Political Considerations when moving to Suburban Greene County (Dayton, Beavercreek: public school, contractors)

[nickolaseposter]

Wow. It surprises me how ignorant people are.

[Giesela]

I consider myself a moderate with varying opinions depending on the issue. I can honestly say that since old enough to vote in 1975 that I have pretty much split my votes/tickets pretty evenly btw Rep and Dem.
I live in the Beavercreek area and work at the base. The DOD community has gotten quite ultra right wing over the years.
Anyone who doesn't pretty much agree with the whole in a cookie cutter mentality usually comes under suspicion. However that I hold some beliefs and opinions that are on the liberal side immediately gets me cast as a "LIBERAL" (when your that far right everyone looks liberal). Knowing this when I moved here 2.5 years ago I vowed to start over and to just not talk politics at work and keep my views a secret. Man they sniff you out like hound dogs. The insist you share some personal details.
Being a female bird watcher was enough for people to start assuming I was an environmentalist, ergo a liberal, ergo not one of us.
Certainly no one is as rude as the above post, but honestly, that's only because its illegal and they are scared to. My "liberalness" is more a joke. Although while going to lunch with office workers I made a rather weak comment about something really right wing on the radio and the guy driving said "oh, and who do you listen to? Joe Smith? (can't remember the name he said but I guess is some liberal pundit I never heard of) cuz if you do you can get out of the car and walk" - direct quote from 2 months ago. If I really talked up my views at work, or was antagonistic I could see. But I don't. At all. Unless I'm cornered. Anyone even remotely liberal in the military generally keep it to themselves and sticks to sports. The eastern suburbs are very DOD. Retired military, civil service, retired civil service, prior service military contractors.
Haven't read the book but it sounds spot on too me. Very scary.

[JefferyT]

I live in the Beavercreek area and work at the base. The DOD community has gotten quite ultra right wing over the years.
Anyone who doesn't pretty much agree with the whole in a cookie cutter mentality usually comes under suspicion. However that I hold some beliefs and opinions that are on the liberal side immediately gets me cast as a "LIBERAL" (when your that far right everyone looks liberal). Knowing this when I moved here 2.5 years ago I vowed to start over and to just not talk politics at work and keep my views a secret. Man they sniff you out like hound dogs. The insist you share some personal details.
Being a female bird watcher was enough for people to start assuming I was an environmentalist, ergo a liberal, ergo not one of us.
Certainly no one is as rude as the above post, but honestly, that's only because its illegal and they are scared to. My "liberalness" is more a joke. Although while going to lunch with office workers I made a rather weak comment about something really right wing on the radio and the guy driving said "oh, and who do you listen to? Joe Smith? (can't remember the name he said but I guess is some liberal pundit I never heard of) cuz if you do you can get out of the car and walk" - direct quote from 2 months ago. If I really talked up my views at work, or was antagonistic I could see. But I don't. At all. Unless I'm cornered. Anyone even remotely liberal in the military generally keep it to themselves and sticks to sports. The eastern suburbs are very DOD. Retired military, civil service, retired civil service, prior service military contractors.
Haven't read the book but it sounds spot on too me. Very scary.

Very interesting. I had an aquitance who worked at the base and was not only liberal ,but came out as gay. Uh-oh. They eventually figured out a way to fire him, but he took them to court and won a substantial financial settlement but didn't get his job back. He ended up back in considerably more socially progressive Connecticut (where he was from).

I suspected the defense community is not that tolerant of political or lifestyle eccentricity, and it is a community that is going to be increasingly prominent in the region due to the economic development strategies followed here.

[Ohioan58]

My dentist (in the Dayton burb of which we are speaking) is an ex-Air Force guy and he once told me that he didn't like Google News because it had too much "left wing stuff." AFAIK, Google is a software machine that just aggregates what's out there, but he took it as deliberate bias.

About the DoD community: a few years ago I blundered into a couple of software engineers who were hooked into Grumman (Xetron) in Fairfield, and these guys were both just f*cking rabid right wing zealots. One of them was incessant about sniffing you out. The other guy had this stupid blog that just hammered Fox News talking points. Those two a-h*les shoulda got a room together.

The whole mentality around here is bullying. It was that way when I was a kid growing up in Dayton and it has metastasized into overbearing need to call out all opponents. This will, as I stated, severely limit the attractiveness of this area to people who think and create for a living, who will consider it a ghetto of closed mindedness.

[Daytonnatian]

Yeah, having such al large DoD community does breed a lot of radical conservatism.

Again, in the military community, their goal is to "search and destroy" the enemy. They do that on the home front, as well, when they sniff out Liberals. It's disgusting, horrible, and kinda frightening, (I'm an extremist liberal, at least for these 'burbs). The further you are from the base, though, the less this occurs, and I doubt you'll have a problem being a liberal in Riverside, Kettering, or Huber Heights, as the problem is largely isolated in Fairborn, Beavercreek, and very close environs.

Living in this area for my whole life while being a liberal, I have found that keeping my mouth shut aroud these whack-jobs is the best thing that I can do. I won't transform then, and there is no way in h*ll they are transforming me. So, if they talk politics, I normally stare them down until they shut up.

[Crew Chief]

Originally Posted by Daytonnatian

Yeah, having such al large DoD community does breed a lot of radical conservatism.

Again, in the military community, their goal is to "search and destroy" the enemy. They do that on the home front, as well, when they sniff out Liberals. It's disgusting, horrible, and kinda frightening, (I'm an extremist liberal, at least for these 'burbs). The further you are from the base, though, the less this occurs, and I doubt you'll have a problem being a liberal in Riverside, Kettering, or Huber Heights, as the problem is largely isolated in Fairborn, Beavercreek, and very close environs.

Living in this area for my whole life while being a liberal, I have found that keeping my mouth shut aroud these whack-jobs is the best thing that I can do. I won't transform then, and there is no way in h*ll they are transforming me. So, if they talk politics, I normally stare them down until they shut up.

WHOAAA, Daytonnatian! PLEASE don't judge all military personnel after just meeting a few, or even a few more. Military folks are a good cross-section of the civilian population. I'm definitely not a "Right Winger" and I know plenty of military people (and family members) that actually think things through before they make up their minds about an issue.

I moved to Washington Twp. and I'm suprised (and pleased, I might add) by the variety of political viewpoints I've encountered here. And we have a fairly sizable military population here, as well.

Anyone who listens to WLW's "America's Trucking Network" or even the C.B. radio might assume that all truckers are Conservative. That's FAR from the truth; many truckers refuse to get on the airwaves with their views if they don't sound like the Right Wingers on the radio...

[Ohioan58]

Remember the notion of the "silent majority" from the 60s/70s?

I wonder if this country really has a "silent majority" of reasonable moderates who don't want to shout down or ridicule someone who thinks differently than they do? Who will not speak up because they don't want to be attacked by either side?

All you hear today are the overbearing idiots. It's either "praise be, Obama is gonna pay my rent" or "Obama is a socialist, Al-Qaeda fifth column who was born on Mars."

If so, I am definitely in that camp. Of the silent majority, that is.

Also, ++Crew Chief: bigoted a-h*les are definitely not exclusive to the military. In my work in the DoD sector, I never ran into a military person that I simply couldn't stand to deal with. Whereas the DoD contractor employees I mentioned above were pure on-the-sidelines chicken hawks who never served.

[wrightflyer]

^Ohioan, I'd give props to you, but the system won't allow me.

Anyways, I'd say you are dead on about the "silent majority" aspect of political view points.

I'd also say that many people who serve tend to have a cross section of views. Each person is a little different. I'd agree that many in the DoD contractor field would be more right wing, but maybe that's because the right wing hawks are feeding the contractor's salaries (indirectly, of course).

Your parody of the different sides "viewpoints" had me ROFLMAO.

[Crew Chief]

Great thread, All! Sigh...President Eisenhower was right OR wrong; depending on where you sit at the table; "Beware of the Military-Industrial Complex"...

[Daytonnatian]

Originally Posted by Crew Chief

WHOAAA, Daytonnatian! PLEASE don't judge all military personnel after just meeting a few, or even a few more. Military folks are a good cross-section of the civilian population. I'm definitely not a "Right Winger" and I know plenty of military people (and family members) that actually think things through before they make up their minds about an issue.

I moved to Washington Twp. and I'm suprised (and pleased, I might add) by the variety of political viewpoints I've encountered here. And we have a fairly sizable military population here, as well.

Anyone who listens to WLW's "America's Trucking Network" or even the C.B. radio might assume that all truckers are Conservative. That's FAR from the truth; many truckers refuse to get on the airwaves with their views if they don't sound like the Right Wingers on the radio...

Being in a military family myself (grandpa was a CMSGT at WPAFB), I know that my statment is very far from characterizing everyone in the DoD community. I do know, however, from personal experience from being in a military family that if you support any political view not endorsed by FOX, Rush Limbaugh, or GI JOE, you will be treated as a third-world citizen at best.

The scary thing is that I HAVE noticed civility getting worse from my neighborhood/city toward liberal attitudes, which I think can largely be attributed to the garbage on FOX News that inspires people to act this way. My neighbor, a wonderful, sensible person who is the best neighbor I could ever have, sometimes is not someone I can stand to be around because he starts asking me vicious political questions and warns me to "Watch out for those liberals! They're going to turn us into a Socialist nation!".

Sorry to pinpoint the DoD community, but the reason why I did so is because of my personal experience, its predominant conservative attitude and prevelance in the area. This still doesn't explain the even less tolerant views that those in Mason/West Chester/rest of sprawl-land forming Daytonnati express, though.