Author: S. McKee

I was raised in a staunchly Democratic household with Democratic generational roots in Northern Indiana. I grew up supporting Democratic policies and candidates and looking down on Republicans as backwards and not out for the middle class. I even said many times while living in Northern Ireland that “I will not move back to the States if that country-bumpkin Bush gets elected.” I did, however, eventually move back to the US on September first 2001. I watched the horror that seized the nation ten days later and then watched helplessly as the Bush’s two terms pass. During that tenure, I watched as civil rights and liberties were diminished, an ill-fated war be waged based on faulty intelligence (against a country that had nothing to do with September 11th), torture and abduction become acceptable, national debt skyrocket while more and more money is poured into our military industrial complex, and finally a the crash of the entire financial system. The tide of fear that gripped the nation left no room for any form of decent against what was happening for fear of being labeled unpatriotic or worse yet, a terrorist. In my mind and in my conversations, I had one nice and neat place to lay the blame…BUSH and his Republican cronies.

I was filled with the “hope” and “change” that swept the Democrat Barack Obama into office and looked forward to congress being held by the Democrats as well. Things will change, they have to get better, I thought. As the dust settled and the Obama presidency got underway, I watched again helplessly as more and more Bush policies were adopted, as a healthcare bill was written by the insurance companies, as more troops die in both wars, and every effort seems to be made to compromise towards a “Republican platform” on social programs. Then one day as I was thinking about the state of our nation, I thought to myself, “What would I think if this were a Republican president?” I came to the realization that neither party has my interests at heart, neither party is willing to make the hard decisions on difficult challenges facing our country with both parties willingly perpetuating problems for political gain. No longer can I support the Democratic Party. I now believe that there is only one “hope” for our country and that is to break the two party strangle-hold that has established its permanent place of power and make our government much more transparent and working for us. We need to return to a point to where the government is the servant of its citizens and no longer its citizens being indentured servants of the government. I do not believe that can or will happen under this two party system.