How fear made me liberal

I’m afraid of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Not because Romney thinks paying 14 percent taxes on his millions of dollars makes him a swell guy.

That is why I despise Romney, why I won’t be voting for him and why I’m convinced President Barack Obama is merely the lesser of American white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalist evil.

I’m afraid of Romney because he is the champion of the privileged, ignorant and hateful. His supporters vehemently oppose collectivist thought.

Romney’s running mate, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., aptly reduced Washington to a battle between individualism and collectivism in a 2005 speech at an Ayn Rand society gathering.

He’s got a point.

Walking home from one of my jobs last week, I came across two sights.

A person, maybe homeless, was playing guitar beside a sign asking for help. I offered a smile and, truth be told, nothing else.

Soon after, I passed two well-dressed, middle-aged white men talking loudly.

One of the men was angrily asking, “Can you believe these bums who do nothing and get free food?”

I didn’t confront him at the time, but I’m left regretting my passivity and wondering where his hatred came from.

He is one of many who have convinced themselves that other people don’t deserve help, that some people live off government programs because that’s an easy thing to do.

Capitalist liberalism has convinced the country that individual rights should be valued more than collectivist thought, and thus it perpetuates attitudes that depend on the subjugation of our fellow humans.

My radical friends have rightly accused me of being liberal. I’ll grin and bear it.
Note to GOP readers: Radical leftists aren’t Democrats. They actually disdain Democrats more than you do.

If voting for Obama reveals my liberalism, so be it. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and revolutionary politics won’t stop Romney in the next month.
Social security, Medicare and middle-class tax rates will be jeopardized if
Romney wins the presidency.

For the next five weeks, I’ll have to hope voting is compatible with broader anti-normative politics. Call it diversity of tactics.

Don’t get me wrong: Obama almost definitely isn’t going to change the U.S. for the better.

He has done little for women’s rights, except to neglect redefining rape. He hasn’t actively sought to implement gun control. He hasn’t kept his promise on immigration reform.

But Obama won’t do anything that Romney isn’t going to do, and then some.
The American political system is bought and sold. The United States is doomed to suffer the consequences of capitalism until a radical leftist group actually gains traction.

For now, Romney has scared me into liberalism.

I’m so scared of Romney that I’ll be voting for Obama.

­— ptbeane@indiana.edu