The Republicanskis and The Democratskis

Back when Ronald Reagan was president, I was working for a company in downtown Birmingham that had a coop program. For those of you that don’t know about cooping, it is where a student, throughout his or her college career, alternates between classes one term and working for a company the next term. When I was going to Auburn, I thought cooping was a great idea. There were only two objections. My father, who along with my mother was paying for my education, said that it would prevent me from working for him during the summers and he did not think that the cooping would be worth as much money as I could bring in at Miller’s Garage. The other objection was from the Coosa County draft board who said that if I choose to coop, I would have to use their plan, which was one term in Vietnam, followed by another term in Vietnam until my tour of duty was finished. Needless to say I did not enter Auburn’s or the draft board’s coop program.

Anyway, as I said before, the company where I worked in the mid 80’s had a strong coop program. One summer term, we had a female coop from UAB and a male student engineer from Mississippi State. Student engineer was what they called summer temporary employees that happened to be engineering students. This particular student engineer had been in the coop program but his work terms had been completed and he still lacked enough credits to graduate. He was a good worker so some manager recommended that he be hired as a student engineer for the summer. Both of these employees ended up working in the department with me. Prior to that time, I had directed the work activities of our coops and student engineers, but my responsibilities had changed and they were reporting to someone else. For some reason, maybe because of my prior dealing with coops, these two students took a liking to me. We would go on break together and I would offer up my ‘sage’ wisdom. Everything went along pretty well until one day they got on to the subject of the Soviet Union and centralized government. I don’t remember exactly what was going on at the time, but something had whipped these two into a patriotic furor. They were ranting on the wrongs of the evil empire. When they finished, I agreed with them that it was just as bad as they said, but unfortunately, our political situation in this country wasn’t much better. In fact, I said, about the biggest difference I could see was that in the Soviet Union, the communist party picked a few of its members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. In this country, the republicans and the democrats, picked a few of their members, put them on the ballot, everyone had to vote for them, and they ran the country. I added that if the communists were to divide their party into the republicanskis and the democratskis, our systems would be nearly identical.

My observations brought some strong objections from the summer student and the coop. They gave me a pretty good verbal dressing down and left the table almost immediately. If I recall correctly, they never went on break with me again. That was 20 plus year ago. I still think of this when someone starts talking about national politics. I am more convinced now that I was then that what I said was correct. I wonder how those two young people feel about it now?