On the first morning of the Road Trip I stopped by the Jackson County Republican Office in Medford, OR. I brought my invitational flag and told the two men inside their Main St. storefront that I was a left-leaning person who for the most part lived around only people with similar political perspective, and was looking to talk with conservative people about their political perspective. They said hello with warm, calm expressions and one of the men, who was my parents’ age, invited me to sit down at a desk with him to talk. Humble but confident in his way of speaking, he looked right into my eyes when he spoke and had an exacting memory for dates and statistics. He worked with both the Republican Party and with Freedom Works Oregon, which is a Tea Party group, and said he didn’t really like any of the major candidates in the Republican primaries. He stated that “corporate cronyism” was one of the major problems in politics right now and he saw the common ground between that position and some of the motivation for the Occupy movement. He described a number of local political situations where local people tried to come up with their own economic innovations only to be stopped by a combination of government regulation and the big businesses who give major political contributions. He noted that people of my generation and his own children have a hardship that he didn’t have which is the scarcity of jobs. His opinion is that with less government regulation American businesses could produce products at more competitive prices so that we wouldn’t be buying so much from third world companies who pollute and mistreat workers in worse ways than Americans would allow. I didn’t really dig into this argument in the conversation, but it rings in my head afterwards. In my opinion, while it may be the higher level of worker and environmental regulation in the US that makes China’s products cheaper to import, it doesn’t seem that taking away our regulations and allowing for higher worker exploitation and lower pollution standards would be a solution Americans would really want to live with.
Since many of his opinions were so close to opinions progressive people believe, I asked about why he chose to identify as conservative. In his opinion he wasn’t simply conservative or libertarian, he voted and acted according to whatever he thought would help small business people and individuals be able to take care of themselves as best as possible. For him the basic premise of that self-initiative is the rights of the individual over the rule of collective interests – because in his opinion whoever gets to decide what is in the best interests of us all becomes someone assuming they know better than he does about what is good for him.
Medford, OR
One comment
Public Feeling Booth
What feelings are we experiencing as a result of the political, economic and social conditions in which we live? What force for change is alive but hidden in the difficult feelings that we struggle with? It can be helpful to
Public Feeling Booth
What feelings are we experiencing as a result of the political, economic and social conditions in which we live? What force for change is alive but hidden in the difficult feelings that we struggle with? It can be helpful to
No Thank You Democracy
No Thank You Democracy: The politics of non participation. Public group discussion at c3: institute When we talk about American democracy we usually ignore over half the people who make up this country. We have gotten used to the seemingly
No Thank You Democracy
No Thank You Democracy: The politics of non participation. Public group discussion at c3: institute When we talk about American democracy we usually ignore over half the people who make up this country. We have gotten used to the seemingly
Fighting Words
Fighting Words: A public debate on the relationship between social practice and art institutions. During the summer of 2014 a rousing, free, public debate took place at the Portland Art Museum as part of a gathering of artists, students, educators
Fighting Words
Fighting Words: A public debate on the relationship between social practice and art institutions. During the summer of 2014 a rousing, free, public debate took place at the Portland Art Museum as part of a gathering of artists, students, educators
As we make our bed, so must we lie in it?
By presenting the U.S. Constitution as the bed we made for ourselves as a country, I invited people to consider what lying on that foundation means in both poetic and practical terms – for themselves as individuals, and for the
As we make our bed, so must we lie in it?
By presenting the U.S. Constitution as the bed we made for ourselves as a country, I invited people to consider what lying on that foundation means in both poetic and practical terms – for themselves as individuals, and for the
Working / Not Working
Through conversation I am investigating people’s different experiences of work and lack of work and how it affects their sense of self. Drawing on Studs Terkel’s book, “Working” this project revisits his approach to the role work has in our
Working / Not Working
Through conversation I am investigating people’s different experiences of work and lack of work and how it affects their sense of self. Drawing on Studs Terkel’s book, “Working” this project revisits his approach to the role work has in our
The American Society for Personally Questioning Political Questions
I spent the 2012 election year looking for conservative and libertarian people to talk with me about their political beliefs – how they felt about the United States in those days and what they considered questionable about liberal or left
The American Society for Personally Questioning Political Questions
I spent the 2012 election year looking for conservative and libertarian people to talk with me about their political beliefs – how they felt about the United States in those days and what they considered questionable about liberal or left
Conversation Station
Conversation Station is an open structure for investigating culture on a personal scale in public places. The Stations are informal sites that I set up in various locations to invite passers-by to talk with me about often uncomfortable subjects including
Conversation Station
Conversation Station is an open structure for investigating culture on a personal scale in public places. The Stations are informal sites that I set up in various locations to invite passers-by to talk with me about often uncomfortable subjects including
Pingback: Invitation | PUBLICWONDERING