The other night at about 10:00 I was in a Safeway store in an obscenely wealthy suburb of Portland, Oregon (world famous home of Thom Hartmann). The woman in front of me was buying the October 23 issue of Time Magazine. The
cover story is a piece by Joe Klein entitled:
Why Barack Obama Could Be The Next President. This is not about that article, Joe Klein or Barack Obama.
This is about my complete failure to attempt to save the moral and political soul of the clerk, a young kid in his early to mid-20's by the look of him.
The complete story below the fold...
Senator Obama's picture is on the Time cover. Just making idle conversation as they waited on the debit card computer, the woman apparently said something nice to the clerk about the Senator, or the prospect of and need for regime change in America. I didn't hear her clearly or realize the nature of her comment until I was shocked into awareness by the kid's response. He picked up the magazine and derisively slapped Obama's picture with the back of his other hand. He curled his lip in a really ugly, hateful sneer and spit some words at the woman along the lines of "Never! Not if I have my way!"
"Why?," the woman asked in polite surprise.
"I'm a republican," spit back the kid, shoving the magazine into her bag with a thunk.
"You're a republican? Really?" She had a look of stunned disbelief on her face. Most young grocery checkers are, after all, perilously close to being a member of the downtrodden "working poor" who are but an accident, illness or layoff away from living in their car.
"Yeah," he said, and continued angrily, "and I don't understand why they have all this left wing stuff out there on the shelf and they never put any of the right wing magazines out there for sale." Mind you, he was working at the time. For Safeway Stores, Inc.
As the computer inched out her receipt the woman said, as if to comfort him (of all things), "Well, it's hard to get shelf space. I used to work for a magazine so I know that." She was still dumbstruck I think.
"Which magazine?," he wanted to know.
"The Nation," she replied.
"I don't know that one," he said to her back as she took her bag of groceries and left.
Me and my block of Tillamook Medium Cheddar and four boxes of taquitos were next in line, and there was no one behind me. As I'd stood watching and listening to this shallow little pipsqueak half my age, I thought of how inappropriate it was for a clerk in a "Huge Corporation" store to be making a customer feel awkward by dissing or even labeling her politics or her choice of news magazines. Make no mistake - he was proud of being a republican and proud to say so out loud and in a confrontational manner. My gut reaction was to lay into him for being a snotnosed little creep doing no more than spouting his rich daddy's BS and asking him where he got off making comments like that to a customer. Report him to management. Get him fired. That sort of thing.
It occurred to me to tick off a handful of reasons why no one in their right mind (or who has a mind or a heart) could possibly be a republican, let alone proudly claim to be one: Dishonesty, cronyism, incompetence and corruption running rampant in the party from top to bottom; deliberate encroachments on constitutional freedoms; the failed occupation of Iraq to the tune of hundreds of thousands dead and wounded for nothing gained except by war profiteers; record deficits coupled with tax cuts for Paris Hilton and corporations; lobbyists for Big Pharma writing their own Medicare Part D legislation; and, the purposeful destruction of the middle class through regressive taxation, the outsourcing of jobs overseas, the emasculation of labor unions and cuts in higher education coupled with imponderable tuition increases. That's just to name a few. You can add your own in the comments if you want.
But those truisms aren't what this diary is about either.
This diary is my confession of how I didn't say a thing. Not one word. I completely failed to do anything to help this poor dumbass kid open his eyes. So did the woman ahead of me. We both let him get away with spouting his "proud republican" crap and did nothing to try to save his soul. She may have had good reasons. She might have had a sick child at home to get back to, or an early morning appointment necessitating an early bedtime. I had no such reasons, and I'm embarrassed and ashamed.
The encounter might not have been the golden opportunity it looks like, and perhaps it would have been inappropriate to try to take the kid under my wing then and there. But I've read so many great diaries and comments here setting out strategies for dealing with these wingnuts. I thought I was ready for them. "Bring 'em on," I thought. And when the time came I did nothing at all. I could have stood there and debated with that kid all night long. Really confronted him. Shown him the error of his ways.
What I knew at the time is what is now breaking my heart: it was absolutely pointless to try to convince the kid. I was intimidated by the lockstep devotion to Bu$hco that these people feel, and I have to admit that I was a bit frightened by the aura of certainty emanating from this little fool. I'm not someone who is easily cowed. I was a trial lawyer for Pete's sake! For 26 years! I have a degree in Political Science. I was steeped in the Anti-War Protests of the 60's!
Nor am I the slightest bit weak in my convictions that republicans and republican policies are ruining my country. I am deeply afraid of where America has been heading, and quite certain that if we as a nation do not sharply change our direction we will indeed arrive just where we are heading.
What I also realize is that I did not want so much to help this poor wayward youth as I wanted to crucify him and his opinions and everyone who supports and encourages them. I was angry that someone so young, having so much of his life left to look forward to, nevertheless subscribes to a politics that is 100% against his own self interest. And I am angry that no matter what a democrat says to a wingnut, no matter how organized and true the democrat's words may be, the wingnut will simply snarl, diminish and dismiss any fact or statement that doesn't jive with the wingnut talking points of the day. We are wrong simply because we are wrong. End of discussion. I realized today that the politics of divisiveness embraced by the neocons has worked, and it has worked on me. I was apart from and different from that stupid kid and I resented both him and his views mightily and righteously.
And in that frame of mind, there is no way I could have even made a start on gently bringing him to the land of milk and honey. So, tonight I wonder if that is true for others as well. Could it really be true that Rove and those of his ilk both know and intend that we so despise what they do that it is all but impossible to keep from hating them and their followers and therefore shy away from engaging them in discussion? The saddest thing is that it does seem that the republicans have successfully created a political and social atmosphere in which any discussion of views differing from their own is by definition a confrontation rather than a discussion.
How do we engage our "enemies" in "peace talks" for the common good when they seek only to goad us further to anger and resentment? Are we really past the point of reasoning with one another without descending into hostility? If so, how do we produce a change in this dynamic?