Here is today's prerequisite reading. It's satire, but it airs the latent hypocrisy within tea-partisans who work in the public sector.
I recently found a former teacher of mine on Facebook and immediately sent him a friend request. He was one of my favorite teachers growing up. His was one of the few classes I took before high school that was both fun and engaging.
This man has dedicated his life's work to the shaping and molding of the young minds of Des Moines. For that I'd always admired him.
Which is why it was such a devastating revelation that he's a tea-bagger.
I won't go into the specifics of the conversation we had; It just isn't that interesting. Typical right-wing echo chamber stuff. Socialism bad. Obama socialist. Social Security is a ponzi scheme. You've heard it all before.
But one thing he said stood out above the rest. "The government steals from me."
"The government steals from me."
Let that sink in.
This man suckled at the teat of public life for 30 years. He experienced first hand one of the greatest success stories in the history of the public sector, Iowa Public Schools, and is set to retire as a millionaire, as a direct result of that success story.
Now don't get me wrong, he earned every paycheck. He provided a much needed service, and helped tens of thousands of children grow and prosper. When he taught me, Iowa was first in the nation in education, he was a part of that. Without his service the world is a worse place.
But...
He views his civic duty, paying taxes, as the government stealing from him.
These two views are fundamentally at odds with each other. Anyone with half a rational mind can see the hypocrisy. And it's not just inaccurate, it's plain wrong. Imagine a world without public schools. It's not hard to do. It's a part of the history of this young country. The rich were educated, the poor were not. It's as black and white as that.
It's not a place we want to go back to.
Public education is the ultimate example of how government programs can succeed at helping everyone. Private enterprise helps who it wants to help. Period.
Now, if you want to talk about public schools failing our children, I'll talk. If you want to talk about school board corruption, I'll talk. If you want to talk about government operating poorly and inefficiently, I'll talk. But be prepared for me to point out that these problems also exist within the private sector.
That's not the argument the tea party wants to have. They want to have a fundamental, existential argument about whether government aught to exist. It's just not reality. But it is well documented that tea-partiers love to collect the government benefits they hate. When a public servant rails publicly about the evils of the government that provides for their family, it is the ultimate hypocrisy.
Anyway, after a vigorous back and forth he stopped responding to my posts. I clicked on his profile and he had unfriended me. I private messaged him and he accused me of "character assassination."
I guess it was for this:
Like it or not, we are all this boat together. You've forgotten that.
Sad.
I guess that's what passes for character assassination in the tea-bagging world.
I apologized for the word sad, stuck by everything else I said, and sent him another friend request.
He hasn't accepted it.
Sad.
Edit: Removed the teacher's name. It added nothing to the discussion and unfairly violated his privacy.