets $20,000. Most experts say this would more than cover our present income tax.
Let's talk higher capital gains taxes, this discourages investing in the stock market. Hopefully you understand the impact stock prices have on a company's opportunity to borrow money. Money borrowed to expand, as in hire more workers, do research (like cancer prevention, a cure for diabetes, Alzheimer's, etc) build new technologies like solar and wind and nuclear generated power, and as stated, and most importantly create new jobs. You cannot have it both ways, want more jobs, a cure for cancer, less expensive energy and a better economy, you cannot increase capital gains. Unfortunately liberals just don't get it.
How about the inheritance tax, why should anybody be forced to give up the fruits of a lifetime of work and be unable to pass on their estate to their children or favorite charity, or church or alma mater without it being raped by the gov't to pay for people who because of whatever reason will never even know what an estate is. More liberal Robin Hood philosophy. It is flat evil and wrong!
I won't even go deep on the other reasons Obama is dangerous, I can't wait until he goes to Iran to negotiate, I mean strike a compromise with our enemy, to the incredible detriment of our country. The guy is more driven to get elected that to win the war in Iraq. He won't even admit the surge worked.
Canvass all you want, I am not sure I really know who you are. After all you told me "You are them" when I asked you about the liberal demographic. You must not have mirrors in your house. Sorry, but the typical urban, inner city demographic that I described is not college educated and does not have a six figure income and does not live in the suburbs. I am sorry if this sounds personal, but to me our country's future is very personal. If we have any chance of remaining friends we better agree to disagree, because politically and spiritually we are on different planets.
Your pal,
R
Dear R,
You and I agree on one thing, for sure. "Politically and spiritually we are on different planets."
Let me address fundamentals then. Let me start with what I find most disturbing in your email, which is your basic philosophy and outlook.
The part of your email that bothers me most is this: "After all you told me 'You are them' when I asked you about the liberal demographic. You must not have mirrors in your house. Sorry, but the typical urban, inner city demographic that I described is not college educated and does not have a six figure income and does not live in the suburbs."
First of all, let's talk about "the liberal demographic." I would point out that by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, Kerry beat Bush among college educated voters. So I seem to be squarely in that demographic. Now on to more basic matters.
You see, R, while I may be an atheist, I am not amoral nor am I non-spiritual. I think you know me well enough to know that. I try to rely as much as possible on reason as the basis for my thinking. To me, the "right" thing to do and the "smart" thing to do are one and the same. I do not think, for example, that it is "smart" in the long run to be a thief. While it may provide some gain to me personally in the short term, a society built on thievery would eventually result in chaos. I use this only as an example of how I think. In other words, I try to extrapolate what the ultimate consequences of any action would be. That is how I arrive at my "moral judgments." I do not need the Bible to tell me "Thou shalt not steal." I can figure that out without resorting to what, in my view, is superstition. (I'm not knocking your belief--a vast majority of my friends and all of my family are believers and I am not arrogant enough to think that I must be right and everyone else is wrong. Just for me and me only, I find it intellectually dishonest. As I have said before, I admire Jesus as a philosopher.)
Now, let's move back to the quote above where I originally said, "I am them (i.e., people of color, poor people, uneducated people, welfare moms)." Now why would I say such a thing? After all, my skin is white, my hair (what's left of it anyway) is straight and brown, my nose is narrow, my lips are relatively thin, I am 6'2" and weigh 210, and I am a 56-year old man. I am a graduate of Wake Forest and I earn about $50K per year. So when I look in the mirror, I do not see a black woman, with black curly hair, a broad nose, thick lips, who is 5'3" and weighs 225 and is 32 years old, single, has three children, and a job earning $20K per year. You are right.
But, you see, R, on a more fundamental level, I think you are dead wrong. Because when I look in the mirror OR when I look at that black woman, what I see is a human being. No more, no less. As I said to you before, she and I are 99.9% identical genetically. When either of us is poked with a needle, we say, "Ouch," and we bleed. Both of us bleed red blood. When that woman gave birth to a child, she was overcome with the emotions of love, anxiety, responsibility, and hope--the same feelings I had when [my boys] were born. When she fell in love, she was giddy, excited, happy, and impatient to see the person she loved. I felt the same way when I was in love. When someone close to her died, she was sad, filled with memories, and felt emptiness and loss, just as I have when one of my loved ones died. When she fought with her husband or boyfriend, she felt the same anger, frustration, and guilt that I have felt when I fought with my wife. When she lost her job, she felt depressed, worried, angry, and worthless, just as I felt when I lost a job. When her child brings home a bad report card, she is concerned, upset, blaming herself and her child, just as I did when my child brought home a bad report card. When the Colts won the Super Bowl, she was elated and happy and giving high fives to her friends, just as I did. When it's cold outside, she shivers. When it's hot, she sweats. So do I. R, I am them, and whether you know it or not, YOU are them, too.
By an accident of birth, she is black. I am white. She faced racial prejudice that is a reality, not a fiction. She was born to poor, uneducated parents. I was born to middle class, educated parents. She was born a woman, while I was born a man in a culture dominated by men. We were both fortunate to have been born in the US, not in Ethiopia or Bangaladesh or Darfur.
In my view, what separates me from her are superficial things. I see myself as far more like her than different. Obviously, you have a different view. But let me extrapolate that view. When we begin to think of other people as fundamentally different from ourselves (i.e., not as "good" or as "important" or "worthy" or even just "different"), we open a dangerous door. No matter what we may say or claim to believe, ultimately we are saying that they are not equal to us as human beings. They are apart, separate. They are not "us." They become less important. Extrapolating that view further, they then become expendable (because after all, they are not us--they are less than us--unworthy, different, lazy, bad, and grasping creatures). They become convenient to use as scapegoats. Nowhere on earth was there a whiter (i.e., more Caucasian) society than the Germanic people of the early 20th century. They were smart; they were educated; their culture had produced Goethe and Beethoven and Wagner and Von Braun. But they fell for the mistaken belief that they were better than other human beings. And they exterminated 6 million Jews and others because of that belief. My grandparents were just two of the victims.
You see, R, I cannot take that view. It is not a "smart" view in the long run, in my opinion, and therefore it is not a "right" view. For me, it is an "immoral" view.
As far as taxes, health care, the Iraq War, and whether or not Obama is
dangerous, those are political concerns. I would be happy to debate each in turn. I have done a diary on Capital Gains taxes, for example, that I would be happy to link you to. It is filled with facts and figures that, in my opinion, disprove your assertion. I won't even argue that having uneducated citizens is bad for our country. That seems obvious on the face of it.
The "welfare mother" that you describe is a stereotype based primarily on lies. You are aware, aren't you, that Reagan's famous story of the "Cadillac-driving welfare mother" was untrue. A myth, a lie, designed to convince the most ignorant that they were somehow threatened by the least powerful people in the country. Reagan, of course, continued to tell the story even after the press called him on it. The Big Lie.
You are also aware, I assume, that since welfare reform in the 1990s, that
people cannot continue on welfare indefinitely. I would also add that I deal with the children of poverty in the classroom daily. I assure you, R, none of them--black, brown, or white--has done anything to "deserve" their circumstances. I further assure you, R, all of them are human beings, just like me and you.
But I see no reason to argue politics unless and until we can come to some sort of agreement on a basic view of the worth of each human being, and that, in fact, we are them and they are us. As Dr. King said (and, extrapolating that out, I have to agree), "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
I am happy that you and many of your friends make over $250K per year. I
sincerely hope that it makes you happy. I am so pleased for you that you have health insurance and security because I love you and care about you. Imagine how bad it would be if, like many people here in Kokomo, you had worked all your life for a company, had earned a pension and health care benefits for your retirement, and suddenly those things were taken away from you because the company shut down or the retirement fund was raided or overpromised. That is the reality for many here in Kokomo and the rest of the US.
We got close to earning $250K once ($212K) but, you know, I wasn't as happy as I am now because my work wasn't fulfilling to me. Although I make far less now, I am far happier. And compared to most of the people in the world, my family still lives like royalty. How much more do I need? Frankly, if it were up to me, I'd like to have far less than I have! My pleasures tend for the most part to be fairly simple ones.
For me, it is not "He who has the most toys wins." Rather, it is he who makes the most positive impact on the world who wins. Then we all win. It is "smart." It is "right." It is "moral."
Your friend always,
[Dragon5616]
I could argue political points with my friend, but my question is: Am I wasting my time? What else can I say or do? I am likely to see this person on my birthday in September when we will go to a football game together. I am unsure how to approach this. Any suggestions are appreciated.