My parents and their friends republicaned every night after dinner, and always had Republican during dinner. They would take us to rallies and fairs where public republicaning was as common as churchgoing!
My young friends and I discovered Republicanism when we sneaked into Father's office and found a treasure trove of fliers, pamphlets, newsletters, and one liners! We tasted the concepts, and at first thought that they were just nasty. But the more we read, the better everything tasted.
I remember feeling a little woozy at first, then as if I was on top of the world! After all, we weren't on welfare, or colored, or sneaking into the country from some third world place that couldn't run itself well enough for their people to quit coming here.
The pamphlets promised us that the best of everything was for us, first, not for those losers who couldn't make something of themselves. They made us soar and swoon with the promise of tax cuts, mission accomplished, and "Good Job, Brownie!"
Before I was sixteen, I was a full blown, blackout Republican. I spent most of my waking hours thinking thoughts that were straight from the party think tanks, and posting them on the internets. I was fired from a couple of jobs for teasing a couple of minority people about their dependency on Democrat welfare programs and affirmative action, but those weren't important jobs, anyway.
During high school, I became politically promiscous and my parents had to bail me out constantly. My Mom would threaten to sue whenever there was a teacher's conference and they threatened to suspend me for exercising my first amendment rights during discussions about Moby Dick. To me, Moby Dick was about the majority struggle to keep minorities from taking over our country and taxing us to death!
I bleached my hair blonde and became the high school darling; Prom Queen, Cheerleader and all of that. I had the teachers and the rest of the students in the palm of my hand...or my lawyer's hand.
My Dad found Summer work for me at various insurance companies and banks owned by his friends, so I had good work whenever I had time free from my rallies and poster painting to earn some money.
After paying a Chinese kid to take my SAT's for me, I started college as a hardcore Republican. My first stop wasn't the registrar's office, or to move into the dorm. I went straight to the campus Republican office, where I bellied up to the counter and they hooked me up with some others who were staying in a twenty room mansion.
We spent our college years having freaky sex and making life hell for those liberal and colored teachers, students, Black football players, and hippies!
I graduated Summa Cum Laude, thanks to my parent's friends at the University (and to their sizeable contributions to the Alumni fund).
When I left school and home to start a career, it wasn't long before I hit rock bottom and stayed there for eight years. I went through two marriages, both of them to other hard core Republican operatives. They didn't work out. We were too busy making money and proselytizing.
Then, it all became clear to me on a cool, crystal clear day in New York City. During that one day, I became committed to doing anything that my government asked of me. I became an avid producer of internet spam, while trolling for any liberal, minority, colored, hippie, treasonous, commie comment or sentiment.
I developed search techniques to dredge up any comments that questioned our President or his policies. I had hundreds of internet identities which I used in order to robo post on Google groups, open blogs, myspace, facebook, CNN, Yahoo...
Most days I couldn't remember a thing that happened the night before. I collected slogans and zingers, then wrote thousands of my own, passing them on to hundreds of my fellow hard thinking Republicans.
And hard thinking I was. Often, I'd drag myself into work hung over from an all nighter at the Huffington Post, barely able to speak in coherent sentences. On weekends, I'd Republican before breakfast, and keep it going all day and night.
Then came the biggest low of my high life. I was at a "Tea Party" in Sacramento, California, working on a video starring that plumber, when I saw a colored woman taking pictures.
She quietly snapped several photos with her homely, cheap little camera. She was very polite and friendly. I stopped what I was doing and went over to the F*&ks news van, where she was photographing the logo, and asked her why she was there.
She said "Here...take this card...there's a meeting at 3 o'clock." I took the card and read it. It had a meaningful logo and said "Republican at a tea party? Only you can help yourself." I looked up to ask her some more questions, but she had disappeared into the crowd.
The card had an address on it. There was no title or other information on the card. For the rest of the rally, I couldn't get my mind off the little lady and her quiet, calm demeanor. I must have taken that card out and read it a thousand times!
I looked around at the cowboy hats, a man with a pit bull, big hair, some bikers, a woman wearing a home made dress of red, white, and blue, and knew that I couldn't go on with it any more.
Finally, I left the Tea Party and I got into my car (I could afford to park at the expensive downtown parking) and drove to the address on the little card.
I found a tiny storefront in one of the seedier parts of Sacramento, parked and went inside. I came in and saw a sea of White, well groomed faces.
A kind man approached and said "Come on, sister, tell us about yourself. It's the first step that's always the hardest."
So here I am. My name is Debbi, and I'm a Republican.
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