The more I hear from the Republican presidential candidates, the more it seems they’re all about taking what we have away from us. They want to take away our rights to abortion and birth control, the minimum wage, social security, Medicare, health care in general, food safety regulations, consumer protections, the EPA — the list goes on. They’d give tax cuts mostly to businesses and people who don’t actually need them, but I never hear them talk about what they plan to do for, rather than to, the rest of us.
As the conservatives become more powerful and extreme, I feel like flying away, to retreat into my corner of California and live a good life in this state and community where, at least so far, their destructive policies haven’t penetrated. I can grow vegetables and fruit, buy as much as I can locally, spend less, treat other people with decency and respect, and help create a culture apart from, and better than, what the right would impose on us. The Republican pundits seem to believe that capability and self-sufficiency are attributes only of the conservative base, the blue-collar white men of the so-called heartland. How little they know!
Yesterday I started a bunch of seeds — peppers, eggplant, bunching onions, and lots of tomatoes, 33 sets in all. Not much, but not bad for a woman with a full-time job and too little sunny garden space.