Damn Commies

I like to call things "effing hipsters." It's a great way to be jokingly accusatory. The only thing I like more than that is calling people or things communist. Anytime somebody disagrees with me or doesn't go to a party I'm at, they're immediately part of the Red Guard. It's obviously for comedic effect, and I beat the shtick over the head. I take much pleasure in being a faux-McCarthyist, and I'll find a way to link someone to communism through circular and irrational logic.

That being said, this communism talk has me feeling nostalgic. At one point in life I considered myself a communist and/or socialist. Hell, I am the proud owner of not one, not two, but THREE Che Guevara tee shirts. I still wear them sparingly, as he was a great anti-imperialist and Latin American thinker, but not with the same zeal I once did. I truly believed an entire of people could work together in an ideal state where the right to starve was eradicated. However, my switch to free market ideals was tied in with my cynicism about humanity. Upon seeing the failures of communism across the world and feeling less inspired by people's attitudes, I formed the notion that capitalism was the most perfect imperfection for an economy. (I'm sure it wasn't a year spent in business school that convinced me otherwise. Positive.)

I am actually a registered member of the Socialist Party. I may be a proponent of the free market, but I still thought Mr. Obama was the man for the job. Now, this would normally just be a political belief and nothing more. However, when you go to Catholic school is South Louisiana Obama becomes the black harbinger of Muslim abortion clinics on every collectivized farm. All I heard at my school, from authority figures and students alike, was their ardent support of McCain and how Obama was an idiot socialist. I could not vote in the presidential election, but there was a table to register to vote at the end of the year. With the same accusations swirling in my head as I signed up, I happily told the nice old lady (who'd said she was pro-McCain pre-election) that I wanted to register with the Communist Party. Taken aback a bit, she said, "Louisiana doesn't recognize the Communist Party." She offered me solace, though, in the Socialist Party. Thus, I signed up with them to laugh at the zealous right-wingers at school, using irony to make a statement about society defining someone by their politics. Wait, that sounds like something done by a...no, I can't be! DAMMIT!