I recently learned of a distant relative who led a somewhat checkered life, often in trouble with the law, taking advantage of relatives by bleeding them for money, always with a promise to pay them back but never doing it. A deadbeat who was always scamming people and never paying his bills, he was lazy and irresponsible. He bounced from job to job, married and divorced at least twice he fathered a number of children. A drain on society and government social systems, he has caused pain and suffering to his family and those whose paths he crossed. Having served jail time himself, I learned that he has one son who has been in prison and another who is now in prison and will be there "for a long, long time", I have no idea what for. I don't know about his other four children but one can only imagine. It is well known that there is a cycle of anti-social behavior that is spawned and spreads from one generation to another, the offspring of succeeding generations locked in a cycle that repeats and worsens as it is concentrated by other participants who add their own anti-social genetic makeup to the web.
This man I refer to above apparently hates blacks, Mexicans and essentially all foreigners, and is now is growing old, claims to have a fatal disease, is poor and without friends and blames others for his misery. He considers himself a patriotic American and supports George W Bush.
There are other irresponsible people I know of who have their stories. They are all equally bigoted and quick to blame others for their troubles. Most have a history of financial problems, wildly spending themselves into debt, addicted to instant gratification, they always have someone they blame for their predicament. Some have fallen victim to drugs, some the illegal kind and some the legally prescribed kind that they lean on and pass around to each other like candy.
Some of these are quick to declare themselves victims of one disease or another and keep switching doctors until they find one willing to treat them for whatever disease they can imagine the symptoms for and claim they obviously have. To these people they believe there must be pills available that will correct all their problems and make their lives happy and fulfilling if the doctors will only prescribe them and they take enough of them. They never consider it might be personal choices causing their problems. They don't seem to understand the concept of taking responsiblity for their actions.
When confronted with their irresponsible and sometimes criminal behavior they claim they couldn't help themselves, that they are bi-polar (the designer term for yesterday's manic depressive) or some other psychological illness as an excuse they think should let them off the hook for anti-social or illegal behavior - which is the equivalent to the catch-all absolvent, "the devil made me do it".
They are quick to ask for pills and are always looking for an outside fix to an internal problem. They are also quick to blame others for their behavior as if they have no control over themselves.
Many of these people are also severely overweight from gorging themselves on unhealthy food and driving up the likelihood of health problems at an early age. Some rely heavily on alcohol getting drunk every evening or binge drinking every other day or so. Not all, but a lot of these people are also heavy smokers.
I had a gay cousin who drank a six pack of beer every afternoon/evening before going to bed half drunk. Also a heavy smoker (two packs a day), after years of this behavior he apparently couldn't understand why he developed severe health problems and became miserably ill and debilitated. After suffering escalating health problems for two or three years he died at age 66, angry, depressed, feeling cheated and resentful of others who had so far escaped his fate.
Although I am a liberal progressive and was one of his few close friends who accepted him and loved him, he was unexplainably a big George Bush supporter. He was gay, was not wealthy, relied solely on Social Security and Medicare, and did not benefit in anyway from his support of Bush - yet he apparently held nothing but disdain for all other liberal Democrats - except for me and my wife. Go figure that one!
I'm not sure how to explain this but in almost every case, the people I refer to above as examples represent real people I know of and, as in the case of my cousin, are people who are avid supporters of George Bush and the Republican Party.
Yes, these same people, who all have low income and lean on social programs like Medicare and Medicaid for their healthcare and their drugs, are big Bush supporters. Bush, who proposes to end these programs or limit their effectiveness.
These people who typically have nothing but social security income for support when they can no longer work, throw their support to the man and the political party who would do away with the Social Security program because it's an unfair burden on the wealthy.
These same people who so frequently relied on the bankruptcy court to erase their reckless and irresponsible debt, worship and give their loyal support to the man and the party who changed the law to make it nearly impossible to file bankruptcy no matter what the cause.
And those like my cousin who are gay yet give their allegiance and respect to a president and a party who denounce gays as a threat to society, as sexual perverts, and who want to limit their participation in our society and refuse them equal rights under the law. That confounds me.
These are all apparently proud Americans who are so confused they are siding with and supporting the very people who hold them in disdain, who are denouncing them, limiting their rights and have targeted them for oppression.
No wonder other cultures refer to us as "those crazy Americans."
