I wrote the following in a comment a week or so ago and I thought i should make it a diary, but everyone around here, myself included, has been so pissed at the tax cut deal and this is so personal that I didn't want to invite people to rip my heart out. So, please don't. I am a democratic socialist in my heart, Senator Sanders is my favorite in congress. But in practice I am a pragmatist and this comment turned diary explains why. .
It's been pointed out to me in the comments that I should be saying pragmatist instead of moderate. I agree. I've changed the title and intro, but I'm leaving the comment below the same since I copy/pasted it.
i was a foster kid from the age of about 1 until 7. along with my older brother who was 3 when we went into foster care. i won't say why we were taken away from our birth parents from the state except to say that my brother who had endured 3 years to my one year was so severely affected that they thought he was mentally retarded at first.
we were in foster care for 6 years and while it was light years better we still suffered incredible abuse. nobody gets abused like foster kids who have already suffered abuse by their birth parents. nobody notices cause you were already fucked up.
we were adopted when i was 7 and the abuse continued for the rest of our childhoods. longer for my older brother because he didn't leave home because of his lack of social abilities, diagnosed autistic, and he was abused until he moved in with my wife and I not long after his 30th birthday.
my wife and i just celebrated our 10th year anniversary so my brother has lived with us for 9 1/2 years. he spent the first 30 years of his life in one hell after another. but he's lived with us for almost 10 years now.
my brother is also a genius. he went to school for computer science, math and physics. but because of his social issues he had trouble getting a job. so, i hired him. i was programming and i hired him. really, i split my work with him. we did web development and then windows applications and then he wanted to do video games.
now, i had no clue how to make video games and he didn't either, but he really wanted to make video games so i figured that since he lived through 30 years of abuse hell that i was going to get him into goddamn video games. and that's just what i did. we've been making video games for about 6 years now.
so, what has this all got to do with my being a moderate. i'll explain now.
government saved us from our birth parents. the abuse we were enduring would have destroyed us beyond the point of return if we hadn't been taken away from our birth parents.
but government also failed to protect us from the people they paid to care for us. and we were adopted by foster parents who continued to severely abuse us so they could abuse the system for money.
what i know about government from my own personal experience is that it can be a force of great good and at the same time utterly fail the people supposed to be helping.
but i would rather some help than no help at all. and i can never repay the good that government did for my brother and i even though it also shares some blame for great harm done to us.
i am not the kind of person who looks at a challenge and thinks that i can't succeed. i am not the kind of person who decides that it's too hard and it's taking too long so i better just stop shooting so high. where i am compared to where i came from is night and day. and i am here doing what i do today by sheer force of will maintained over years and years.
i am a moderate because i go get what i want no matter how hard it is to get it and no matter how long it takes me to get it. i don't shoot low and i don't quit. period.
but i also don't look at situations or people as black and white. i know that government can save people and at the same time fail them. but that doesn't mean to me that government is either good or bad. it means that it's just limited and flawed. like the people who make up the government. and i can't blame them for their failures without thanking them for their successes.
when i considered the health insurance reform debate i was happy for what we got because i know that it helps people. does it fail to help people at the same time? yes it does. but that's doesn't make it bad. that doesn't mean we shouldn't have gotten what we did with it because people will be saved by it. they have already. even while others have been falling through the cracks.
from someone who was both saved and utterly failed by government i am one who believes that we shouldn't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
now, that doesn't mean that we don't keep getting better. it means we take what we can get when we can and then we keep trying for more. it doesn't mean we settle. it means we take one step at a time.
and this is from someone who has gone from nothing to everything i dreamed of because i wouldn't take 'it's too hard' for an answer.
i am a moderate because i know the reality of making progress. it's messy. it's painstaking. it's compromised. it fails people to their ruin. but it also saves people. and the only way to make progress is to fight for it one step at a time until you are done. period.
now, some people think that makes me something weak or that it means i have no moral compass. i disagree with them.