Former Dittohead Voted Today!

I just finished the book Confessions of a Former Dittohead by Jim Derych. I didn't know there were people like me out there! You see, I'm also a former dittohead. A dittohead is someone who is a complete and unabashed fan of the likes of Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O'Reilly. I used to listen to those guys, admired their non-PC approach, and thought they were telling me the truth. So how did a lifelong Christian Republican like myself go over to the 'other' side? Mr. Derych describes his conversion as like the death of a thousand cuts, and for me it was that way too.

It's hard to precisely define just what was the first cut. Perhaps it was the months of chatting with a beautiful dying woman named Noelle. She had been a nurse, and had contracted Hepatitis C from her contact with the blood of a patient. Frequently she had problems keeping any food down, and the only thing that relieved her condition and allowed her to eat and allowed her to continue to live, was medicinal marijuana. Later I was to find out that my staunchly religious grandmother who was dying from colon cancer had to have something similar slipped to her without her knowlege in her last days. So I no longer come to the judgement that anyone who uses medicinal marijuana is just a 'pot-head.' Some people need it, and I know that is true.

Then, in the late 90's I had a coworker with whom I would engage from time to time in philosophical discussions. After a great deal of night shifts, over several hours each shift, he finally convinced me that the death penalty, something I firmly believed in up to that point, was uncivilized, inhumane, and was subject to incompetence or outright abuse of the justice system. I began to ask myself how people (Republicans) could fight for abolishing abortion and yet feel the need for the death penalty, for vengeance.

For some reason, although I never listened to my union's advice before, in the year 2000 I decided to vote for the person that would benefit the working man (me) the most, regardless of party. I had faithfully voted Republican up until this point, but now I grudgingly voted for Al Gore. I was ashamed of myself for voting for a Democrat, and told no one. I was a bit relieved when George W. Bush was elected instead, and for the longest time I never admitted to anyone that I voted for Gore. I thought Bush was an embarassment that would give the world the impression that we are a nation of idiots, but at least he was Republican and not a lying, wacko
liberal.

Then came 9-11. I was off of work, and spent that entire week in front of the TV. I was in shock, as were many others. Picking my kids up from school I saw a couple of men in turbans. I realize now that they were probably East Indian or something similar, but at the time I hated them to my core. God help me, I really hated them. And yet, they were there to get their kids, just like I was.

One night my wife and I were watching a documentary on the beef industry. I'm sure the makers of the documentary didn't intend to turn people into vegetarians, but after seeing the sorry state of our system, from the raising of the cattle to the butchering, inspection, and handling of the meat, I realized that our system is outdated and ineffective. I began to read, to discover for myself about our food. By chance I discovered John Robbins, who in a fit of conscience (actually deep inner conviction) gave up his inheritance, the entire Baskin Robbins empire. I highly recommend any and all of his books, as they are heavily annotated and footnoted with all the references for every fact he presents. He is very heavy on presenting the facts, and it overwhelmed me that our food industry and corporations have bought their politicians and along with a few other corporations are running and ruining our country.

The war raged in Afganistan, and I agreed it was necessary to eradicate the Taliban. Then Bush decided to take the war to Iraq. I watched C-span, and saw the presentations that Colin Powell and the rest gave. I saw when we pulled the inspectors out of Iraq, a couple of days before the first attack. I thought the evidence and reasons were flimsy, but I still trusted my Republican government, that they knew something I didn't. It annoyed me that they wouldn't just come right out and say why they wanted to invade Iraq, instead of trying to make up theories about what WMD the Iraqis might theoretically have.

Then in 2004 I proudly voted for John Kerry, although I was and still am registered Republican. I was impressed by how presidential he acted. I thought it was great that he didn't stoop to the level of the Bush team with the swiftboat slander. Kerry is a dignified, principled, and civilized man of honor. I could not, and I still can't, believe that we hear so much talk about honoring our veterans and yet when we are presented with a bona fide war hero that people, especially veterans, would tolerate him being 'swiftboated.' Even if they wanted to eliminate him from consideration for the presidency, if they themselves had any honor as veterans they should never trash a fellow veteran like that.

From hearing about all the action from celebrities and political groups to get the vote out for Kerry, I thought it was certain that he would be elected. But it didn't go down as expected. But wait a minute. How many reported problems were there with the voting? More than 350,000 people were denied the vote in Ohio, yet Bush took Ohio by something like 150,000? There weren't enough machines in areas that vote mostly Democrat, causing people to have to wait for hours to vote? Many people in Florida were denied their vote because they'd been mistakenly put on a felon's list. Wait a minute, what's going on here? How come the exit polls differ so much from the actual votes, when it has been established in elections around the world that one of the primary ways to discern whether or not the election has been rigged is to look at the exit polls? And yet now the story is that the exit polls are notoriously incorrect? What?

But absolutely the very last straw was something I could not explain away. When it came out that many of our ports operations were being sold to the United Arab Emirates, the light finally went on in my head, because there are only two possible conclusions a logical person could come to. It is a fact that several (OK, actually two) of the 9-11 terrorists came from the UAE. It is a fact that the (financing of the) training for the 9-11 terrorists came from the UAE. It is a fact that the UAE was paying for the 9-11 terrorists housing and food. So, if Bush and his puppeteers are so intent on selling off the operations of our ports to these known terrorists, at the very least one of the following must be true. Either A) our administration is completely and totally incompetent to not know this and seek business, or B) our administration is not worried that the UAE will do any mischeif. Why? The only explanation for 'B' is that our government was somehow directly involved in the setup and enactment of 9-11. Can anyone come up with another scenario?

Then we have the various and sundry ever-changing reasons for going to Iraq, and another conundrum. Rumsfeld has come out and said that we had bad intelligence, aw shucks, oh well, he's not in the intelligence business after all. What? Isn't he in charge of the Defense Intelligence Agency? He's secretary of Defense, and he knows nothing about intelligence? What? OK, so what if we give them the benefit of the doubt, that they were taken in by bad intelligence. Then why are we still fighting? The government of Iraq is GONE, and we are left fighting and killing the people of Iraq, but it's OK that we are doing all this carnage because of bad intel? If we acted purely on bad intel, shouldn't we apologize? Shouldn't we make reparations? Shouldn't we rebuild and restore as much as we can, and back out giving them their country back? And if incompetence is the reason, shouldn't those responsible, be responsible? Shouldn't they lose their job and maybe go to jail?

At a recent speech at West Point, Mister Bush compared himself to former president Harry S. Truman. Truman was famous for the saying, "The Buck Stops Here." But where does the buck stop for Mister Bush? Bush says he now realizes that he shouldn't have said, "Bring 'em on." That's not an apology, and does nothing to fix the mess that happened on his watch, that he should be taking responsibility for.

This is blindingly, horrendously, and stupendously a nightmare, is it not? If there ever was such a thing as the Republican party it must be dead, and these guys in charge are most definitely not Republican. The party of Lincoln was for limited government, not increased government. The party of Lincoln was for fiscal responsibility, not spending more in one presidents watch than all previous presidents spent, combined.

So that's how I went from being a weak conservative to being a strong and proud liberal.