i'm a republican

last week, after romney made his ill-informed "47%" comment, i was reading something on the washington post and his picture was on the front page.  siri asked, "who is that?"  i thought i should take advantage of this moment and do a little civics 101.  so, i quickly searched for a picture of obama, and told her he's the president of the united states.  siri has a good understanding about countries and knows that we live in the united states.  okay, that was easy enough.  her next question -- "what's a president?"  oh shit.  i didn't really know how to describe that role in an age-appropriate way.  i said he's kind of like the parent or boss of the united states, and romney (toggling between both pictures) also wants to be president.  siri thought about it for a second then wanted to know why they couldn't share. i then tried to describe divergent political parties saying that only one person from a party can be president a time.  i also told her the two primary parties are democrats and republicans.  then, she wanted to know the difference between them.  so, in my quick response to appease the three-year-old, i said "well, republicans don't really like sharing with other people, and democrats are a little better about sharing."  siri: "oh, i like republicans.  i'm a republican."

we then had a little age-appropriate lesson on sharing and why it's important to share.  she argued that she shouldn't need to share with strangers and she would only share with people she knew.  i validated her argument, but then presented a very dumbed down inequality scenario of someone who is less fortunate, and even if we don't know them, we should share for the better of society.  her response to that: "i'm a republican."