The Front Porch Incident

A woman knocked on my door the other day, triggering the barking mechanism inside Maggie, my 100 lb. chocolate lab which, very much like a political salesman, is difficult to hush once they get going. The woman was old, and she had to work her chin off of her chest with a couple shoulder dips and lifts, simply to see me standing above her. Out of consideration I stepped down onto the porch so she wouldn’t have to work so hard, and that’s when I noticed her hands stuffed with packages of photo cards.

“Have you heard of Timothy Slick, or Rodney Starchman?” she asked as she fumbled their cards from the stack. “How about Don Glimmer, or Pat Pearlywhite?” The sheen of the cards caused them to slip and they fanned in her frail forearm, and just as they were about to fall to the porch I reached out to spare her the grief. That’s when I noticed they had elephants all over them.

“What, they’re all Republicans?” I asked, turning them over and around to see all of the smiling faces. They smiled for trust until it hurt. “Not one Independent even?” She stared up at me and her lower lip started quivering. After the moment it took her to gather her cards and thoughts she spoke up as if she’d just remembered that she forgot to buy milk that morning. “Why no!” She looked frightened. “You see, we believe there’s too many people in government jobs, and these candidates here all want to get rid of them.”

“Is that what they’re running on this time?” I asked. “Leaving tens of thousands more to collect unemployment? And who will pay all of the taxes when they are no longer getting any income whatsoever?”

“Well taxes are another thing we want to get rid of because the taxes we pay under Obama is ruining us all!”

“Really? And how is that when taxes didn’t go up at all? And let me ask you this…” I wasn’t going to give this lady the nicety she was most likely getting from every other house on the block – that “Oh but she’s a poor old woman whose only trying to help her cause,” benefit of the doubt, and simply because she was not only voting against her own better interests but she was voting against mine. “… if nobody is paying taxes then where will all of the money come from?”

“Money for what?”

“Money for everything. Every time the population grows we need more police and firefighters. We need street repairs, and public works in general. Costs for education? Where will all of that money come from?”

Her head pistoned in and out of her shoulders as she looked away to the street, panning like an imbedded lawn sprinkler, and just like one she brought her head around quickly to answer the question. “We believe that by cutting all of the government jobs we’ll have more than enough money…”

“But none of these people will be paying taxes then, that’s my point. They won’t have any income, so they won’t pay any taxes. Look, do you think that we’d be in a better position handing back our government to the same people who drove us into the recession we’ve been trying to get out of?”

She started laughing a ‘how dare you talk that way about my child if I was your mother I’d spank your lights out but your generation made spanking illegal so I’d hit you even harder’ laugh. Her teeth were yellowed with the same amount of history she wanted to slap into my head, but I knew for all intents and purposes that she was nothing more than an anti-progressive. She was nothing more than a tea partier too tired to party, and so she settled in with her long time companions, the Republicans. Then her laugh turned sour. “Oh sure, blame the Republicans!” she said.

“They were in charge of Washington when all of this happened,” I reminded her. “And now they want to protect the banks that gambled our economy into the gutter.”

And then the strangest thing happened. It wasn’t the look of intense shock that her face suddenly morphed into, nor was it the way that she pointed up to me with her twisted witch-finger as if she were putting me under  the same evil spell that drove her political views her entire life, but it was the 7 words that followed. “The banks were forced to do that!”

Yup! Apparently the most recent claim coming from the faux-conservative wall of “duh” is that the banks were forced into driving our economy into the gutter. The dog was still barking and without the slightest hitch in timing. Ruff Ruff Ruff Ruff… she went on and it sounded as if someone wouldn’t give the ignition of a dead engine a break. I knew she was just trying to bark some logic into this lady, so I let her go on. I didn’t care if Maggie was tainting my image as some ordinary middle-class citizen, and making me look more like trailer trash who happened upon a stroke of luck. The dog was right, “Listen up or get off my porch.”

This time I was doing the laughing. “Really? The banks were forced to do it?”

“Yes, it was Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac, and all of the regulations…”

“Fanny and Freddy had hardly the share in this that the free market banks had. The Lehman Brothers, and Bear Stearns’s, and as far as regulations there weren’t any, because Clinton under the guidance of a Republican majority chose to do away with bank regulations.”

She just stood with her head shaking, whispering, “No, the banks were forced to do it by the Democrats.”

“No, they weren’t,” I responded. “You just can’t admit that your party bears the brunt of this train wreck of an economy, and I think it’s sad because while all these people are trying to turn it around your party wants to see it fail just so they can get back into power. Well, ma’am, I’m sorry but I don’t vote straight party lines like you do. I try to find the best candidate for the job, and anyone refusing to help our country in a time of crisis is not only an utter ass, but is a treasonous utter ass. I’m sorry if I can’t help you out.” With that I walked back inside and shut the door. I watched her waddle down the steps and down the driveway, shaking her head the entire time. Maggie had to be settled down before she could go back to basking in the sun through the bay window, waiting for the next thing to roar her engines over – the busy squirrel scampering through the yard, the neighborhood skateboarder. I sat watching the lady as she crossed my neighbor’s yard. She was there a whole twenty seconds and back the next day handing him a sign to post in his yard. “Sick freaks,” I said to Maggie. She wagged her tail. “Total halfwits.” She rolled onto her back. It was her way of begging for belly-scratches. “You know Maggie-Moo? I wish you were a Democrat in Washington,” I told her. “At least you know how to bark back.”