Picture it: small town in northwestern Pennsylvania, sometime in October, 1980. I was by that time a Junior at Elk County Christian (Catholic) High School in a neighboring town. I saw Ronald Reagan yard signs in some of the yards of this traditionally Democratic voting area. Having never given much interest to politics, it was easy for me to see things from a less informed perspective. We'd been living through four years of what appeared to be weak and ineffective leadership of the incumbent candidate, Jimmy Carter. As a country, we were suffering from high unemployment, repercussions from an oil embargo and a humiliating hostage crisis in the toppled government of Iran. Though years later I would find out that little of this was the fault of his leadership, it was easy for folks who weren't that involved in politics to be lulled by the charismatic former Hollywood actor and tough talker, Ronald Reagan. I would find out years later as well that history would record what happened in my small neck of the woods as voters who'd turned into "Reagan Democrats" and much of the rest became the history of the Republican "revolution" of the 1980s. We would live for twelve years under Republican leadership. During this time, however, I'd recalled speaking with my dad after seeing a clever Reagan TV ad that he seemed like he'd make a good President--after all he'd spoken of a "new morning in America" and that we'd be a "prouder, stronger, better nation." Hey, it sounded good and everyone seemed frustrated with the way things were going. Dad got red in the face as he often did and said I was crazy. Reagan would be the worst thing that could happen to our country.
Fast forward thirty-six years later. I've never had as much respect for my father as I do now--though it's sadly posthumous in many cases. I couldn't understand his loyalty to the Democratic Party at that young age but I certainly do now. I wish my father would have explained more of the why he felt the way he did rather than expressing such anger. He sure knew how to get angry though. I'm learning about that anger more than ever before--only this time it's me getting angry. Dad knew about the lies Republicans in the ilk of Richard Nixon were pushing as truth. Since the party had nominated "law and order" President Nixon, it had shifted from a party that cared little about the little guy and more about the big guy. My dad was no liberal in today's sense, but he really wasn't an Archie Bunker type either. He knew the struggle...and he knew the difference between real talk and bullshit.
I needed to learn to hate then--at that time of my life. I didn't need to learn to hate homework, or grownups, or any person. I needed to learn to hate injustice. I needed to learn to hate racism. I needed to learn to hate an ideology that I barely understood then but so sadly do now. Now, it would be terribly wrong for me to say that I've never known any good Republicans. I have and I've been pleased to debate them civilly and have even rarely agreed on certain points. But make no mistake, their exclusive message--strong in my father's time--still stronger today, is a message of loyalty to a way of life that doesn't have room for me. With an even more exclusive message today--"Make America Great Again"--read by suffering laid-off factory workers as a call to action and by people who know better as a call to another time, yes, a time before Civil Rights, LGBT rights, Women's rights actually made America a great place, we have a Republican Party that has veered farther right than at any time in history. We need to teach our children to hate that. We really do.
