Tuesday, July 29, 2003
The kids ain't alright
This has been disturbing me all day, so I had to share.
It was the first night of the 55th biennial college Republican convention at the Capitol Hilton in Washington, and around 1,000 young people had gathered for three days to hear speakers like Rove, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, former U.S. Sen. Bob Barr and right-wing polemicist David Horowitz. On the Hilton's second floor they organized, plotted strategy for the 2004 election, and generally paid homage to President George W. Bush, whose grinning visage appeared on everything from T-shirts to handbags. Even more, they gloried in Americanness, a state that many seem to regard as both quasi-religious and the exclusive provenance of their party.
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Some attendees were driven by spiritual conviction that seamlessly encompassed faith in two messiahs, Jesus and Bush. For the true believers, Bush is a man of wonder-working powers. Jason Cole, a 22-year-old senior at the University of Iowa, grew enamored of Bush when he heard his earnest, simple talk of God during the 1999 presidential campaign. Cole says he has little interest in working in politics beyond the 2004 election. "I do it," he explained simply, "because I love President Bush."
If Bush and his successors remain in power for the next decade, Cole believes, we'll have a world "where leaders say what they mean and follow it up ... millions and millions will enjoy the freedoms that our forefathers fought for. Democracy will spread across the world. Iraq was a phenomenal start. In Africa, the United States is helping Liberia and giving AIDS relief. Soon, they'll be back on the economic track. People now living in squalor will experience a home-owning boom like that following World War II. Look at how Staten Island was developed ..."
The College Republican leadership echoed this pious optimism. Paul Gourley, the party's treasurer, is a chiseled, broad-shouldered 21-year-old from South Dakota. "I am religious, and my religious beliefs steer me towards this party," he says. Bush is somebody "students can identify with, somebody students can follow. His energy, his passion for America and freedom and his religious beliefs ... I think he's going to be one of history's great presidents. We're all honored to live during this presidency."
If that doesn't make you sick enough, read on. It only gets worse . . .
Ferruggia was sitting in the Capitol Hilton's lobby bar shortly after Rove's speech. There were three others with her -- another blond 19-year-old Georgetown student, Chris Sibeni, chairman of Hofstra College Republicans, and Jeffrey Chen, a recent Johns Hopkins graduate. Sibeni and Chen puffed on Fuente cigars.
"I'm a Republican because liberals make me sick," said Sibeni, spitting out the words. "I don't like whiny people and tree-huggers."
"You're a tree-hugger, but the tree you're hugging is the money tree," joked Chen, a jocular 22-year-old who plans to attend law school next year at either Boston University or Tulane.
Sibeni, who had spiky hair, glasses and a long face, is high-strung and given to rash pronouncements. He denounced assassinated civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. for "dividing the country" and trying to help African-Americans "advance over the white society," and defended American support of the brutal Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. Chen, who went to high school with Sibeni in Great Neck, Long Island, is easy-going and quick to concede Republican mistakes, mocking his friend's more outré arguments.
While Sibeni declared that Bill Clinton had been more dangerous to America than Osama bin Laden, Chen defended the ex-president's economic program. "Without him," Chen argued, "we would not have had globalization. He took a Republican idea, used it as a Democratic idea, and used it to become the most popular president of all time."
Chen seemed so mild and centrist that at one point I called him a closet Democrat. Taken aback, he replied: "How am I a closet Democrat? I'm racist, I love guns and I hate welfare."
He wasn't kidding. "I'm racist against anybody who doesn't work for a living," said Chen, whose family comes from Taiwan. "We're in Washington D.C. You can guess who that is." He's no fan of religion, but says he's less bothered about paying tax dollars to faith-based programs than to "crack whores who have eight kids because it's easier than working."
"I wish there could be racial equality," said Sibeni, who, while in high school, refused to attend Martin Luther King Day celebrations. "The number one reason there's racial inequality is because of hip-hop."
"For young black men, it glorifies something they try to live up to, and they end up dead or in jail," says Ferruggia, sipping her drink.
Before the Supreme Court's decision upholding affirmative action last month, "I couldn't admit I'm a racist," Chen said. "They admitted they're racist, so now I can too."
All four of them believe they have lost opportunities to affirmative action. "I applied to NYU and I didn't get in," says Sibeni. "My SAT scores weren't the greatest ..."
"You were just another white guy from Long Island," says Ferruggia. "The only person you can really discriminate against anymore is white men."
Ferruggia, the daughter of a pharmaceutical salesman, was valedictorian of her Southwest Florida high school. "I had the highest SAT scores in between five and 10 years" at her school, she says, and feels affirmative action cheated her out of scholarships. "I watched minority after minority after minority accept these awards ... I'm tired of people whining that I'm taking away from them."
"A lot of poor white people in the trenches of Appalachia, they don't complain, they go out and work," said Ferruggia's blond friend, who sat quietly next to her for most of the evening. "Black people have been given a lot of chances ..."
"And they always screw it up," said Sibeni.
Unbelievable. The rest of the story is at Salon.com, which means you have to get a "day pass" which requires watching an ad before they let you into the website. Kind of a pain in the ass, but it allows you access to the site without having to pay for it.
Thanks to August and his comments about this story.
posted by chris at 4:23 PM
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