Dustin said to me yesterday, "The older you get, the more conservative you're getting." I live in probably the most liberal town in the Midwest and it's scary to think that he might be right.
I learned recently about an apartment complex that's opening up in Bloomington that would house the homeless with absolutely no responsibility on their part. Basically, they can drink and do drugs all they want and their rent and utilities will be paid for; the only thing that qualifies them is that they have to be "chronically homeless" which means they would have to have been homeless for a year or more or have had 4 episodes of homelessness in the past 3 years. Oh and they won't force them to go to treatment or anything so yeah. Maybe before I would've thought, "Oh that's nice. It'll get them off the street and perhaps it'll inspire them to better themselves." Now, all I can do is silently scream in frustration because I know that those assholes can better themselves in high barrier shelters like ours but they're just too damn lazy. I've seen it for Christ's sake! All this is gonna do is use taxpayer money to house lowlifes. This makes me want to bash my head against a wall.
Does this make me more conservative than I was? Yeah probably. However, the change in my way of thinking wasn't brought on by traditional conservative means. I'm not getting all up in arms because I feel like this is communist/socialist/whatever but it's more because I have worked with these types of people for a while now and gotten to know the different types.
I mean, when you think "homeless" do you see the guy panhandling on the street alongside the guy who works 40 hours a week? No, of course not, and I didn't either before this. However, we had a resident who worked 40 hour weeks and still couldn't afford to live on his own because his bitch of an ex-wife was sucking every last penny for child support and probably alimony. Should he pay child support? Hell yeah, he should! But is that really fair? I mean, yeah he could work two jobs to get an apartment. People do it all the time. Then he'd never actually see the kids he's paying all this money to support. That's not okay.
I've gotten way off topic here. I still identify as a liberal but I've obviously got some conservative-y thoughts permeating my brain and is that really all that terrible? I've always kind of been on the fence. When I vote, I vote Republican and Democrat. Maybe that's because I was raised in a split household.
This makes me wonder how Lily will turn out...
