I have hope

Tuesday, 1:21 pm

By Kate

Jun

28

2005

I went out to dinner with a friend Saturday evening. We don’t normally talk about politics—it can be an explosive subject. She has been a zealous George Bush supporter since 2001. We both understand that we hold diametrically opposed opinions with no middle ground for consensus. But we enjoy each other’s company and would prefer to talk about everything else over our margaritas. Our kids have grown up together and we share a history of a sort. And this woman knows her margaritas. She’s been a fine teacher of the finer points of building the perfect margarita.

Sometimes, however, you never know exactly what will turn the subject to politics. The simplest innocent musing can do the trick.

In fact, I don’t remember what it was that I said that made the political magic happen. But the response left my jaw flopping around on the table. It seemed to come out of left field. Whatever I said, her immediate response was, “I can’t stand that man. He’s such as asshole.”

Well, it wasn’t an elegant response to whatever it was that I said, but the point was made with a fearsome vengeance that left no doubt in my mind that something has changed radically somewhere along the line. She’s furious with the President.

My equally inelegant response was, “Huh?”

“Absolutely,” she said, “he’s a spoiled rotten rich kid who’s having a lark driving this country into the ground. He doesn’t care about anything but his rich friends. The rest of us can go hang.”

Naturally, I warmed to the subject right away, although it was sort of like poking around a minefield. I didn’t want conversation to explode suddenly, so I gently encouraged her to expand on her statements. And expand she did. For a good fifteen minutes she expanded and embellished and worked up a righteous indignation.

Her final summation—“And if he thinks he’s going to get his hooks into my sons to fight his ego-driven war, he’s got another think coming.”

Then she leaned back in her chair and pronounced, “He is not a Southerner.”

There we have it. From a woman born and raised in the northern portion of the south, a Republican her entire life, delivering the ultimate insult.

In general, my interpretation of her discontent is that the occupants of the White House are not true Republicans. They’re more like aliens who landed from a different planet and they’re determined to lay waste to everything in their path, including us.

It was a fascinating conversation. There was no one thing that swayed her formerly strongly held opinions of the President. It seemed more of an accrual of events, though if I had to pinpoint a particular moment of revelation, the Terry Schiavo fiasco was probably her tipping point. Everything since has solidified her convictions. She’s not a blog reader nor a frequent newspaper reader. The last time I knew, she was a devoted Fox News consumer. But somehow, somewhere, she has reached her conclusions on her own.

And you know what? She’s a true focus group representative. An average American who doesn’t ordinarily pay that much attention to the news, who goes about her daily business, too busy to read the newspaper, trusting that the government knows what it’s doing. Until something doesn’t strike her quite right and she begins to pay more attention. Discrepancies begin to filter through. The “everything’s going well in Iraq” pronouncements don’t gibe with her own eyes watching daily film clips of suicide bombers blowing things up or the daily tally of dead American soldiers. In other words, the spin isn’t working for her anymore. She’s afraid for her kids. She’s afraid for herself and her future as a single woman. None of it looks good to her anymore.

While I’m just as afraid as she is, I still find a huge amount of hope in her gradual shift. I can guarantee that she is not the only person whose opinions have changed. Too much damage has been done, she says, we’ll never be safe again. But, she’s determined to throw the rat bastards out of office and salvage what can be salvaged. That’s pretty impressive for a life-long Republican.

The part that really made my day? She quit the Republican party and became an Independent. No more of her dollars are going to support a party that no longer represents her. Doing so requires an extra effort—to battle traffic and find a parking place and spend time at City Hall to fill out the forms. It seems small, but it takes one out of one’s daily orbit to take a stand.

It was the best dinner I’ve had in a long, long time.