Confessions of a (Not So) Liberal

It's too much work to be a liberal in the 21st century. Back in the day, one only needed to get firehosed for the occasional pesky [insert pet civil rights cause here.] But now, if your finger's not cramped up from clicking "accept" for all your Facebook event invitations to antiwar protests, anti-police violence candlelight vigils, stop global warming fundraisers, save the children of Zimbabwe campaigns, save the wolves/polar bears/meerkats (of Zimbabwe) film festivals, all of which take place during your work hours, then you're clearly a stone-hearted right wing jackboot. The addition of a black president isn't helping matters, either, especially if you didn't quit your job and default on your student loans so you could move to Iowa and pitch a tent inside an Obama campaign office.

Personally, I'm wrung out from the paroxysms of guilt I suffer whenever I delete a MoveOn.org or ColorOfChange.org email without reading it. (And no, clicking on every petition in every email they send you isn't enough to qualify you as a proper liberal.) I'm thinking I might need to move to a state where they tend to follow a don't ask, don't tell policy regarding political philosophies. After all, the amount of work it requires to live authentically as a liberal varies from location to location. In Dallas, for instance, all that's necessary to be considered a liberal is going out of your way to find a recycling bin for that bottle of Ethos water you got from Starbucks. Here in San Francisco it's about, like, six-thousand times harder than that. This is a place where Democrat is the new Republican—it's Green Party or bust, baby. Sure people might let you slide if you display the proper bumper stickers on your Prius, but if you slap that "Free Leonard Peltier" puppy on there you damned well better know who he is or consider your membership card revoked. I, for one, do not know who he is and have not twitched a pinky to find out. Nor do I drive a Prius, wear hemp instead of leather or starve if I can't find organic, vegetarian-fed, free-range, sustainably farmed, humanely slaughtered cow. (Although, I suppose I deserve to starve since meat is murder.) To top it all off, I also happen to think you ought to learn English if you move to this country and I root for the United States during the Olympics—winter and summer.

*phew* It feels good to get that off my chest, even though it's over for me now. The PC Police will be busting down my door any moment, but at least I go to my fate with a soul unburdened. I mean, I tried to be the best liberal I could be, ya' know? I went about $80,000 in debt to attend an all-girls, er, womyns private college and took a class called Third World Industrialization and Globalization. The prof managed to convince me that the WTO is bad. Doesn't that count for something? Shit! I know I'm going to get a pissy comment about taking a class with a privileged fascist term like "Third World" in the title...

Hmmm, Third World...poor...colored...Wait a damn minute. Being African American, I don't have to work that hard to prove my liberal mettle. I get a pass, because my people have been oppressed since we ran aground on this motherfucker! Hell, I'm female and queer, too! Every breath I take is a statement for liberal politics. Screw it, I'm gonna bypass all that heavy lifting. From now on, I'm just a broke, lazy black girl livin' in the ghetto—drinkin' my 40s and eatin' my beakless fried chicken from KFC—content to let the white liberal intelligentsia from Pacific Heights proxy for me at the protests then come through the BVHP and enlighten me about how oppressed I am.