Partisan Preconceptions

A current client of mine (I'm listing and selling his home for him) is an aging football coach. He seems to have basic intelligence and he has, through some inheritance and probably a portion of dumb luck - plus a reasonable degree of business common sense - managed to amass a small net worth that makes him feel as though he is in the 1% category. In other words, a standard Republican.

While tossing out huge generalities about this or that item he has to be concerned about due to his tax bracket, he also got in his jabs at the Affordable Care Act. Naturally (for a Republican) that involved spitting out the derisive nickname, "Obamacare" in the process of his trying to say how disgusted he is by the whole thing. The fact that he is (as am I) enjoying the benefits of the governmental single-payer healthcare plan known as Medicare, doesn't make him less opinionated or less disrespectful toward a hard-won plan that covers more Americans who otherwise couldn't afford healthcare. To the contrary; older Republicans are the worst. They can not even remember a time when they were more democratic, more fair and compassionate in nature. Now that they "have it," they don't give a damn about those who don't.

This self-satisfied old Republican who is the fine looking speciman he should be for a man who has spent his life in sports, has the temerity to slur the ACA which does not affect his life at all, and the point seemed to be nothing more than a chance to slur the President. He opined to me, "What a mental midget!" Interesting.

One would think that even a coach is nonetheless a person in the field of education and may actually care about such simple matters as the ability to think and to speak. One might think that any educated person may have some ability to recognize others who are obviously advanced in intelligence and ability to govern.

Can you recall a time when the most recent former president, that person to whom I refer as our national embarrassment, ever sat for an hour with a commentator/questioner in an auditorium filled with university students and invited open discussion of any and all types concerning his policies or practices? No, probably not. I can not recall such a thing happening from 2001 to 2009. And cannot imagine such a scene! Sure, I confess to not seeking out such events due to my difficulty in listening to someone who sounded so ignorant as to jar my senses; still, I doubt he would have subjected himself to such a test. Surely his handlers shied away from putting him in positions where his ignorance glared.

President Obama said in his interview with Chris Matthews that after five years in the presidency, he felt humbled. He said one would have to feel more humble rather than cocky in such a roll. I said aloud, "He never listened to Bush!"

But I suppose that the bantam rooster of an excuse for a leader used what tools he possessed. Lacking actual intelligence and presidential skills, he fell back on bravado and privilige. Too bad that Republicans - old and young alike - could not see him for what he was (and was not) and much worse that they today cannot see that what we now have is a true leader with skills to rescue our nation from the horrors of eight years of degradation. They apparently can't even see the gradual growth in our economy and improvement of our current state. All they can see is that our capable President is not a "Conservative" so therefore is the enemy. (Oh, yeah - he is also not white!) Why not attack his intelligence? Republicans don't recognize intelligence for what it is, having seen so little of it in their own party.

Unbelievable! Since conservatives are completely dedicated to wealth and there is more of that around today than ever (for them!) thanks to the crock-market, one would think they would be so appreciative.