So…I Got Political.

Don’t get used to it.

Although I always maintain that my political viewpoints are far too scattered to attach myself to a specific party, I’ve found I often lean right, at least financially. Socially, I still find myself agreeing more with the left. I fought my Republican father tooth and nail throughout my youth on most of his politically incorrect opinions, but as I grew older and became a tax-paying citizen, I saw the truth inherent in quite a few of his words.

A friend of mine asked me once about what I thought it would take to encourage younger people to get excited about or at the very least, understand the Republican party. My response is as follows.

The media, the world, the liberals, even the conservatives themselves have done an excellent job of painting a pretty awful picture of the Republican party. Remember the younger generations were raised by Vietnam war protesters, Haight Ashbury survivors, Free Love supporters, even just the silent observers of the political mess that was the 60’s and 70’s. The Civil Rights fighting, a Nation divided in thought, and truly the first example in the US of total irreverence for all things tradition and government. “Down with the Man” was born. Nixon, Reagan, Bush…these faces do not have too much of a difference and come with a HUGE negative slant when it comes to a young person these days. We’ve inherited the cynicism of our fathers, perhaps in spades. War monger’s. Power Tripping A-holes. Uncaring, rigid, unbending jerks with a private agenda and would take any measure to reach that goal. These thoughts are but a few of the ones running rampant through any typical 20 to even 30 year old’s mind.

Most of these people (my age group) are operating under the idea that their thoughts are their own and original, however, these stereotypes of the Right I just mentioned have been encouraged in many ways, mainly by the conservative party itself. Whether through media bias (which DOES occur on ALL fronts, liberal & conservative, but predominantly liberal) , through the cynicism of the previous generations battle scars with lost causes like Vietnam, through our liberal leaning educations, through the birth of the instant gratification culture where we know more about the new Mortal Kombat game and the new Batman movie than Prop 8, through excellent word-of-mouth campaigns, the ill-advised choice of the awkward Pres. Dubya Bush for a representative of the party,…and much more, it is hard to distinguish the real people involved in the party through the ugly blanket thrown over the entire Right. Remember, I am talking about the VERY common perception, not the reality.

My generation hates soccer moms and all that they stand for. They sneer at the traditional values that the members of the Right so often hold dear. They are almost exclusively children of divorce, infidelity, abuse, R-rated movies, and cynicism nurtured from the womb. They are not voting because they want to preserve the values that they see fail every single day. The failures of our parents and authority figures to uphold the truth of goodness and virtue that they preach have much more far-reaching effects than we can know. This isn’t a rebellious, teen angsty POV. It is an abhorrence of the hypocritical image so often associated with the religious and the virtuous, because the attempt to be more enlightened and a good person is no longer enough.

The common excuse of being human and failing doesn’t matter to this scarred and often childish generation. This has evolved into a preciously held belief. We can’t believe in marriage, love, happiness, and virtue (look at our examples of that epic fail) so as usual, people must find something to believe in. The Anti-values Belief. When you believe in being “groovy” with everything, being PC about everything and accepting all forms of relationships and life, it leaves little room for disappointment and failure. Everything is cool.

And this is where the Left makes its grand entrance. Liberals are associated with beliefs that are harder to pin down and harder to be scarring hypocrites about. Scarring was the key word there. The environment, animals, civil rights, women’s rights, seemingly against big business, a more hippie, earthy, open approach to life…who doesn’t care about these things today? The requirements from our country, both economically and politically, to fulfill some of the more idealistic dreams of the Left don’t factor in with my age group. Instant gratification, remember, not a ton of forward thinking. Half of us secretly believe we are headed to some kind of alien Armageddon, for crying out loud. You see how ridiculously easy it is for this generation to walk into the libs camp and act like they were destined for it? We were raised for it.

There are less differences than one might think between the Right and Left. This is an arguable point but I would deviate from this point far too much if I went into specifics. The party differences are at the core and issue related and people are forgetting that. What seems to be the new thought and new common belief is that the differences are more emotional and more personal. What I mean by that is, our two parties seem to be divided more along lines that have less and less to do with the real issues and more to do with the surface politics, the perceived faces. Each day the parties seem to polarize more along these new, ill-defined fault lines.

SO the first step in reversing this trend before it is too late would be analyzing the situation correctly then applying a well thought out treatment that adapts to the problem, versus sticking to your guns and refusing to change.