They say to avoid the two topics of Religion and Politics in polite company, so as to avoid any unpleasant awkwardness and heated arguments. This is a tradition I've had with my own mother since the year 2000. This unspoken agreement was created when I told her I voted for Gore (which I knew she wouldn't like, but she asked, so I told her). She responded to my statement by looking at me like I had just sliced open her abdomen, pulled out her intestines and draped them around myself like a feather boa. Then she said in this strangled tone said, "You voted for dead babies?!?!"
Yeah. That was about as much fun as it sounds.
This unspoken cease fire was occasionally breached tentatively by each other, most often by my mother who tried to make sweeping statements of condemnation or approval in an attempt to trick me into changing my mind such as, "Saddam Hussein was an evil man. He killed so many innocent people. Aren't you glad Bush got rid of him?"
I mean, really. There are so many things wrong with that statement, but the getting into them with her would get so ugly that the effort of it just boggled me. I would just respond with bland statements like "Nobody would argue that he was a good guy, Mom." And then I would change the subject.
Occasionally I would become temporarily insane and would attempt to convey to my mother the unscrupulousness and incestuous relationship between certain corporations (Halliburton, Carlyle Group) and the current administration. She, unsurprisingly chose to brush off the implications of these statements by countering with her assurances that the Cheney is a good man! He and his wife are Christians! Um....ok...?
Recently I stumbled across
this article written by an evangelical minister, called "Wasn't Jesus a Liberal?". I thought it was a great article, written by someone my mother couldn't dismiss offhand, and contained some of the major themes of political philosophy that I took into account when forming my own political ideas. It has been my experience that many right-wing conservatives shout party-line statements, while not investigating the underlying tenets of each party. They let individual issues decide for them, instead of looking at big pictures.
I'm a big picture person when it comes to politics, and on both major platforms, economic and social, I'm liberal...actually I prefer to call myself progressive. I believe in the role of goverment as a safety net for the least fortunate. I don't think people are generous enough by nature to be able to adequately keep third-world conditions in the third-world. The Culture of Poverty is too persistent and pervasive. Not only do I think it should be a safety net, but I also believe it should be a ladder, providing people with the capability to climb back up. That is where we have seriously dropped the ball as a country. We all know the adage, "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime."
But I digress.
So I printed out the article and sent it to my mom, with a note saying something like "I'm not trying to open an ugly can of worms with you, I just thought it would help you understand me better, and know that there are all kinds of opinions and many are worth listening to." Something like that.
Hoooo boy. She responded. In some ways better than I'd hoped, because her tone was friendly and conversational. She stated that she really enjoyed the different perspective and that no political party had a monopoly on Christianity. Wow! Nice! I thought. She said she really wanted us to stay engaged like that. Then things went quickly and terribly downhill. She went on to state her opinion on the moralities of the Clinton, "Clinton's kind of liberalism wasn't the Jesus kind...his personal behavior was dishonorable to men, women and children" and the kicker, "...
primarily the economy was the payoff of sound groundwork by Reagan."
Then she rhapsodized on Bush..."I personally think the Iraq was is necessary - doesn't pure liberalism demand the victimized be protected..." She says she's for "revised tax structure, medicare, affordable health coverate, a welfare system but formulated and
facilitated by Scriptural 'by laws'".
That last part sounds scary as hell to me. So she says all this stuff, and I can't say I'm really surprised. In some ways it's a good start for her, and in others it's still pretty alarming. Afterwards I didn't know what the heck to write back. I talked to some friends, and I talked to my husband. I typed out a first draft of the letter and thought it sounded pretty harsh, but my husband thought it was awesome and honest, so I went ahead and sent it.
It included such statements as this: "I do, though, think that Reagan’s “trickle-down” theory is laughably idealist. Reaganomics succeeded in making the rich richer and the poor poorer, because it relies on the principle that the people at the top will share their wealth...That is a sick reflection on our society that oil companies continue to post record profits over Middle East unrest and hurricane-damaged refineries, while hundreds of thousands of people are dying of starvation and Aids in Africa."
A personal fave: "As far as the “War on Terror” goes, we need to remember that, try as they might; no one has definitively linked Saddam Hussein to 9/11. Iraq only became a harbor for terrorists AFTER Saddam’s regime was destroyed. And yes, he was a bad guy. Nobody is going to argue differently, however the reasoning doesn’t hold water. If it did, then HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people wouldn’t have starved to death in Nigeria last year. The genocides in the Sudan and Rwanda would have been stopped. Where’s the “War on Poverty” or the “War on Hunger”?"
Oh, and this one too: "I think it’s kind of odd that people think we should be celebrating the rebuilding of Iraq. We are the ones that tore it down. Of course we should rebuild it. You shouldn’t get kudos for stuff YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO DO. "
I saw her over the weekend and she said, "I got your letter the other day." She looked kind of horrified and shell-shocked. "It's going to take me a while to formulate a response to THAT."
So now I'm feeling like I shouldn't have sent it. I feel like maybe I should have just said nothing, or just glossed over things. Maybe I got too hardcore on her too fast. Thoughts?
