I used wikipedia a lot for this post, to back up my assertions and rationale. More will come later, bear with me. This contains some of the history of my family, and it's origins.
I was born into a
middle income(it's not "class", becuase you are not stuck in a class system in this country, you have only income and
income/social mobility) family in 1980, under the
Jimmy Carter administration, sadly not born while the most high and exhalted
Ronaldus Magnus was president. :P J/K Folkel. During the 1990's my family transitioned to an upper-middle income family, when filing jointly, and remains so to this day. (
See this for Class in contemporary America) Both my parents never graduated college, with four or two year degrees, the one who has come closest is Joanne, an AA degree. Growing up in
California, through the 1980's was perhaps one of the best things that ever happened to me, and later
Wisconsin, which molded me into who I am now. I am very lucky to have, and will be ever-humble towards, my parents who, have sacrificed so much of their own lively hood for me, and are the epitome of the eternal hard working Americans that make this country such a wonderful place to live. They both are
liberal, but more along the lines of the
New liberals. I for one agree with most of classical liberal ideology, though I never agreed with my family on that many issues, I accepted my family's leanings. I however was much more
conservative than my family and friends, from my early years.
My dad Vincent Marean came from a small family in
Hubbardston/
Gardner, MA. His sister Janice Marean and his brother George Marean Jr. They lived in pretty squalorous conditions compared to our relatively care free existence now. They did have running water/electricity/refridgeration/radio but lacked a bathtub or shower. Thankfully they lived next to my Great Aunt Ethel Taylor, who had a gem of a house in Gardner, MA, where they were able to bathe and take care of business.
My dad's family situation was less than ideal, his father George Marean Sr. was an assembly worker during the war buidling
Sherman tanks to fight the
NAZIs, because he was too old to serve. After the war he had trouble finding/keeping work, and my dad's family split. Louis Marean was my grandmother, another epitome of the Hard working American. The whole of my dad's side of the family is/was liberal, except maybe Louis, I didn't know her well enough.
My mom, Joanne Marean however, was born into a large farm family Wisconsin. Thanks to
Franklin Delano Roosevelt's programs like
rural electrification, they had running water and electricity. My mom had 13 other brothers and sisters. They managed a meager but respectable life as farmers in the area while my mom was growing up. The kids were born between early 1930's to the early 1960's. My mom is essentially the middle child. Not really much of a back story here though, not much drama like my dad's family, so I will move on. They are almost all liberals too.
I contribute the almost the whole of my conservatism to my parents being from a different generation than the parents of children my age. See my parents are a mix, my dad is part of the
Silent Generation while my mom was a
Baby Boomer. My dad was born in 1941, and my mom in 1947. While the majority of my friends parents were born in the late 1950's to the early 1960's. A time when my dad was just having his first children. My sister Michelle Marean was born in 1962, my sis Andrea Marean in 1964, and Charolette Marean in 1966. All my siblings are liberals.
My dad and mom both were in the
U.S. Airforce, for my dad, he enlisted after leaving the
University of Michigan Ann Arbor, where he persued his
Chemical Engineering degree; my mom enlisted after highschool becuase she wanted to see the world. My dad, was stationed at
Travis Air Force Base, he became a navaid/radio systems tech on many of the jet fighters(
F-106 Delta Dart and the
F-100 Super Sabre) used in the time period from 1960-1966 right before and during the
Vietnam War, I prefer to say South East Asia because it was a regional conflict, to say it wasn't is just to blatenly ignore history. My mom was went into the service in 1966 and worked in
Germany, one of the bases outside the Soviet controlled perimeter. There she met her first husband and had my Brother Eric Davis, 1969, and was summarily honorably discharged due to her pregnancy, something that was actually illegal at the time. Eric also is liberal.
My parents however not agreeing with the war in South East Asia, did not support the
protesting elements that were demostrating against the war effort. My dad lived in the
San Francisco Bay Area from 1960-1977, where he met my mom. My mom moved to the Bay Area in 1970 or 71. They met in the same apartment building where they both lived, I think in
San Jose, CA. They married in 1977 and moved to Santa Rosa, CA in 1979. I was born in 1980 in
Santa Rosa, CA. After his service my dad worked with
AT&T in the bay area on the phone systems, though I don't know exactly what he did with them, I guess just installation and maintenace. After his first divorce, Vince held the a second line manager within what was at the time AT&T. After learving managment Vince became very active in his local union, the
Communication Workers of America, CWA, and became, I think regional union Vice President, I cannot remember when. After braving the politics of running for union president and losing, Vince gave up his post as a union offical, and returned to work as a phone operations tech.
Joanne during this time worked for a series of banks before landing a job with the
U.S. Social Security Aministration, which launched her career into U.S. governmental agencies.
I was raised in Santa Rosa until I was four years old. I still remember how nice Santa Rosa was, a beautiful area within the
Sonoma Valley. I was able to pick berries from bushes on our street. The neighbor hood was afluent/middle to uppermiddle class. We had culture in our area too. A neighbor of ours was of
Iranian Nationality, who's family immigrated here to, I believe flee the hostile take over of
Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's government. He owned/owns a series of Gas Stations throughout the Santa Rosa area. He was a great man, and a U.S. patriot. I used to play video games at his house, which was just beautiful, he would always joke how I would make a great pilot for
Ayatolla Seyyed Ruhollah Khomeini. Which I obviously didn't understand then. I was raised also by my parents best family friends, Mike and Fern Wilson, who ran a day-care center out of their Santa Rosa home, their son Mark Wilson became my best early childhood friend.
In 1984, my dad took a position as a Radio repairman with what was then
Pacific Bell Corporation, one of the many "Baby Bells" to break off of AT&T, in
Salinas, CA. My mom found a job with the
BLM in
Hollister, CA; where we lived. I started school in Hollister in 1985 at Sunny Slope, elementary for K-3 education. Then in 1989 attended R.O. Harding Elementary School for G4-6. From there I attended Rancho San Justo Junior High School for G7-8. Next, I attended San Benito County High School for ninth grade, before moving to
Port Washington, WI. There I attended grades 10-12, graduating with honors in my class, and being the only male, senior member of my grade's National Honors Society group.
Port Washington, WI itself affected my world view and politics better than anything else could have. There was a diverse group of people holding strikingly different opinions. I listened to, and did extracirricular activities with the liberals, but hung with and conversed with the consevatives. Port Washington was a racially insulated town, which had little to no ethic diversity. We had the sereotypical "gay"/feminine guy, that my brother thought was like something right out of Hollywood. We had the tolken black person, my fellow "Brown Noser" award winner. We had our "Hicks", Jocks, Geeks/dweebs, cheerleaders, band geeks, thespians, greasers, satanists, and in the lower classes, wiggers, and politicos. Oh yeah at the group I fit into the Nerdy/Jock/Thespian/Politico. I was kind of an amalgamation of four distinct groups and had friends in each. There was what seemed like a riggid social structure within the school, which I crusaded to break the bonds of by belonging to many different groups. But of course, when everyone gets to their senior year all that stuff goes out the window, and people start faking that they will miss you and remember you. What malarky! I have yet to have one person from my class contact me since college, besides Goggins. Oh yeah, and my Brown Nose compatriot, but that doesn't count cause she was just using me to get to a guy I knew in college. Everyone else was just fake and did not. care. But who can blame them, I didn't make that many solid friends in highschool cuase I was constantly messing with people's heads, those people who I didn't like I should say. I will get into that later.
What Port really did for me was show me that conservative policies work. The town was highly conservative, except for most of the Education Board, and some of the teachers. But, it was a great place, where low property taxes abounded, they were protectionist of their heritage and land, and were not willing to sell their community out to commercial interests, which isn't so conservative. But, they didn't want large corporate entities to destroy small business in the city. The city was reluctant to give much extra money to the school, insisting on it working with what they had, and making the school much more efficient. The community was very religous, with the major demnoinations being Catholic and then Lutherans, and the churches taught conservatively too.
This is enough for right now. I made progress in explaining to you that my whole family is liberal, and that my conservatism may have been at first a way of rebellion against my family. But it's not like that anymore, I dont' rebel against anything anymore, accept hippies. Everything else is not worth my time, I will work within the system to change it, not rebel against the system. I also made progress in telling you where I got some of my verification for being a conservative, through policy working itself in Port. Later, in a future post, I will mention my formative college years, where I defined myself as a conservative and what I stood for, and what i rejected.
More posts to come....soon....not this one a week B.S. PEACE OUT!
