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I’ve mentioned before that I used to be a die-hard liberal. And these images of soviet communism and Che Guevara from the cover pic are actually my belt buckles that I used to wear while I was in college. I even had t-shirts with the same logos. With the rise of Antifa in the news, we’ve seen these same images being waved around on flags and on apparel as a symbol of rebellion. So I feel a personal responsibility to speak against it. With a little luck, I might even get one or two leftists to #walkaway from their ideology like I did. But to any leftists who may be reading this, just keep in mind, I will shake up your beliefs, but I am not trying to disadvantage anyone.

I grew up in liberal NJ. And all I had ever known was the rhetoric that the Democrats preached to us day in and day out. Despite them supposedly having my best interest in mind, I still felt the need for “change” when Obama ran for office in 2008. And like most of my other college friends, I voted for him. It was the cool thing to do. I didn’t know anyone who voted differently. Nor did I know of any reason not to. I thought that the world was unjust, and that the signatures of American culture were to blame. Such as capitalism and anything considered traditional. I had no idea how the economy worked and how much freedom we are given in this country. Mostly, I didn’t know how much of my own anger was being created by the failed Democrat policies which were actually working against me…

It took me a while to learn this lesson, and I had to learn it the hard way. By entering the working world and seeing what my money was actually getting me and how many rights I had. For this reason, I don’t understand how any adults can be liberal in blue states (unless of course they are rich and out of touch). It took no time at all for me to realize that the cost of living in liberal states (like NJ) is so outrageous that an average household needs at least $52,000/year (for a 2 adult, 1 child household) in order to meet the standard of living and be able to afford BASIC essentials. And I also found myself to be a fool for listening to the liberal indoctrination which told me that I needed to be college educated in order to be successful. My degree in psychology actually left me unemployed for 2 years and drowning in debt. This wasn’t uncommon either, as I graduated in 2009 right after the recent economic crash which left many young people unemployed. And as I got older, the facts just kept piling up against my liberal beliefs. I found that on top of this incredibly high cost of living, the schools and other services that take up the most tax dollars are actually the WORST performing in the state! (I wrote a whole blog that lists the cost per student for some of our towns in NJ).

But as I said, these Democrat politicians that run the towns keep getting elected because they tell the people what they want to hear (lies). They promise to use more money to make the towns better, but of course they neglect to mention where the money will come from or exactly what the money will go toward. For the schools in these poor city areas, the money doesn’t even go toward teachers or better curriculum. It goes toward metal detectors, security, and afterschool activities to keep the kids away from the street gangs while the parents work multiple jobs, just to keep up with the high cost of living caused by these public services. Meanwhile our private schools are nearly half the cost and have better academic standards. Yet we cannot afford them because all of our money goes to the taxes provided to the public schools and other government services. I haven’t even begun to touch upon other topics like the massive cost of road repairs in NJ (about $2 million per mile!) which obviously isn’t all going into the roads. The government keeps finding reasons to increase our taxes while the roads in my area are still horrible. Or the fact that we have the highest paid police officers in the country, but we still have some of the most violent gangs in our inner cities. The irony there is that the officers with the highest salaries are actually NOT the officers in these dangerous cities… But yet these politicians still claim that our states are the best states for minorities and for the poor.

I myself am Hispanic, I’m a college educated millennial, I’m actually below the middle class, my parents were the first in my family to immigrate to this country… If I’m living in such a liberal safe-haven, then shouldn’t I be well taken care of in this state, according to Democrats? Shouldn’t I have every opportunity handed to me? The sad truth is it’s all a lie. Because of all the promises that our local politicians keep making, they have taken away our ability to provide for ourselves, and even our ability to afford basic living costs. This is the very root cause of why we cannot afford our own health insurance or our own private schooling. This is the reason why we have the highest number of career fields that are state-controlled and require state licenses. This is why we have such ridiculous laws like mandatory court appearance for yard sale signs that aren’t on your own property, mandatory registration and fees for having home security systems, laws against selling home baked goods, and self defense laws that are stacked in favor of the attacker. Does any of this actually help the people? NO! All these laws do is restrict our opportunities to make a dollar or to protect what is ours.

And what do states like NY, NJ, CA, MD, and others have in common? Highest taxes, highest costs of living, most working restrictions, highest number of murders in our cities… And historic Democrat control. No matter how you look at it, any logical person will have to face the truth that these factors are all correlated. And with every Democrat vote, we give up a little more of our rights in hopes that the government will MAYBE provide an adequate service to us. When will we stop the cycle?

I hope that I have made sense to someone out there who is currently on the leftist side. I want my readers to understand that I do not want to see this country fail. I want to see this country become the land of opportunity that it once was. When I think of the phrase “make America great again”, I think of the time when my parents came to this country. My father (as a legal immigrant) was able to support a family by just working in a factory. My mother (who was also a legal immigrant) didn’t need college in order to get a decent paying job. They actually had the choice to raise me in a single-earner household. And businesses like my parents’ companies had the freedom to send their employees to college. And buying a home was not just a dream, but a possibility. But the truth is, these liberal states which have been held by Democrats for generations, have become the most expensive, restrictive, and dangerous states to live in. I myself am a minority who was let down by the Democrat party and I struggle to get by in a state that supposedly has my “best interests” in mind. Young people are fleeing the blue states in large numbers. And the worst part about that is that these young people are often clueless as to what made their states so intolerable. So they are about to infect the perfectly sustainable red states with their bad voting policies.

Make no mistake, I am still a rebel. I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I do my own thing. And I am still fighting for a better America. But I have woken up to the truth of how to get there. I hope that more people will join me in breaking away from the cycle we’re in.

-Pemmin-

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