There are a few family members I've avoided talking with over the last seven years. Just to 'keep the peace,' just because I'm a 'nice guy' and don't want to wreck a family gathering by getting into an argument with anyone.
But after getting to know Senator Barack Obama, my candidate for President, I have changed my tune. Please follow me over the flip for a little family anecdote that I hope will help others with their Republican relatives.
I've come to believe that the politics of progressives throughout the whole Bush nightmare has really been to take the bait, as if we were Luke Skywalker being told by Darth Vader, give in to your hate, your rage, thereby spending our force in the wrong direction, making mistakes. That was the Clinton approach, to make us hate the "vast right-wing conspiracy." I really bought into that, way more than I admitted to myself. Because even though I was refusing to argue with my Republican cousins, I wasn't approaching them with kindness or an open mind, either, let alone with a view to getting them on my side. I let their fear and loathing of my politics set the table for our relationships. Thereby putting myself in a weak position from the start.
Senator Obama, on the other hand, is more of an Obi-Wan kind of figure. He is smart and observant and naturally inclusive, and he uses those gifts to create non-violent means of getting what he wants from the opposition. This was the primary reason I supported Senator Obama from the moment I became really aware of him, during the 2004 convention. I realized right when we first saw him--and people at this party were saying Wow, wouldn't it be amazing if that guy could someday be our candidate, and people were all oh, no, couldn't happen--that the divisive politics of my adulthood up to that point had ended, whether any of us knew it or not; and whether or not Senator Obama wins this election, I have no doubt that he has already scored an enormous blow against the real 'enemies of freedom,' and it is only a matter of time before the truth of his message--that we are all in this together--hits its destined mark.
So anyway, recently I spent a few days with a dear cousin with whom I grew up in the flaming red seaside town of Huntington, New York. She and her husband are truly Fox News zombies; she literally doesn't read a newspaper; even the slightest attempt at talking politics with her used to make my blood boil so hot I thought I'd pop an aneurysm right there at the kitchen table. But this time, I tried to keep it cool, the Obama way. That meant engaging, and being honest. Letting myself be honest actually was the best part, because the repression was what had been making me so angry.
When my cousin said, Obama's nothing, what has he done, he hasn't done anything! I was able to say quite cheerfully, without turning purple or having my ears blow off my head, have you actually looked into that at all? How would you know? They don't go into that sort of thing on Fox News, hon. And then I went on to tell her about Senator Obama's legislative successes (Google for Government being my personal favorite) and the way he and Senator Lugar sponsored a bill against letting dangerous weapons be traded all over the damn place, and about the fact that it's mandatory to videotape homicide interrogations in Chicago because of Senator Obama, and that he had got even the police to agree, and there was a very good reason why he became our nominee. He was able to create solutions where everybody wins, and then show the participants how everybody wins.
(And meanwhile I am thinking, I am doing this myself right now!!)
She said, "L. (another cousin) says it's so hard to argue with you because you always have all these facts" (she said "facts" like it was kind of a dirty word.) Ordinarily I would have been embarrassed by that and kind of clammed up, because I am absolutely a latte-drinking liberal elite blah blah, because apparently that is some kind of crime, whereas it is not a crime to be the piss-ignorant pawn of Bill O'Reilly. So then I said something I should have said a long time ago--just honestly, is all: "When you have got contempt for facts, it makes you sound really really just dumb, sweetie, you could never get away with that attitude at work for example, you aren't dumb and when you're at work you don't brag about being ignorant." It was incredible how cheerfully I could say this! I just gave myself permission to say anything I wanted and my anger just totally dissipated!
Maybe this technique won't work for everybody, and I can't really guarantee anything about this, even to myself, but before I left New York my cousin was literally saying she might vote for Obama! I don't know if our conversations had the slightest thing to do with that, but still for whatever reason I would have bet that I could get back to Los Angeles by flapping my arms really fast sooner than that I would ever ever hear those words from her, of all people!!! I'm still in shock, seriously.
So I am going to repeat this experiment with all my other (R) relatives, even the ghastly, hardened cases. I'm going to cheerfully explain that Obama is the best candidate, and I'm going to ask them to vote for him in a respectful and friendly way, showing them their opinions matter a lot to me even if they are big Rush Limbaugh fans, because in fact their opinions do matter to me: everybody's do. That's what Americans believe. After all Jon Stewart said the other day, "Republicans are very patriotic, they just hate half the people who live here!" and I thought my god, I don't want to be like that.
Anyway, I think if everybody would open up to their Republican relatives in this way it might be a really great thing for us progressives, and for Senator Obama's campaign.