Leah and I don’t talk about politics to other people. We pretty much agree with each other about that kind of thing, so we talk to each other, and sometimes we talk to the TV, but not to other people. So why do so many other people talk about politics to us, thinking that we must agree with what they say?
Leah’s 92-year old uncle wants to complain about getting Obama out of office. A store owner tells us the real estate market is not going to improve until Obama is out of office. A Walmart worker tells us he wants to burn all the cardboard boxes he’s breaking down and to heck with global warming; he doesn’t believe in global warming anyway. A neighbor blames Obama for health insurance increases and says Obamacare keeps poor people from getting health insurance.
I don’t think we actually invite any of the comments we keep hearing. We don’t encourage them, but they keep coming anyway. We don’t argue. We don’t engage them in conversation. We just say something like, “Mmmm,” and keep on going. We may talk about later it between ourselves, but not with them.
I don’t point out that Obama was elected for a second term and he’ll be out as soon as he completes it. I don’t point out that the real estate market is actually improving after a precipitous decline that started before Obama was elected. I don’t point out that burning cardboard boxes doesn’t add any carbon to the global carbon cycle like burning gasoline does, or that climatologists have spent their lives working on climatology and probably know about global warming better than nonscientists. I don’t point out that poor people can get assistance to help pay their health insurance premiums.
I suppose they assume that everyone in town agrees with them. After all, Georgia is every bit as solidly Republican today as it was Democratic 40 or 50 years ago. And I’m an old, white guy from Georgia, so I must be a Republican, too.
But you know what they say about assuming things.
I’ve gone through stages, but the last four or five years have with only one or two exceptions followed your and Leah’s pattern. And religion, for that matter – I’ve never wanted to talk about religion with anyone. Oddly, I am a sort of political junkie but that’s more of a consequence of just being a voracious reader.
Outside of Glenn, I stopped talking about politics as I saw a family member become more and more obsessed – he’s the archetypal right wing Thanksgiving uncle now, except he’s my father.
Before, I tried to limit conversation to policy, but found that any invitation will escalate into pointless whining. At that point objectivity flees.
I’ve been trying to find the term for the occasional person who simply must interject some passive aggressive comment into a conversation that has nothing to do with politics. Microaggression would be good, if only it didn’t already have a very specific meaning. Verbal provocation? Drive by jabbing?
The Walmart guy was the odd one. We were actually talking to the others (not about politics), but we were just walking down the aisle at Walmart when this guy starts talking to us. We have seen him before, and maybe he recognized us, but we’ve never spoken to him other than to nod and say hello. I guess that was enough.
My mother turned into the right-winger, too. Unfortunately, it went beyond talk. She gave money to every nutcase that sent a solicitation.
Roger and I have been very lucky. Most of our extended families are politically aligned with us. The few who are not we hardly every socialize with or have any opportunity to engage in anything deeper than, “Hi, how are you?” Once in a while we’ll hear something like “Social security is a ponzi scheme,” or “we should deport all those Mexicans…” but we never respond. We never ever talk religion. Oy.
Robin Andrea — My brother and I have pretty much the same opinions, but Leah’s brother is a physician. His views differ from ours, as you might expect. It’s kind of funny, but my mother’s sister (94 years old) and late husband had views more similar to ours, while their daughter, who is near our age, is completely different.
I’m pretty much the same. I just try not to let it into the conversation, and when someone tries to pick a fight, I generally just say something like “let’s not go there, okay?”
One checker at the grocery store had to respond to my evidently commie liberal request for paper bags (I’d left my canvas bags in the car) by saying we needed to “take back the country.” I wanted to say that we did that in 2008 and 2012, but I refrained. And I try to avoid her checkout line when I can now.
Pablo — Yes, “take back the country.” I think I know what that means, and it isn’t pretty.
Although I manage a private natural area (which most people would probably imagine would be the haunt of “tree huggers”), my board of directors is almost completely Republican and some of them are pretty adamant and vociferous. Plus, our upscale neighborhood is pretty Republican, too, so I get these kinds of unsolicited comments all the time.
Probably the funniest (but most unsettling) interaction I’ve ever had was at a fund-raising gala we sponsored some years ago. Being a good executive director, I was schmoozing and working the crowd, when I came across the elderly matriarch of a very wealthy family. I certainly had known about this woman but had never before met her. Nor had she ever met me; we were complete strangers. So, I introduced myself and sat down in a chair next to her to chat with her for a few minutes. The first words out of her mouth were, “That goddamned Hilary Clinton! I will go to my grave fighting that goddamned Hilary Clinton!” And she did.
Scott– That is such a great story. I read it out loud to Roger, and we had a very good laugh.
I’ll never forget it, Robin Andrea.
Scott — That story is funny, but, unfortunately, minus the cursing, it reminds me of my mother. I have no idea how she ended up so far to that extreme, but I blame part of it on age and part of it on exposure to toxic junk mail solicitations.