It's Not Politics, It's Just Personal
There is a common idea—or maybe misconception is a better word for it—that as you age and (presumably) accumulate property and wealth, you will become more conservative. I think there is a lot to unpack about this entire notion, but I also think it makes a lot of assumptions.
This assumes that as you age and your list of assets grows, your dependence on systems and institutions that you do not control (like the federal government) will go down.
After all, what do you need from the big, scary government when you bought and paid for everything you own with wages that you brought home in spite of the government taking their cut for "transing the mice" or whatever?
Let's set aside the fact that everyone who thinks this way relies on the government every single day in more ways than they can comprehend.
What happens when your relationship with the government goes in the other direction as you age? What happens when your list of assets and wealth grows alongside your dependence on the government for the needs of your family?
Put another way, what happens when you own more property and earn more money than either (or both) of your parents ever did, but you are blessed with a beautiful and funny son with complex medical and developmental needs?
What happens when no amount of work or labor—and no tax cuts—could even scratch the surface of the tens of thousands of dollars in medical care that keeps your son above ground?
No matter what it looks like or how contentious it may be in one direction, everyone has a relationship with the government. It is impossible to be a citizen of a given country without having some kind of relationship—good or bad, dependent or otherwise—with your government.
If we assume that every relationship is a two-way street, what happens when one end of that relationship seemingly loses interest in the other? Worse yet, what happens when the larger, more well-equipped end of that relationship doesn’t just lose interest but shows outright contempt for who is on the other end?
I'm not talking about someone on the campaign trail jokingly referring to people who voted for her opponent as being deplorable. It’s easy to pretend to be upset about stuff like that, but your parents have called you worse, and we all know it.
I'm talking about the people who won the election using slurs and mocking people like you.
What happens when positions like the presidency are no longer aspirational because it’s clear to you that not only have they lost interest in you and your family, but they think you and your family are a joke—seemingly undeserving of these supports?
It stops being about money. It stops being about policy. It stops being about cakes for gay weddings and which bathroom your friends can use. There is no foreign policy, and there is no defense budget. There is no Second Amendment, and there are no trans people threatening to jump through your bedroom window and steal your tennis racket or whatever.
There is no “getting more conservative as you age” when your life is a series of collective action problems that are incompatible with the conservative ideas of individualism and self-reliance.
I wish it were about money. I spend hours every week wishing that my issues with the current administration involved something as trivial as the stock market or taxes.
I wish I didn’t have to consider what someone’s vote tells my son about how much they value his life—and how much my willingness to tolerate it tells him about me.
But that is not the relationship you have with the government when you depend on it, and nothing short of a funeral will ever change that.
This was written in a fit of rage, on my phone, after reading the Vox piece What dismantling the Education Department means for kids with disabilities