Politics in America

AuthorHouse

Contents

1. About Me....................................................12. The Democrats...............................................133. The Republicans.............................................194. The News Media..............................................255. Illegal Immigration and Race Relations......................276. States Rights...............................................337. Social Security.............................................378. Crime.......................................................419. Creating Jobs...............................................4710 If I were the President.....................................5311. Foreign Policy.............................................6512. Ramblings and Rants........................................73

Chapter One

To be a true Southerner, one does not necessarily have to be born in the Deep South or even in the South at all. To be a true Southern Gentleman, a man needs to be respectful of others, especially to women, children, and their elders. Respect is never given to anyone. It has to be earned. But once earned, it takes something colossal to be taken away from someone.

There is a huge difference in being respectful to someone, and having respect for someone.

They must be courageous, proud of who they are, and very proud of their Country and their home State. You must be tolerant of others, especially those who do not agree with you.

You have to carry yourself proudly, but not be arrogant. Like I said you don't have to be born in the South to have these traits, but it seems like it sure does help. But of course, I was born in the Deep South, and I am very proud of that fact, and even more so, by saying I was born in the Great State of Georgia, in the year of 1963.

Calling me a gentleman may be one of the biggest over statements of all time. By the way, I'm guessing you could get fairly long odds on that in Vegas.

Being a Southerner anymore is simply a state of mind, and life can be hard for us. It's inside your mind, and it's in your heart, and it's in your deepest soul. To be a Southern White Man at this time in history is even harder. We have the least amount of rights of anyone in this country. Every other person, of every other color gets preference ahead of us. I can't speak for every other white man in America, but I have never owned any slaves. But it does seem like I am the one paying for white people owning slaves 150 plus years ago. I was not even around when slavery was legal, and I'm pretty sure no one else is either.

We have been typecast as being backwards, clumsy, awkward, and very uneducated, and if you believe the media and the Democrats, very racist. At times, 1963 yes this has been the case for some, but for the most part very untrue. Another thing a lot of people seem to forget, a lot of things people call racist was legal back then. I'm not saying right or wrong, I'm saying it was not illegal for people, schools, restaurants, and a lot of other places to be segregated.

Changes like that have to come slowly for some people. If a person owned their own business and wanted to limit it to only white people or to only black people, I don't really care. People it's 2010, not 1963!

Let's take me as an example. I'm 47, White, decent house with a mortgage, truck and a car, divorced, grandfather, full head of hair, decent job. I make pretty good money, around 100k a year, and I have a little money in the bank, around 50,000 dollars. Not rich by today's standard of rich by any means, but very well off if you don't have any of the things I mentioned. There were many years I did not have them either.

People from the South seem to be very firm in their beliefs, whatever they may be. I know I am. Things such as politics, we tend to be very Republican or very Democrat. I happen to know people who I call friends of both persuasions.

I am not a smart person by anyone's standard. I did not even finish high school. I dropped out because I knew I was not a college type person, and my living arrangements were not geared for me going to college. But for the most important reason's, I was not smart enough and I did not care and or know enough to even want to go to college. A paycheck beat the hell out of a report card.

I learned very early in life that Kroger would cash a paycheck, but not a report card.

Depending on what part of my life you wanted to put under a microscope, 0-10 or 10-18 or 18-23 or 23-29- or 29-40 or 40-47 those are just kind of milestones years for me. But it would depend which set of years you look at as to what kind of person that you would think I was.

If you took 0-10 years old, you would be talking about the kid from a very disjointed family. My parents divorced when I was a little past 1 year old. My father had received custody of my brother and myself. My brother was about 3 when they divorced.

The story I have always heard was that my mother gave up custody of us for a new car.

My father worked construction for a living. That means doing a lot of traveling. Well anyway he was on a job, staying at a boardinghouse and he met the woman who was running it. She had 4 kids from 2 different men. They decide to basically become the Brady Bunch way before they ever decided to have a television show about them. So now I am the youngest of 6 kids, I now have 2 older step-brothers and 2 older step-sisters. I caught a lot of crap from them, and I had a lot of hand-me-downs.

Of course this was not your average fairy tale, even though something I think all we could agree on was the fact that we all had, and hated the evil mother/step-mother. Even her kids didn't like her. She was mean to all of us, but I do think my brother and I took the worst of it. There's no point in getting into the many beatings we all took, many for the slightest of transgressions. How bad can a 6 year old be? I'll put it this way, I was in the first grade, and I only missed 1 day of school that year. It was because I had a cut above my eye from getting backhanded across the room for not taking the clothes out of the washing machine and putting them in the dryer fast enough. Back then kids had chores before and after school.

Then I was 10 years old and my life changed again. 2 1/2 weeks before my 11th birthday my father died in a car wreck coming home from work. That's a tough one for a 10 year old boy. My dad was a pretty good guy. He did drink a lot, but he never hit or abused any of us.

Now getting older myself and working construction also, I can understand why he drank. Between construction work and the evil bitch that he married. He was even good to the step-brothers and stepsisters. We all used to go hunting and fishing and camping a lot. The oldest step-brother was 16 almost 17 when my dad died.

But when he had turned 16, my dad had gotten him a car, not new but a decent Mustang. The next oldest step-brother had gotten a small motorcycle a year or two earlier. My dad dying was hard on all of us kids.

My Grandfather who had already had 1 heart attack was threatened by my step-mother, that if he didn't turn over a life insurance policy worth 40,000 dollars to her that she was going to drop my brother and I off on their doorstep that very day. It was a policy that my dad had set aside for my brother and myself for when we turned 18 we could have a good start at life. He had purchased it way before they had even met and before they had gotten married.

This is after she had already gotten a couple of other life insurance policies from his death. One paid off the house, one was for 100,000 dollars, and at least one more for 50,000 dollars. My Grandfather once told me that he regretted ever giving in to her, and that he was sorry that he had done it. I told him that he should never be sorry for doing what he thought at the time was the right thing to do. I told him that since I never got it, it was not something I had missed. I guess I was about 17 when he told me about it, and knowing most 18 year olds I would have just blown it on a car and or girls.

Both of the step-brothers got brand new cars, as well as the stepsisters after my dad died.

When my older brother turned 16 he ran away, and after he came back, he was sent to live with my grand-parents. When I was 15 I too was sent to live with my Grand-parents also.

If you took the ages of 18-23, I would be a poster child for the Democrats. In the Army at 18, I had nothing really else to do at the time. I was discharged from the Army at 20 with nowhere to go. I looked up my mother whom I had not seen in about 10 years. She and my father had divorced when I was less than 2 years old, my father had been given custody of me. She was living in the Houston Texas area. Well let's just say that things did not work out too well after a month or 2, and I headed back to Georgia.

I had loaned her all the money I had, a little over a thousand dollars. I had just received my tax refund. She wrote me a note telling me that she didn't think it was going to work out, "me living with her". Then she bought me a bus ticket back to Georgia.

I moved in with a relative that I still knew where they lived. I then received a letter from my mother's lawyer. She had filed bankruptcy, and filed against me what she had borrowed from me.

I stayed with an Aunt and Uncle in Georgia for a couple of months, and decided that this was not going anywhere. So I took a map of Georgia, opened it up, closed my eyes, and pointed to a spot on the map and asked them if they could take me there on the upcoming weekend.

I had 78 dollars in my pocket, my army duffle bag, my army sleeping bag, a small pup-tent, about 5 old uniforms and 2 pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers and a pair of Army boots. I went to a pawn shop and pawned a couple of uniforms and a few other things, and bought a shotgun and a fishing pole. I bought them for hunting and fishing, and I was planning on living off of the land.

They took me to the town like I asked, and we had lunch, and I then had them drop me off on the side of the road, next to a river in North Georgia at a boiled-peanut stand.

I camped in the woods next to the river that first night. I had some canned goods, but it had rained and anything to make a fire with was wet. So I had a can of cold pork-n-beans that night for dinner. It got cold that night, into the lower-40's I thought I was going to freeze to death.

Anyway the next day I had just about had enough, and decided to ask the people at the peanut stand for a ride into town. I was going to call my uncle who dropped me off and ask if I could come back for awhile.

I didn't want to, but thought I had to. As I was walking along the river going to the peanut stand my life changed again. I started talking to a person, who as it turned out was living under the bridge. He asked me if I was on the road, and then one thing led to another, and he had a good size tent and a heater so I agreed and moved in under the bridge. I have never needed to make that phone call again in my life.

I lived under that bridge for almost a year. I met some of his friends who were local residents of the town, and we became good friends. The friends were 3 brothers who had grown up in the local town.

They were just 3 good ol' boys to the core, country boys, nothing fancy. We fished, hunted, drank beer, played the guitar, and I enjoyed the hell out of it.

I had no worries, life was good. I bathed in the river, washed my clothes there too. I would help campers out with stuff like setting up their tents, or helping them launch their canoes, and things like that, they would give me a few bucks now and then. I changed a few flat tires for people, sometimes they would give me 5 maybe 10 dollars. I never did ask them for money, they always offered it. I did something nice for them they did something nice for me. It was just enough for some food, and sometimes townspeople would drop off food also.

We would pan for gold in the river, and even find a little every now and then. When we needed food, or other things we would sell the little gold we had found in town or to campers. We are not talking gold bricks here either, I don't know if we ever made more than 20-25 dollars at any one time. But it was enough to sustain us in food, ammo, fuel for our camp stove and fuel for the heater when it was cold. The basic things in life for me at that time.

I did not take to stealing and robbing to survive. I had nothing to speak of, my most prized possession was a 40 dollar single shot 12 gauge shotgun.

Now you tell me, is that not the poster child for being a Democrat? A white man, homeless, a veteran, living on hand-outs, living under a bridge, no money, no job, no car, basically no family, and no prospect for any of the above. The Democrats in power today would be promising me anything for my vote. And most of the Republicans today would wonder what kind of drugs I'm hooked on and who I'm robbing or stealing from, and just hope it's not them.

But that urge to do something different was coming back to me again. I've always had that ol' traveling bone. I had saved up a few bucks by helping a friend cut some firewood and a few other odd jobs, and decided I was going to get a job and a place to stay in town.

Anyone could get hired on at one of the many chicken processing plants in the area. I was going to rent a room at a boarding house in town, but one of my friends that I had meet on the river talked me into renting a room from his sister who also worked at one of the chicken plants nearby. So I ended up renting a room in town from one of friend's family, and took a job with them at a chicken plant. Wow a few paychecks and I was rich.

I lived there a year or so, but it helped form me so much in my mind, it instilled the good ol' boy in me forever. I learned so much about myself. I learned that I could make it in this world, and I grew up. I learned that I wanted to be that friend that could bring the food and beer to my friends. But not as being better than they were, just that I could.

It is now time to jump ahead to the next age time frame. 23-29. Well after a few years back in Georgia, I thought it was time to go back and try Texas again. I called my mother, asked if I could stay with her for a couple of months, just long enough to find work and get my own place, she agreed. I guess after filing bankruptcy on your own child it's tough to say no.

A couple of nothing jobs later, and a few drinking and poker buddies, I moved from my apartment into a friend of mines apartment who had just got divorced. We figured we both could save some money. A few months later he lost his job and wanted to move back to his home town, so I said lets go. A few months later I have meet a girl, we got a kid on the way, time to get married. A few stints in jail, it's a Texas thing to get yourself a couple of felony convictions.

Now I am the perfect Democrat. I've been homeless, no money, and now a convicted felon.

There's not a lot to look forward to at this point in time. I'm sitting jail, 27 cents to my name, nobody to call for help, poor pitiful me. I get extradited back to Texas, I stand trial, and I get a 10 year sentence. I spend 18 months behind bars, before I get paroled. The wife takes me back in, mostly for the kids I think. I don't think she ever trust me again. I will say this, I did my 8 1/2 years on parole without getting into anymore trouble. To me that is what parole is for, it's your 2nd chance, or in my case 3rd chance.

I now get a job in construction, starting out at the bottom, as a helper. There are not a lot of jobs out there for a convicted felon, with no high school diploma, and with no skills really.

I don't think cooking in restaurants qualifies as a special skill.

After doing this for a few years, I decide I don't really like being the low paid guy doing all of the hard work. I start paying attention to what is going on around me on the jobs. I see all of the crap from the supervisors who think they know everything. I decided I want to make more money, and I think I can do what they are doing, and most likely better than they can do it. I apply myself and finally get promoted to a foreman on a job. Yes it takes a few years, but I get my chance to either put up or shut up. This starts a 4-5 year run with many different companies, most times as a supervisor, but not always.

You take what you can get when you can get it. You try to make a name for yourself and do a good job, that's all anyone can do, or ask you to do.

By now it's 2002 and it's time to get my divorce. I take off on the road again looking for work. They call people like me in the construction business, "roadwhores". That's because we'll go anywhere and do almost anything for the job and for the money.

I have a few bucks put away by now, maybe 5,000 dollars. I have my tool box, my truck, and I've purchased a R.V. By now I'm mostly only taking supervisor jobs, but not always. Sometimes I leave out the part about being a convicted felon, but for the most part no one asks me.

It's kind of like the gay policy in the military, don't ask don't tell. Anyway I'm on another job, and I get noticed by some higher up people who work for a different company for doing a real good job. They ask me to apply to their company. I do and about 6 months later they call me for a job.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Politics in Americaby Chris Rice Copyright © 2010 by Chris Rice. Excerpted by permission.
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