Making of a Political Science Major

This year I graduate with my B.S. in political science, oddly ASU’s acronym for poli sci is POS. Get a good laugh out of it, it was carefully selected for just the joke running through your head. This is the first big accomplishment in my 36 years on this planet. I have made some not so kosher choices determined to not function within the demands of my family, or friends. I wanted to do it my way, and I have finally done so. I’m strong willed to put it mildly, breeding maybe, stubborn certainly, uncompromising in the obligation I feel to do kindness by the world without question.

So to start with the story, I should say I was abandoned by my egg donor at birth, and it has taken me 36 years to realize I was created so she would have a paycheck coming in. When my Dad left her, she no longer had a need for me. The reality is this has been a painful, life draining event, that eventually turned into one of the greatest blessings in my life. My Dad, is complicated, but he is my best friend and every day I miss having him in my life. He left when I was about 12 or 13, and he calls and sends cards and does his best to feel connected to me. Mostly I feel caught in a web of things I don’t understand and grief of all of those wonderful moments I will never have with my Dad by my side. Like all shades of grief, it never really goes away it just hides for a while until the next trigger occurs. Mine happen to be weddings, holidays, and any other day that ends in a “y”. I can’t replace him, and I can’t change the circumstances, and even if I find the answer to my question “Daddy why did you leave” I think it would only cause more pain and regret and I suspect a lot of rage on my end.

In the absence of both parents, I was raised by my Dad’s Aunt. To say we are polar opposites is probably a mild understatement. We think a like but that happens when you spend a lifetime as a pair. See she was never married, and I became her source of emotional reassurance. She tried hard with me, but I needed the one thing a person who was raised through the Depression simply did not know, and that was affection and emotional support. She’s not good with emotions, and as you can see in my beginnings a little love and support would have been very necessary to over come the troubles of parents leaving. She did a great job with me, as far as teaching me the right things to do, emotions I had to find on my own, and let me just say I am still a hot mess but I am making it happen.

All of this creates a perfect storm in me, the absence of love from a mother my whole life, the absence of the one person who I felt was a constant and loved me in my troubled times, and a woman who gave me all she had, but the one thing I needed most. I became driven to change the world, to change the presence of love in it. I wanted to show the world love was the answer. A bit perplexing this would be my path, since at the end of the day I really have no idea what it means to be loved. However, I do have a very clear understand of what it means to be told and reaffirmed by everyone you are worthless, you have no value, meaning or validity in this world.

We will go back to my Dad for a moment, my Dad as I mentioned was my best friend, he showed me the world. He taught me I had a responsibility to look at my blessings and make sure the world did not go without. He lived in L.A. in the late 80's and early 90’s, I remember the tension in L.A. It became obvious the color of my skin made people uncomfortable, righteously so I suspect, in a community that spent most of it’s time at odds, having it constantly reaffirmed it was worthless of existence. You can see where I might identify with that. My Dad is the most important facilitator in my existence, because he put love in my life, and then all of a sudden it was gone. I experienced what it meant to be valued, and all of a sudden it was gone, and I was stuck in a life where my consent to actions of those around me was silenced by their own perceptions.

My relationship with my Dad is a bit ironic, he taught me to never stop asking questions, to always pursue what is kind and true, even in the presence of conflict. He taught me in the effort to achieve this, politics was the key. I had to know the system to change the system. So I feel in love with politics. Well maybe not politics, but Government, because politics is simply the acquisition of power between conflicting ideologies. Problem is it is smothered in rhetoric, and nonsense. It’s kind of like how Johnny Cochran convinced a jury of O.J.s peers “if the glove don’t fit, you must acquit”, however no one ever mentioned the fact blood is largely water. The equation is simple leather + blood + heat (since I do not think the L.A. County evidence room is kept in the realm of climate control). There is a reason most politicians are lawyers, and I want to deal with what is true.

I suspect the phrase “the devil’s in the details” is more about when we look too closely at the details of each other’s pain, we lose sight of the fact we all suffer at the hands of someone else at some point. No, we do not all have to suffer the life ending tragedy of the Black Lives Matter movement, but we should be willing to put an end to it because one day we will all find ourselves helpless to the majority.