"You know, if you kept on hitting your head against a wall over and over again, and it started to hurt, wouldn't you eventually stop?" --- Barack Obama
My brother is voting for John McCain, and it hurts.
This diary is an attempt for me to figure out why it hurts so badly that he's going to do this. It's going to be a personal, serious kind of diary, and on the off chance that some people read it, I want you to try to take this as seriously as I do. Read it when you have some time to devote some careful thought to it, please.
No matter what, try to be kind to my brother in any comments you might make. I love him a lot, but we lead very different lives, and at times like this I am reminded of how very different we truly are.
You can't understand how different my brother and I are without first hearing about the choices we have made.
Eight years ago, my life was pretty similar to the life my brother is living right now. I didn't have a lot of responsibilities in life. I was a staunch, some would say extremist, conservative and I though I had it all figured out. In addition, I was a fundamentalist Christian who believed that if the country would just turn to God, all our problems would be solved.
I left my parents' house and I went to college. The woman who I met there and who eventually married inspired me, through her toughness and independence, to take it upon myself to be a better, more self-reliant person.
Now, a lot of conservatives say they are all about personal responsibility, and that liberals just want to hand people an easy life through entitlement programs and other welfare measures. But what I found to be the case is that conservatism in America today too often blames other people for its problems. It's always the Mexicans, or the gays, or the Democrats, or other countries.
Furthermore, I met people who challenged my point of view. I met strong women who believed in choice and equality. I met GLBT students who were every bit as decent and hardworking as I was. And I also met a vast array of people who were different from me -- in their faiths, in their philosophies, in the skin colors and nationalities.
Then came the events of Sept. 11. This was when I truly "left home."
I saw the consequences of extremist thought, and worse than that, I saw a little of it in myself. These are the wages of thinking that you know what is best for everyone.
My political thoughts skewed leftward as the world changed around me. I left the church I was raised in when the pastor advocated for the invasion of Iraq. Before long, I found myself protesting a war that I felt we had no business going into -- holding a sign with a bunch of people that I had always scoffed at in my former days.
I woke up one morning to discover that the person I was before I left home was completely opposed to everything I used to believe.
My brother, on the other hand, has been to college and has moved out of his parents' house, but I don't feel like he has ever truly "left home." His views remain the same as his parents, and his wife's, and his wife's parents.
Compounding the problem, I feel he hasn't been inspired in the way that I was by my wife to take on new responsibilities and new challenges. Every decision he makes in life is the safe one.
First he was reliant on my parents' support. And at the point where I resolved to break away from that, he instead clung to his future wife's family, working for them and allowing them to pay for his school and expenses. It wasn't until he was married that he gave my mom back her credit card.
He has the same friends he had in grade school. I don't even talk to the people I knew in college save for one. He married the first girl he held hands with. I chose a woman who challenges me intellectually and makes me want to be a better person. He doesn't leave his bubble -- financially, spiritually, socially or politically. I enjoy leaving my comfort zone and talking to people who disagree with me.
Our choices and priorities have been vastly different.
Even so, talking politics is not something we avoid. I know he is a conservative for the most part and he knows I am what most would call a liberal. We both make an effort to stay informed and remain respectful whenever we talk about issues or current events.
For weeks now I've been talking to him about Barack Obama's fiscal conservatism, his consensus-based approach to the issues that divide us and his belief in the responsibility we have to our fellow Americans.
Far from a big-government liberal, Obama is a good government kind of politician. He doesn't want government to be bigger than it needs to be to become more invested in people and their dreams.
And furthermore, unlike some Democrats, I tell him, he knows that there are some things that government cannot do. It's up to individuals. But individuals can be strengthened and lifted up when government does its job the way it should.
He seemed to be open to all of this. Then, shortly after Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama, my brother came out with his own decision -- and it was in favor of John McCain.
He said he believed that both men would make good presidents, and that he disagrees and agrees with both in nearly equal measure.
I made one last plea to him. I said as respectfully as I could that, as Colin Powell said, when you have two men who would each make good presidents, what you have to ask yourself is which man is the right man for the time that we find ourselves in.
McCain has been a distinguished Senator, I said, but I feel that his time is over. Obama's time is just beginning. This is more than an age thing, I said. It's about good ideas and good timing. I restated my points about Obama's views on the role of government as I have explained before.
I finished by saying that this would be my final word on the subject and that if he didn't want to add anything to our discussion, then that would be it.
At this point, I think he misunderstood my tone. He got quite defensive. He said I wasn't respecting his conclusion.
In the end, I can't begrudge him his vote. As hard as this may be for me to admit to myself, maybe this is the right vote for him to make at this point in his life. If you have very few real responsibilities in life, and if you've never really experienced a problem that someone else -- a parent, an in-law, etc. -- couldn't help you get out of, then why not make the same choice?
As for me and my house, we have struggled. We know what it is to go without. We know what it means to give everything you've got to your career and your life and still not have your checkbook in the black at the end of the week.
I was once like him, but I'm going to stop short at saying that he will once be like me. We all live very different lives. What is right for me may never be right for him. Although I suspect that when life puts the test to him, his perspective may broaden in a way similar to what happened to me.
I take some comfort in one of the tenets of Buddhism -- the inevitability of change. To some, change is a mere slogan. To me, it's the law of the universe. Everything changes. You can't stop it.
Whether it's political or personal, whether it's an individual or a country, things always change. You're not the same person today as you were yesterday, and the country you went to bed in is not the same country that you wake up in.
I hope that you are able to find common ground in this election with those who you hold most dear. I believe that the candidate I support is capable of achieving great things that will benefit even those who did not support him. But that is not as important as reaching a good balance between you and the people you love.
Politics is personal, they say. I used to think that I had found a good balance there. It's been a long time since something related to politics has bothered me this much.
My brother is voting for McCain, and it hurts.