The Fury of Me

Mitt and Me

I have lately been trying to analyze my deep seated despising of Mitt Romney.  This isn’t about policy, because there are many Republicans that I respect, listen to, and understand their positions.  When I hear or listen to Romney, my stomach turns and I want to rip my skin off.  This is a pretty intense reaction to have and as much as I find Gingrich’s policy positions reprehensible and actually disgusting, he doesn’t create this reaction within me.

I know nothing about Mitt Romney outside of what a very aware news and political junky knows.  He is a Mormon and child of some privilege.  He has been a successful private equity investor and an average politician.  He and I literally have nothing environmental in common.  I can only dream of being accepted to and able to afford Harvard Business School, I enjoy equity investment more than private equity, and I wouldn’t know what to do with $250 million if I had it.

The unfortunate kinship I feel with Mitt Romney comes from what I perceive as his intense desire to be liked.  I imagine him in his bus or hotel room with his metaphorical finger in the air trying to gauge what way the wind is currently blowing.  His campaign didn’t go insanely negative until he felt threatened and realized voters might like other people more than him.  Romney then went full Dresden on Gingrich in what may turn out to be somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory for the Republican party. 

Romney’s intense desire to be liked has lead him to change nearly every position he has ever held, do things and act in ways that seem completely forced and unnatural (his rendition of America the Beautiful in response to Obama’s spontaneous channeling of Al Green, and just about every joke he has ever tried to make – Lucille Ball references! Really?), and his generally stiff, unwarm (he’s not really cold) manner.

You’re probably wondering where all this is going.  If you know me recently, I have tendencies to be abrasive, dickish, outspoken, and disliked by probably 90% of the people I have ever met (justifiably and unjustifiably).  When I see Mitt Romney, though, he reminds me of who I used to be.  I grew up in a very middle class manner.  I never wanted for everything, but I definitely did not have the key to every door.  I moved to a new community when I was five and spent the rest of my childhood wearing my heart on my sleeve, getting horribly made fun and wanting nothing more than to be liked by anybody. I became socially calculating out of desperation.

I can vividly remember plenty of times when I would literally force myself into the lunch table with the “cool” kids that I wanted to be part of so desperately, only to sit there and be tortured and made fun of.  Why would anybody do this?  I would attempt to socially destroy anybody who was actually less popular than me in order to somehow get into the good graces of those deemed more “cool” than me. When kids would tell me to get lost and call me names, I would ask the one person in their group that had some speck of a conscience if he wanted me to leave, knowing he didn’t quite have the cruelty of the others to say so. I suffered many intense humiliations all because I wanted to be liked.  My desperation lead me to be socially calculating in ways that make me hate myself.

It wasn’t really until my senior year of college that I became the version of myself that I am today.  The outspoken, confident, take-no-prisoners, self-aware person with iron-clad convictions.  This hasn’t necessarily made me any more friends than I previously had, but when you start from zero, everything is a gain.

Looking back, if I had done everything differently, I still wouldn’t have had friends.  My social environment was one that was too small for there to be enough cliques for everyone.  My being an outsider to a community full of townies meant that that is forever who I would be, an outsider.

Now back to Romney.  When I see Romney at debates, on the stump, or in an interview, I see way to many aspects of old-me.  He wants to be liked so badly that he’ll do whatever it takes – destroy other candidates in any way possible, say what he thinks others want to hear, basically reconfigure any belief he might have previously had prior to the campaign – to be become more popular among the Republican party. There is nothing Romney won’t do to get your vote.

I realize that Romney is a politician and he is campaigning and part of campaigning is to get people to like you.  To me that means it’s your job to persuade and bring people to your side through sound logic and reason.  Romney seems to be doing the opposite.  Instead of persuading others to his position, he is constantly changing his position to match theirs.  This isn’t the fine tuning or slight adjustments that normal adults make when they learn more or life changes.  Romney makes wholesale changes. 

It’s this behavior that gives me the taste of bile in the back of my mouth.  Looking back, I hate how desperate I was to be liked.  I hate the things I did to other kids in order to try to get ahead of them socially.  I hated that I had no standards which I held onto no matter what.  When I see the same behavior in Romney, I don’t understand how anybody could ever vote for him, knowing that whatever he is currently telling you could easily be something different tomorrow.  His demeanor and approach to people, his policy positions, his method of competing with others.  Everything that I would want to be somewhat confident in as my leader is completely lacking.  Romney and I disagree on just about every policy position, but I disagree with many people politically.  With Romney, everything he is presenting is a façade,  a lie in order to get me to vote for him.  When he’s in office, who knows what he’ll be like.

If all I knew about Romney was his similarities to childhood me, that would be more than enough to know I could never vote for him.  Desperation turns people ugly. It didn’t make me an attractive person as a kid, and it doesn’t make Romney attractive as an adult.  As a child, I wasn’t aware enough to step back and see myself like I do today.  Romney, however, is an adult and should be fully capable of doing so which means he doesn’t either because he is unable to, or, even worse, he is the way he is by choice.  I don’t think anybody would ever vote for childhood me, so I can’t understand why people would do so with Romney, even if you agree with his most recent reincarnation.

Money Talks

As the shadowy super PACs of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich attempt to destroy each other without any input or participation by the actual candidates it has become painfully apparent just how a few ultra-rich people can put their stamp on a national election that, most would agree, is of utmost importance.   Romney is a multi-millionaire and his campaign is generally funded by many different people, as well as himself.  He has also been running for most of known history and still can’t make any friends.

Newt Gingrich is the more clarion example.  With the $10 million infusion by Sheldon Adelson (and his wife), Gingrich has been able to make huge ad buys and stay relevant much longer than he may electorally have any reason to.  To put more clearly, one person has been able to keep Newt Gingrich in the race because of his war chest rather than popular support.  This is muddied a bit since Gingrich won the South Carolina primary (largely due to Adelson’s money) but the point remains that Gingrich’s is a campaign funded largely by a single person and Gingrich’s victory in South Carolina is at least largely due to that money.

Is it better for our democracy to have candidates supported by many small donations, such as Buddy Roemer, or a few huge donors (and super PACs), such as Romney and Gingrich?  I obviously believe it is better to have many small donors and that the discussion should not be dominated by a few affluent individuals that are able to put their thumbs on the scale.  It creates an environment in which the wealthy get a higher priority for their pet issues (Israel in Adelson’s case) and their opinions adopted.

What we are marching steadily down the road toward is a dollar-weighted democracy. The more dollars you have, the more influence in government you have.  With such a large amount of our national wealth and income controlled by such a small group, it means that the majority of us are left to pick from a menu provided by the rich.  Yes, all candidates must win a nation-wide vote, but with media, messaging, and ultimately who survives through the primary is largely due to whom the wealthy support.  This goes for both Republicans and Democrats.

The more entrenched this dollar-weighted democracy becomes, the more likely it is that mass protests such as the Tea Party and Occupy will continue.  Until candidates and politicians are once again accountable to and dependent on the general population for both funding and votes, none of us can truly feel represented in our government.

What To Write

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything.  A large part of that is because I feel like I just keep going in circles. I make observations and reactions based on a world that seems determined to repeat words and actions that lead nowhere.  Republicans want to do exactly what Regan did, even though that was thirty years ago in a world completely unrecognizable to anybody under 35.  On top of that, most Republicans don’t want to actually do much of what Regan actually did.

Democrats keep marching into a wall of obstruction because they don’t know what else to do or really have any other options.  They believe in government’s ability to do positive things for people, so it would be contradictory for them to be obstructionist back.  It is a catch-22.  And SOPA/PIPA showed how politicians on both sides of the aisle are completely on the take of corporate money and willing to pass legislation they don’t even read on things they don’t understand.

Even average Americans are run around in circles. An acquaintance of mine things “trickle-down economics” is great, yet he has no ability to actually explain what it is. Everybody is willing to give into buzz words, slogans, and any kind of red-meat politicians throw at them.  Newt Gingrich passes as a historian. How is that possible?  I feel like the person standing still while the mass of people run around crazily around me without actually thinking about anything.  I’m sure there are other people-islands out there, but there are so many people running madly around that you can’t find them.

That’s why things don’t get done.  Too many people are willing to believe whatever they are told from their news channel or politician of choice without actually understanding anything.  He says he’s for family values but has never acted in accordance with any of those beliefs.  Or the Senator from New York thinks that taxes should be fairer, except for the hedge fund managers that donate stupid amounts of money to his campaign.

What can a person write to actually change anything?  A person can only learn more if they want to learn more.  Adults can’t forcibly educate other adults.  And not enough adults actually care about learning or understanding things.  Yes it takes time. Yes people are busy. But does that mean it isn’t worth the extra effort?  We see what people do when they don’t put in the extra efforts. Two wars for over ten years, a financial meltdown, and a horribly divided country.  Don’t kid yourselves, most Tea Partiers don’t understand anything to a point where the actually feel morally reprehensible about misleading their supporters.  The same can be said about the Occupy movement.

So what does one write?  And if there is something to write, what’s the point?