This is my first diary. I wanted to relate an observation I had from a graduation party in my family last weekend. In order to put this observation into context, though, I first have to provide a little family history to tie everything together.
My mother's side of the family is a big Catholic family. I was raised Catholic, but started asking too many questions as a child to do the Church any good. Nonetheless, this remains a close-knit clan, with 45 first cousins largely settled in the same area in Montana (aside from the 5 in the military now).
I've grown highly interested in Jim Webb's work in chronicling the role that the Scots-Irish have played in this country culturally and politically. This has inspired me to pester my mother and to try to fill in the blanks as to what makes my family tick. So far, this is what I've managed to put together.
My maternal great grandmother's family came to the U.S. during the great German migration in the wake of Bismarck's Kulturkampf campaign. They settled in Brooklyn, where she eventually married an Irishman and had 13 children. She was a very stereotypical German disciplinarian, and her temper and thick German accent are pretty much the only things about her that I remember from my early childhood.
On my maternal great grandfather's side, they were a clan of the Scots-Irish that settled in the Ozarks in Missouri that had fled Northern Ireland after a failed plot to assassinate Charles II. My grandfather grew up in Missouri, and joined the Navy during WWII and served in the Mediterranean as an electrician.
My grandparents met in New York while my grandfather was on leave, and they fell in love there. Immediately, though, there was a conflict- my grandmother's family insisted that they stay in New York if they were to marry, but my grandfather couldn't stand the city. Being a man of action, he essentially told them to go to hell, and fled to Oregon, where my mother was born.
After a spell in Pendleton, OR, they moved to Moab, UT, where my grandfather worked in a uranium mine as an electrician. There, they continued to grow their family.
From there, they moved to Wallace, ID, where my grandfather worked in a silver mine. At this point, he began getting involved in union politics. This was also the point in his life where fishing in Montana began to interfere with matters. Ultimately, the fishing situation lead to the final relocation of the family to Missoula, where employ in the Stone Container mill enabled that terrible addiction.
Upon settling in Missoula, my grandfather finally made peace with my mother's family, and my great grandmother moved out to Montana to supervise their parental performance, and offer constructive criticism.
To get back to the original reason about my writing this diary is this- politically my grandmother and grandfather were pretty much misfits- my grandmother was a pretty conservative Republican (which I would imagine was weird at the time, what with the Kennedys and all). To give an idea, my dad was a hippy in the 70s and had a big burly beard, but every Christmas she would buy him a bottle of Old Spice Aftershave. My grandfather, on the other hand, having been a union organizer and very much in touch with nature was a pretty progressive fellow for his time. Of the 8 children, politically, they were pretty evenly split, with the oldest four being the most liberal, and the youngest 4 being more conservative (writing this now, I realize that my mom being the oldest is probably the furthest on the left, and my youngest aunt- 20 years younger than my mom- is the most conservative... I'd imagine there's some kind of Freudian thing involved in all of that, but who knows?).
So, last weekend, most of the family is gathered for a graduation party, and we all get to talking about politics. Being a pretty close family, everyone is pretty comfortable expressing themselves, and nobody's feelings get hurt. Of my 8 aunts and uncles, 6 were there, including the 4 reliable Republicans. But all of them offered up that they'd be supporting Obama. I was utterly stunned, I just sort of soaked it in. What I gathered was that McCain is utterly unacceptable to any of them as President. This seemed to be just the bedrock truth of things, and probably the guiding principle behind their preference. But I also gathered a sense of appreciation for Obama's capacity to move the country beyond the old divisions, and restore a level of intelligence to our political discourse. I'm not entirely sure of things, though, I'm still trying to put the pieces together.
I hope you enjoyed my screed.