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Yeah... my dad was always a gung ho "fiscal conservative"/voted for our regional conservatives just to get our region's interests represented federally, because the "left" party are popular in the other side of the country and our own representatives would just follow the party line, according to him, but now... he's still an old school fiscal conservative, but admits our conservatives and the US conservatives they crib from aren't that anymore and their social conservatism is dangerous and damaging and they aren't even truly fiscally responsible, they just cut social programs to give their rich friends tax breaks and juicy government contracts. Truly the most impressive political 180 I've ever witnessed in real time in front of me.

My mum was never a leftist in any meaningful way... but she's never really been right of center, either. She's into fiscal conservatism/responsibility, but she'd never support someone who'd take her children's rights away, no matter how much money they promise to save Joe Q. Public. She dislikes conservatives because they waste public resources, and spend a dollar to save a penny with "efficiency" shit and means testing and aggressive fraud investigating of public assistance programs... and because they screw over children and their caregivers, and raid the public education budgets for money to reallocate to their rich friends' tax cuts. See, she was never very politically aware or engaged when I was young, but then she got a job as support staff in a school, when us kids were both teenagers and she felt that she had the time and spoons to go back to work for something fulfiling to do, and she's always been one hell of a Mama Bear archetype, and the opposite of a cuckoo bird, so she found not just a job to spend her time at, but a political cause that truly got her fired up - the lives of the nation's children and the people taking care of those children. Her own kids were coming of age, she was empty nesting, and she took a job where she could see daily and firsthand the harm that poor education policy and poor social policy and a lack of funding for schools, health, and social supports does to the most vulnerable and socially lowest of any society, its children. And she was never interested in poli-sci, but she's good at it, so she understands the interconnectedness of all areas of policy, so as a result of having strong opinions on education policy, she has strong opinions on everything the regional and municipal governments do. But she wasn't like that when I was growing up and forming my understanding of her as a person. So I think of her as a pretty uninvolved center-lib, then she spits out a take on children's rights or education policy that makes the fucking Bolsheviks look far right and I'm shocked she's further left than me on some bit of policy.

When I was young, my dad was a washed up Cold Warrior taking it out on his kid who just thought folks ought to share more, because no six year old is a capitalist or wants anyone else to go hungry while piles of food line store shelves, and my mum was an avoidant centrist who just let him do all of that nonsense... now that I'm older and they're more mature and electoral politics has gotten more extremist and sectarian, my mum makes me the conservative in the room when the issue affects childrens' lives and learning, and my dad's the adrift centrist trying to figure out his politics in the light of what conservatives truly are underneath the Rhino Party grade promises (i.e. political promises that are never kept as a matter of course).

Yeah, Dad's always been an idiot... and yes. Sanitation work is public health work and should be valued and compensated as such. If no one hauls your trash away to a proper disposal site for a month, you're going to understand how important the garbage truck drivers and street cleaners really are. (Which is why I have such a complicated view on picking up trash on roadsides being used as the most common form of "community service" to sentence minor nuisance criminals, first offenders, and juveniles to. That should be respected work someone is fairly paid to do, not a humiliating punishment... (and people should respect the people doing it enough to not litter on the roadside in the first place, massively reducing the need for that work) but at the same time, making someone whose harm to society was just minor nuisance level, pay the community back by cleaning the community's infrastructure, makes a lot more sense than most of the shit Western "justice" systems pull. I'd rather someone who racked up hundreds of dollars in parking violations, or committed some other minor offense, have to pick up trash, than be thrown in a jail cell.) Every single job in a society has value and needs to be done to keep people healthy, fed, sheltered, and safe, and everyone should be able to at least have their basic needs met and a bit of recreation and entertainment, whether they're responsible for a massive enterprise, or the bottom position on a factory floor, or the guy who empties the office wastebaskets and scrubs the office toilets, and whether they can put in double time, barely make a standard work week, just about handle part time, or aren't able to work a typical job at all. But that wasn't easy for a five year old to figure out and articulate, so I just let him win for the moment.

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