My wife was in the local post office yesterday. CNN on the TV for all to see. Cheney's mug. Title bar: "Cheney: Enemy Within the Administration?"
Guy about 60 says, "Cheney is the real terrorist."
Guy about 40 says, "I don't believe anybody in this administration after this Walter Reed thing! They send our soldiers over there to fight, and then they come home to this mess."
60 year old guy: "They're all bad!"
Wife, half under her breath, "They're finally waking up."
Lady about 60, African-American, standing next to the wife says, "We gotta do something about our national security."
My wife says, aloud, "They can start by telling the truth." Heads nod all around.
Wife: "Maybe we need to start talking instead of trying to solve our problems with the business end of a gun barrel." People look like they were thinking about that.
Wife says, "I didn't vote for these guys in either election - I knew they were dirty."
Postal clerk says to wife, "Can I help you Mam?"
Sounds like a pretty good shoestring debate in our democracy, huh? My wife's a pip.
What is perhaps more interesting is the setting of this little exercise in self-governance. This is in one of the reddest counties in Virginia - it went for G. Felix "Macaca" Allen in 2006 by a margin of 67-32%!!! Not only that, it's in the end of the county that has long been noted for the "Stars and Bars" waving from many a flagpole and sported on many a pick-up bumper on the rural routes; the local high school is Lee-Davis (that's right, Marse Robert and Jefferson Davis), and the local middle school is Stonewall Jackson. And not only that, the one African American in this little tableaux was the 60 year-old lady worried about national security.
I recount this story to give a bit of lift to your day, kossacks. As my wife so eloquently put it, "They're finally waking up."