So, what'd ya think of them thar alexzuns?

By Joseph Walther

 

Last Tuesday, November 7, 2006, the Democrats became the majority party in both houses of the United States Congress. They took over the House of Representatives convincingly. In the Senate, they took control, but not by much. Political pundits and editorial writers, depending on their politics, have been on a writing frenzy expressing varying degrees of shock, enthusiasm, and indifference. If you’re sick of the stale “expert” rhetoric, read on, here is a different perspective.

 

            At the outset, I’m sick of hearing people tell us that it’s our right, privilege, and civic duty to vote. This is true but there’s an implied condition to it. If you know what you’re voting on, PLEASE vote. Otherwise, you have the right, privilege, and civic duty to stay home. PLEASE don’t vote!

 

            There was no need for me to conduct my own poll to see what the country was thinking. The legitimate pollsters had already done that. Their polls indicated that the “people” were in a nasty mood. Because they know—and strictly adhere to—the polling rules, they were, as usual, accurate.

 

            I wanted to talk to some of those who rarely appear on pollsters’ lists of people to poll. I wanted to talk to people who are representative of the lesser affluent areas in virtually every county in this country, to see how, if at all, they voted and why. I won’t name the neighborhoods because I don’t like to mix the majority good people in with the minority of the low-lifers. All you need to do is just sit back and imagine the most dangerous, endemically poor subsidized housing communities you know about, you’ll know precisely the type of places I went to.

 

            THIS is where I conducted my own, non-scientific poll. People have always told me that I have brass testicles—OK not all of them said “testicles.” The point is that I love a challenge, but more importantly, I don’t think people are idiots just because they live in subsidized housing.

 

            I selected four subsidized housing neighborhoods in my home state of Delaware: two in New Castle County, one in Kent County, and one in Sussex County. I knocked on 112 doors over four days beginning November 8^th and ending November 11^th. I landed an interview with 39 residents of which 18 lived in New Castle County, 10 lived in Kent County, and 11 lived in Sussex County. This was NOT a scientific poll. The responses do not represent the opinions of anyone but those I interviewed.

 

            While I maintained a constant sense of caution, I never felt a physically threatened. I thought how Urkel would have done this. So, I wore a $9 IZOD knit pullover shirt purchased at BJ’s Warehouse and a $14.95 pair of khaki pants—some call them Dockers, but they’re actually pants for the bigger-butted male. Essentially, I looked like a white, much older and heavier version of Steve Urkel of Family Matters fame. The only thing missing was a neck strap for my glasses. One glance and the residents took me as a traveling stand-up comedy routine in search of someplace to destroy.

 

            I’ve always been comfortable talking to people. I love to talk, one-on-one or in front of audiences. Either way, I’m comfortable. When I was but a young lad of twenty years, a mentor taught me that the size of the audience does not matter as long as the members of the audience think that you are speaking to them as individuals. She also taught me that how we say it carries more weight than what we say. By God, everything this woman taught me about people, except for accordion players, has turned out to be true.

 

            Be truthful now. Assume that you’re (fill in the racial/ethnic label) and live in subsidized housing. You hear a knock and open your front door to find a 64-year-old white, gray-haired male, dressed as described above, who greets you with an Urkelian-like, “Hi, as you can see, I’m a dorky-looking white guy, but I’d love to ask you some questions about this last election if you’ll let me.” Come on… Your sides would hurt from some deep, gut-cramp producing laughter. After a couple of snorts of oxygen to help you get your normal breathing rhythm back, we’d be like old friends.

 

            I knocked on 112 doors and I only netted 39-interviews. Many of the residents were simply not home. Others refused to talk, mostly out of fear. But, you know, those 39-interviews were great. These people had a lot on their minds and were willing to talk about things. Many of them would not win any articulation contests, but I knew what they were saying and I’m glad that I did it. Of those thirty-nine residents, 31 of them invited me inside and seven of those fixed me a cup of coffee, which I accepted.

 

            My poll does not give a clue as to how many people living in subsidized housing vote. I knew this before I started. On the other hand, I have always believed that the majority are caring and decent people, forced by external circumstances to live under such conditions. They outnumber, by far, the losers that we all get to read about daily. Most of them do not enjoy living on “welfare.” If the 39-people I spoke to are an indication, most of them vote, too. I doubt that any of these folks woke up one morning and thought, “By God, I think I’ll demean myself and my family and go on welfare.”

 

            We have to realize that our problems do not exist in a universe of certainty because they don’t. In fact, there’s no such universe. But this doesn’t stop people from acting as though there is. Until the majority of us voters come to understand that “right” answers are mostly illusionary, we can’t begin to solve anything worth solving.

 

            Our universe is uncertain and we have to live and survive within its confines whether we like or not. We have to come to grips with this and understand that the only applicable rules are possibilities and probabilities. Faulty mindsets in our universe are a constant and give birth to obvious mistakes. But we can’t correct them if the mindsets that created them remain unchanged.

 

            It isn’t the fact of the Iraqi war that helped bring down the Republicans. It was the way that George Bush’s faulty mindset compelled him to fight it. Along other lines, people who claim the moral high ground lose all of their credibility when people catch them in all sorts of illegal money-grubbing schemes or conducting themselves in sexual ways that they’ve vociferously condemned others for doing.

 

            There’s nothing wrong in occasionally throwing the bums out. But, we have to stop throwing the babies out with the bathwater. All Republicans are not bums. There are just as many bums in the Democrats’ gang. The voters threw out some decent people in this last election simply to send a message to George Bush. This kind of mindless action does nothing but reduce the voters’ mindset to about the same faulty level as the Bush Administration’s has been since 9/11.

 

            Finally, I have to tell you about the one person I interviewed who was clueless. I’m not even sure she knew what state she lived in. She ranted for over 15-minutes. She used many words but about 90% were either f#*k, f!&%ing, mother f$&ker, or c!*k s*%ker. All of her comments pertained to the Republicans. I asked her what she thought of George Bush, but she didn’t seem to know him. She also seemed to think that Iraq is in South America. So, if you’re a Republican, don’t tell her. Or, if you accidentally let it slip, run for your life. You’ll be safe in Iraq because she’ll be in South America looking for you.

 

            Stay tuned for more exciting episodes of whatever. I’ll be back next week. If I can’t find something factual to talk about, I’ll make something up.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.