Thursday, April 15, 2010

Love and Politics

"Katy, I think you're far more centrist than you give yourself credit."

That pith was embedded in a conversation I had while sitting on my front porch on a stunningly sunny afternoon. A chat with Rusty, one of my favorite Righties with a few Leftie tendencies. A Libertarian, he calls himself, but a few of us in our tight group write him off as a big, nasty Republican.

And we love him even more for it.

Let's travel back to the haze of the mid 90s for a moment. The nation's economy was basking in the binge of the dot.com boom bust and property values continued to climb. The American worker was making more money than ever before.

The nation was fat and happy, and so was I.

I trotted off to college in 1995, a flag waving Republican, raised on homespun traditionalism a la Ronald Reagan and George Bush. I loved the GOP, and even had a few elephant motif trinkets to prove it.

As I tell anyone who will listen - the tongue ring I got in college should have clued me in that I was different than the rest of my counterparts on the board of College Republicans.

Times change, and people do, too. I spent a few years working in television news and discovered the massive disparity between my upper middle class, suburban upbringing and that of my counterparts reared in less comfy environs.

Go ahead and groan if you want to about the "liberal media," a good many of my newsroom colleagues were proud believers in the GOP. A few of them even went on to work for big deal state politicians (hat tip to GOP Big Wig!).

The media isn't nearly as liberal as people claim. Exhibit A - Fox News Corp.

Anyway.

As I've gotten older, I've become far more liberal. I think the argument on gay marriage should be a foregone conclusion, and I am bowled over about the changes coming thanks to health care reform.

And I haven't worn a twin set in years.

Now, I know some people argue that love is blind, but I'd say love is definitely a red-blue-purple scenario that has people gravitating toward their own kind. I look back on my dating history and realize I've typically gravitated toward more conservative suitors.

I don't know if this means I'm turned on by the art of political debate, or if I have clandestine conservative leanings that I refuse to admit.

Fellow Twitterati Paul Henrich tweeted yesteray about OkTrends, and I was bowled over by their post on political trends as people age. The piece features all kinds of charts and graphs to drool over; my takeaway was that people need to choose a mate based on either their social or fiscal priorities.

I certainly know what's more important to me. I'll fight to my death to defend the social issues related to human rights and freedoms for others. I get less worked up over financial matters (and I know too well that perhaps this isn't wise).

Politics and love - it's an interesting dynamic to think about regarding relationships.

Twin sets be damned.

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Kate's Random Musings by Kate the Great is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

1 comment:

TGirsch said...

Forgive my fashion and/or slang ignorance: "twin set?"