Slow Down Fred

  In his most recent post, Texas Fred  takes a pretty high-minded tone in telling the younger generations (like mine) that the "Grey-Haired Brigade" are going to save us from ourselves when they vote conservative in November. Now, I actually read this blog fairly often and am more or less in agreement with Fred on most issues, but this one irked me a bit. I don't mind when he, or other conservative pundits, cry "socialism" at every turn or rant about President Obama destroying the country. Don't misunderstand me, I don't really agree with that crap, but I understand where they are coming from and it means that Texas Fred and the people he influences will vote the way I want the rest of the country to vote. They just might be doing it for the wrong reasons. It cracks me up when I watch see the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and Texas Fred's of the world get all radical and extreme or petty and cheap. It reminds me of the typical conversations I would hear at work when Bush was President, only then it was the liberals making a big deal out of nothing. The Katie Courics, Susan Sarandons and Barbara Streisands don't get any attention any longer because they don't have anyone to rant against anymore. It's the same thing, just from the other side. I guess that most people want to see the other side as evil, when it just isn't the case. I can't think of a single thing off of the top of my head that I have agreed with President Obama on other than that we both picked North Carolina to win the NCAA tournament 2 years ago, but I don't think he's evil. If I had a dollar for every e-mail I get that "exposes" Obama as either racist, communist or a closet Al-Qaeda member I could drop out of school, quit work and retire. Now, one or two of them have passed the Snopes test, but the vast majority never do. It was the same way with Michael Moore's "documentaries" and the way my inbox would fill up about White Water and Kenn Starr. People just like the extreme stuff, I guess. Politics reminds more and more of professional wrestling all the time. I would be overjoyed to see the Conservatives (not necessarily Republicans) take over Congress and I don't personally care for our current President's political views or attitude in general, but he isn't an evil guy. Just like Bush didn't create one-tenth of the issues he gets credited with by the average guy on the street.
      But here comes Texas Fred on his white horse of righteousness to rescue us idiot youngsters from ourselves. You know what really bugs me about this post? I agree with him. I really believe that the last 50 years have brought as much change to our daily lives as the industrial revolution did. I'd throw the internet up against the cotton-gin and TV is still the biggest thing to hit the world since the printing press. Cell phones are comparable in their impact to the telegraph. Playing Pac-Man at the mall is far cry from getting my ass kicked in the 3-D world of Wii sports my my 7-year old. I remember when fax machines were a modern marvel and that only lasted for like 3 years before they were classed with cassette tapes and anything analog. Things are radically different than they were when I was in high school, I can't imagine how much things have "advanced" in my parents' eyes. When you live through a lot, you learn a lot. Sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. Things are always changing. They say wisdom comes with age and I think there's a lot of truth to that.

      Where Fred is right, is that it's practically a law of physics that the older people get the more conservative they are, or at least the more conservative they vote. The question is if that's because they have gotten wiser and therefore see that the liberal views of the past were wrong, or if they got stuck in the past and just don't want anything else to change. Texas Fred just assumes that the older generations are going to come out in droves and vote for conservative candidates. I hope he's right. Things have changed so much in recent history that the Cold War is a footnote and even 9/11 happened when some people voting this year were in 5th grade. Fred gets real nostalgic about WWII, Korea and Outhouses, but he didn't mention Woodstock, The Fair Deal or We Are The World. Those the same generations that he's counting on to "take back our nation".

     I think he would be better served asking for help from the slightly younger generations than telling us how he had to vote in the snow, walking uphill to the polls, both ways. I guess I just don't like being told that my age dictates how I vote or how I think. I was pretty upset that my first time to vote Bill Clinton got elected and then I had to watch in horror as Clayton Williams Jr. handed Anne Richards the governorship through sheer idiocy and redneckness on a level even I can't relate to. So, being told that I "drank the kool-aid" or that I was "handed the Torch of Liberty" and traded it for social status when I was voting conservative, with a Lonestar Card in my wallet that was eating pieces of my soul even as it fed my kids. So, I hope Texas Fred can martial his troops out there to save my ass, I really do, but I'm not gonna "thank God for the Old Geezers of the Grey-Haired Brigade" anytime soon when they left me hanging in 2008.