A Republican Without Benefits

In the Kite Runner, it is evident that Baba is the lone Republican on a street filled with blue collar democrats, even though being a republican doesn’t help him as a low status American. When Amir and Baba arrived in America, Baba could not stand the current president, Jimmy Carter. Baba was unhappy with Carter because he felt that he wasn’t doing enough for the Afghan people. In the year 1980, Carter decided that they would boycott the summer Olympics in Moscow because of what they were doing in Afghanistan. Baba was appalled, saying “Brezhnev is massacring Afghans and all that peanut eater can say is I won’t come swim in your pool.” What he meant by that quote is that Carter wasn’t solving any problems by boycotting the games, and he believed that he should have taken forceful action towards the Russians. He believed that Carter did more for communism than the Russians. Baba was longing for a republican president, and got one in Ronald Reagan. President Reagan called the Shorawi “the Evil Empire.” Reagan took a hard-line stance that favored matching and exceeding the Soviet Union's strategic and global military capabilities. Even though Baba was impressed and even bought a picture of him, the Soviet Union was not so. That quote is now very famous and most people refer it to communist Russia. Ronald Reagan believed that Soviet communism was the focus of evil in the modern world. Baba really liked Reagan’s military stance, his economic stance: “Reaganomics”, did not benefit him as a lower income American. Reaganomics called for lower taxes for the higher income Americans, low income Americans taxes rose significantly. Since Baba was a gas station attendant, he would have most likely had to pay higher taxes with the republicans versus the democrats. In conclusion, Baba strongly believes in the ways of republicans; even though it doesn’t necessarily help him in America.