What do you know, I'm a liberal
The subject of this post comes from a thought I had this afternoon while I was sitting in the lab. Having exhausted all normal forms of tea that I usually keep here (black, green) and not wanting a coffee buzz this early in the day, I dug into my drawer to see what was left: two boxes of tea, Trader Joe's-brand Echinacea and Guayaki-brand Yerba Mate. The thought of echinacea makes me sick now (ironically enough), so I went with the latter.
As I sipped the earthy-tasting brew, I idly looked at the package. On it was a picture of three dark-skinned men dressed in khaki-colored shirts and pants sitting amidst tall trees passing a cup between them. "Sharing Guayaki Yerba Mate" read the caption. Underneath, the benefits of the tisane were splayed out, not only for health but for the environment, indigenous peoples, the cause of sustainability, and everything else Al Gore stands for. (He's running in '08, I'm telling you -- read this for more details -- and I'm voting for him when he does.)
And then I remembered that I'd ridden my bike in to work today. Yep, no fossil fuels were harmed in the process. Add alternative transportation to the list of causes I was implicitly supporting. (Side note: Do vegans use fossil fuel-powered vehicles? I've always wondered.)
Finally, I remembered the first thing that caught my eye on my web browser's start page, Google News, today: the defeat in the Senate of Democrats' efforts to pass a non-binding resolution against the troop surge in Iraq. I clicked open some of those links and ate them all up. Can we stop trying to intercede in a civil war that has been 1400 years in the making? For cryin' out loud.
And then it occurred to me, as I sipped my rain forest tea, next to my bike helmet, and cheered on the Democrats in Congress: Yep, I'm a liberal.
posted by stewchang @ 3:19 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
You're only an armchair liberal, amongst the world's most elite segment of society.
If you had lived for just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, you'd be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists back home were trying to deny those people these things.
If you had watched the critically acclaimed National Geographic documentary,
Cannibal Holocaust, maybe you wouldn't be so much in favor of those same indigenous people's would you?
Just some food for thought is all's I'm saying...
actually, i don't think that being a liberal means that you wish to deny people things like fertilizer and irrigation canals and tractors...
i think it means that you sometimes have to be wary of the implications that the 'giving' of such things brings.
"here, have a tractor...and then sell me your crop so i can tax the crap out of it and sell it to someone else for eleventy times as much as you sold it to me...and then i will become very very rich and powerful, while you manage to just get by, but not by much. but, you know, you'll have a tractor. and some fertilizer to help you grow the crops that i'm going to rape you of later."
anyway, all i really wanted to say is that the worst part of being 'a liberal' is that everyone assumes you are a democrat.
i vote for democratic candidates, but only because they are closest to my political stance.
really, i'm a socialist.
but don't tell anybody.
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