Guest Blogger: How, When, And Why I Became An Ex-Democrat

by Aggrieved American

I am the Irish-Catholic son of two Democrats.  I grew up in poverty in an all black Philadelphia neighborhood during the 1970’s and 1980’s.  I knew nothing of the differences between the Republican and Democrat parties except that the Republicans were known to bring us into wars.  In fact, I was told that the Republican candidate for President (Ronald Reagan) would certainly bring us into a NUCLEAR war if he were elected.  My paralyzing fear of being drafted and dying in a war led me to one conclusion: Republicans must be BAD!  I registered as a Democrat when I turned 18 and I voted occasionally, but I had no serious interest in politics or the political process.

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Many years later, at the end of President Clinton’s second term, I began to notice obvious differences in the candidates for President.  Al Gore came off as an empty promise maker and panderer, while George W. Bush came off as sincere, but he was arrogant too.  My adult sense of perception now picked up on this when I’d never noticed such things about politicians in the past.  By this time, I was the proprietor of a modestly successful small business and, I was a father.  Even though the Democrat candidate (Gore) lost the election, I felt no personal defeat as a registered Democrat.  The truth was that I didn’t trust him based upon hearing him speak.  I didn’t even vote in that election.  After the beginning of the war in Iraq, I became upset and I wished to see Bush and Cheney removed from the White House.  I voted against them.  Although I was deeply saddened that they won reelection, something began to make sense to me.  They actually won by a LARGE margin.  I realized that a huge number of Americans must actually agree with them and with the war.  This was a difficult thing to accept, but accept it I did.

By the time the Bush era was coming to an end, I noticed the same Gore-like hollow promise making personality coming from a new Democrat candidate, Barack Obama.  I immediately didn’t trust him just as I didn’t trust Gore, but I gave him my vote because the other choice, war-mongering McCain and his laughable VP choice was not an option for me.  I was totally disgusted with Obama’s non-stop speeches and unrealistic promises, but I felt that this was going to be a choice based upon the lesser of two evils.   I voted for Obama then, and again four years later.  But I do recall feeling some guilt when I pushed that Obama button the second time.  I didn’t even know what Mitt Romney stood for.  I had just heard some bad things about him from Democrat friends and so I made my choice ignorantly.

It seems that my party went completely berserk after that.  I found myself engaged in endless online debates with former co-workers and classmates wherein any objection to Obama’s policies, (many of which I STRONGLY disagreed with) were met with scorn, accusation and red hot vitriol. I was attacked personally.  My intelligence was insulted.  I was labeled a “racist” countless times.  All of this came in response to the simple act of disagreeing with the President’s policies.   The Trayvon Martin story seemed to induce a psychosis in many of my Democrat friends.  The craziness snowballed and seemed to grow exponentially by the day.  I noticed that many other moderate Democrats were experiencing the same phenomenon.  It became obvious that our party was becoming EXTREME in its ideologies.  Anyone who did not agree 100% with the MSNBC-style narrative was condemned, ridiculed, and criticized relentlessly. 

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The very first time I pushed the button for a Republican candidate was in the New Jersey gubernatorial election for Chris Christie’s 2^nd term.  I actually felt like a traitor while doing that, but I also felt that my party was going off the deep end and it desperately needed a smack in the face to bring it back to reality.  Then I voted all Republican again during the mid-terms in an attempt to send that same message.  I was relieved to see that so many independents and moderate Democrats did the exact same thing.  This validated what I was feeling.  It also let me know that I was not alone. 

Here we are at the end of Obama’s 2^nd term.  I am so happy to see him go, but I fear that a Hillary win will only mean 4 (or 8) more years of the same horrible Obama policies.  I will surely vote Republican this time too.  I will not call myself a “Republican.”  I do not agree with all of the Republican principles.  I will admit that I am NOT a Democrat anymore.  I simply no longer view the Democrat party with respect.  All I see from Democrats is endless, promise-making and pandering to emotional voters.  Perhaps if I had been paying more attention to politics, I would have arrived at this conclusion many years ago.  As an adult and a father I am looking forward to the future and I’m certain that the Democrat party (in its present incarnation) will only expedite our country’s self-destruction.  I do not want that for my son or my future grandchildren.

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The views, opinions and positions expressed within this guest post are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Theresa Nelson / Musings Of An Aretha Freak. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.

Book Review of "A Darkness Ascending" by Christobel Kent

This book from Christobel Kent is a part of a series of books that feature Sandro Cellini, a former cop turned private detective.  My first thoughts while delving into the book was that I probably should have read the preceding books first.  I had a hard time grasping who all of the characters were but I'm not sure if this was because the book simply moved too slow to get to the action or if reading the earlier books in the series would have sped that up for me.  There are a bunch of characters all introduced in the early chapters one on top of the other and I had a hard time connecting them to each other.

We do get a prologue that introduces Silvano Niccolo and his partner, Flavia.  It's a fairly simply prologue. Flavia is obviously putting down their newborn infant to bed.  And embedded in the chapter upon chapter of character introductions that follow, Silvano Niccolo is at a political rally or meeting of some sort and he collapses on the stage.

Then Flavia disappears and we find out she's committed suicide.  Or did she?  It's a weird plot of sorts and it is in some ways, a thriller.  Cellini is pulled into the case by Giuli, who as far as I can gather, is some type of foster daughter to Cellini.

This was a tougher mystery for me to read when I typically have no trouble getting drawn in quickly to mysteries in general.  I would not call the entire book flat but there really wasn't what I would call a "climax" here either.  It all kind of goes at one pace, and stays at one level.

I also didn't feel like I was in Italy either.  This could have taken place in the underground halls and alleyways of anywhere.  Except for the names of the characters and places which are in Italian, I didn't get any feel for any of the Italian political culture.

Overall, I would still recommend the book.  But, I would tell potential readers to start with the first book in the series as I think I would have had a better experience if I had done the same.  I gave it 4 stars because I thought it was "very good" with 3 stars being "good" and 5 stars being "excellent."  And I only subtracted a star because of the slow moving feeling.  I couldn't subtract stars for other things because it felt not fair since I hadn't read the other books that came before this one.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest review of this book.

Review of "A Courtroom Massacre" by Mark Porto

I chose this book because the story idea fit right into one of my favorite genres to read: crime/drama/mystery.

I also abandoned this book because I couldn't go on with it.  I received this book in trade for an honest review from NetGalley and like every other book I received from NetGalley, it gets an honest review as well.

The book's premise, a man's family are victims of a robbery by gang members and what takes place in Johnny Bellows' life after he shoots the gang members, sounded like a good premise for a story.  It is still a good premise for a story.

However, this particular book, because of major issues concerning use of tense, punctuation, sentence structure, a lack of flow in dialogue and a whole host of other issues made this book impossible to complete.  As a reader, if one finds themselves having to go back and mentally correct what should be an easily read sentence, it'll eventually drive you crazy and frustrate you to the point that you can't continue to follow the story.

Anybody who writes a book gets some credit for being able to even accomplish that feat. And I do have respect for anyone who writes a book.  However, if you can't do a simple proofread or read what you write out loud to hear what it sounds like to everyone else, then don't bother to go through the effort of publishing it.

After finally abandoning the book, I took to Goodreads to see how others reviewed this book.  I also checked out Amazon to see what those reviews looked like.  What I was surprised to find was the author "correcting" one of his readers.  The author was actually explaining to the reader what he supposedly read incorrectly.  I thought books were for the reader to draw their own impressions, their own conclusions and to experience the story with the gift of their imagination.  But to correct a reader and tell them they're wrong about what they've read?  Perhaps it was that I picked up on the defensiveness of the author.

Don't spend money to attempt to read this particular book.  It's a mess!