You're gonna love this. No, really. You're gonna love this one. It will get you inside of the mind of my mother-in-law and many other Texas voters who will give McCain the Lone Star State's 34 EV's.
Follow the jump and get ready.
Before we begin, I have to say that like many of my fellow Kossacks, I have been at odds with friends and family to understand how they can possibly consider supporting McCain/Palin. My mother-in-law is a wonderful Texas woman, living just north of the Houston metro area. Her husband is retired Houston Police Department officer, and she raised four wonderful sons. She is a Cuban-American who sent her middle son to fight in Iraq for three tours of duty. She is, in short, a great lady. Her whole family has been supportive of our same-sex relationship, and I've never felt anything but love and acceptance from their family.
However, as our good friend the Neo-pagan tantric buddhist taoist rosicrucian orgasmican alchemist mystic reminds us:
it is sometimes helpful to project outside yourself, to mess with your own ideological boundaries, to attempt, however exasperatingly and however much it makes you want to hose yourself down with the cool fire of intellectual clarity afterwards, to enter the minds of your enemies, or those with whom you merely disagree, or -- perhaps most challenging of all -- with those whose mental gyrations you simply cannot fathom in the slightest.
So, with that in mind let me get right to it. Here is the email I sent to her followed by her response:
I respect your opinion and I respect Sen. McCain's service to our country. However, in my opinion, he has not shown how he is different from George Bush and how he will make things any better. He has not focused on the issues and has sadly spent too much time questioning Sen. Obama's character instead of discussing, respectfully, the important issues before us on November 4th.
I really want to share something with you, and I hope you will take it to heart. This is the essence of why I am supporting Senator Barack Obama:
http://www.youtube.com/...
He said today,
"There no real parts of the country and fake parts of the country. There are no pro-America parts of the country and anti-America parts of the country.
We all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from: black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, city dwellers, farm dwellers, we're all together...
People will say that this is one of those moments when America rose up, when we overcame, when we battled back from adversity, when we recognized the common stake we have in each other, now this is one of those moments.
I realize many of you are cynical. Many of you are fed up with politics. I understand you're disappointed, even angry with your leaders, and you've got every right to be.
But despite of all of this I ask of you what's been asked of Americans throughout our history. I ask you to believe. Believe in yourselves. Believe in each other. Believe in the future we can build together. See, together we can't fail, not now."
I got this response (spelling and syntax not corrected) and immediately knew you'd want to see it:
I take no offense at anyone who has a different point of view than I. Its ok, but my view on Obama is not that he is black. It is that being from a communist country myself, and knowing how that works I see this man as being on the verge of communism, when you start wanting to take away personal weapons from people that is a sign that we are headed into socialism.Why? because then the people would not be able to fight your regime cause they have no weapons. Example: Castro, Saadam Housaine,ext. I believe he is also doing Clinton(Hillary) a favor by trying to get her socialist idealogical health care plan into affect for her since she lost the race. I beleive she will get someone to attempte to kill Obama and I still believe she might since there were many people watching one of the debates and heard her insinuate that an assassin "God Forbid" might just knock Obama out. I do not like the women. She like Obama has no experience what so ever. What! she has the experience because she was a president's wife? Or that her husband was famous for running the white house with his pecker in clear sight. I dont think so. Also to even remotely be involved with a known home grown terroist and there are many of them in this country and has been for centuries . These are the poeple who want to do harm to Americans in there own country. Yes maybe we should revert to socialism and communism for awhile so that we can then exterminate the evil that will come from this. I for one do not want Oprah or any other of these worthless people to over take the white house. I think we had that problem with the clinton's did'nt we. I do agree Bush has not been watching the roost in awhile but we have that same thing happen with many a president,Republican or Democrat. So, I think deep down I belive in a free country where you can be free to do what you like which is what we have now. Unfortunately the laws are too laxed and there! are som e like Ayers and the like who are able to take position of destinction and hide under the pretence of being a proffessor . They like to bomb and kill innocent people but they like making the dollar too. " The views of this person in no way resemble in anyway the veiws of Archy Bunker"
So there you have it. I haven't responded directly to her yet, and many of you I'm sure will post comments of utter disbelief. Believe me, I hear you. But what do do with such a person? Undoubtedly, we all have someone in our life that more or less falls into this category? Do we write them off? Do we laugh at them? Do we, against all odds, and even as early voting has begun, try one last time to convince them? It think it best to listen to the wary nymphs of history as they whisper in our ear:
The days are dwindling. The choice is nigh. And the strange news is, somewhere between 10 to 15 percent of the voting nation is still undecided, still unsure, still apparently waiting, after countless debates and speeches, thousands of articles and profiles and policy wonkings, biographies, autobiographies, detailed lists of everything from the type of foods the candidates like to sports teams they root for to the kind of car they drive, for some impossible fog to clear.
So I will continue to shine a little light, and hope the fog clears.