coops and grizzlies

Today, I had lunch at the People's Grocery. It's a local grocery cooperative where if you pay a small fee, you're part "owner" and have a vote on how the store is run. You also get a small discount. The prices are slightly higher than at the big box store down the street, but most of the things offered are either organic or locally grown. The staff is friendly, the store is quiet, and there's always a delicious rotation of local and seasonal foods to be had (today was kale-slaw and a sandwich with locally harvested grain bread).

I walked away from it thinking that not only did I like the idea, but I didn't understand why there weren't more of those. It's in walking distance of my new house, and most of the college area nearby, and is far, far healthier than fast food. For ten bucks or so, I had a good sandwich, and apple, kale-slaw and a water. It's not three dollar Taco Bell, but it's surely not high-priced either. (Then again, ten dollars a day isn't "starving college student" prices either...but there were some cheap heat-at-hope options healthier than and similar to top ramen).

I came home and started reading my blogs and ran into yet another Palin Fox News interview. I sometimes wonder what it's like, the schedule at Fox News. I mean, who decides when she's a politician being interviewed, a celebrity guest, a news pundit or otherwise? In any case, she was talking about what makes one a "Mama Grizzly" and went on to say:

a liberal woman who understands that it's individual rights and responsibilities that can pull one up when they are exercised appropriately certainly can be a Mamma Grizzly, cause a Mamma Grizzly is all about protecting the young and we protect the young by teaching them how to work, not relying on another bear in our case, not to rely on bigger government to solve our problems and to provide solutions to everything that we face its all about individuals, it's about families, it's about communities...

I tried to square that with what I'd just experienced at the co-op. The men and women who had decided to support local, small business, and thus keep local farmers and healthier foods a viable alternative to the mass produced foods that have spread salmonella and other diseases very recently. I wondered if any of them considered themselves as being "dependant" upon the government or were looking for someone to "pull them up" and the answer was no.

The issue, as I see it, is that people like Palin continue to frame the debate in ways that simply make no sense in the context of the laws and ways that we ACTUALLY govern. The Republican Party (or, at least, the part of the Republican Party that doesn't disavow Palin and her ilk) aren't for individual rights and responsibilities, they're for corporations rights and no responsibility. When they say they're for "small government" what they mean isn't that they don't want the government to do much, it means they don't want the government to do much to corporations. They're fine when the government regulates the bedroom, and otherwise pick and choose which government actions are the intrusion of the nanny state and which are just good for business.

If Mamma Grizzlies are about individuals, families and communities, then why do those Mamma Grizzlies' political aims tend to destroy local communities at the benefit on conglomerations? Why are the against improving the school systems nutrition program to stop the massive spread of type II diabetes? Why are they against allowing gays and lesbians to HAVE families? Because they're not really for any of those things. They're using those things as a cover for what is, in reality, simply a drive to deregulate business and spread the free market ideology throughout every aspect of government without regard to ACTUAL outcomes while simultaneously trying to impose an antiquated sexual morality on a population that long since rejected it.