I spent the Thanksgiving holidays with my girlfriend at her sister's house. My girlfriend and I talk politics fairly often, since she knows that it's very important to me. We also share many of the same progressive views on most if not all political issues we've discussed. However, that is not the case with her parents.
To their credit, her mother and father are nice folks. They've raised three intelligent, friendly children, the other two of whom I would describe as left-of-center (though I haven't had many political conversations with the siblings). My girlfriend's family -- both her parents and her siblings -- have always been very cordial and welcoming to me whenever I've come to visit them. I would also add that they're very good cooks, and have made some great Thanksgiving Day fare. When it comes to politics, however, there's a much bigger divide.
The Father is a very, very conservative individual, and the Mother is also fairly conservative -- though I would argue that she might be considered conservative-by-osmosis through her husband's political activism. He listens to right-wing radio all the time while driving, he's a devotee of FOX News, and ever since Barack Obama's inauguration, he has been heavily involved in tea party protests. He and his wife even traveled to Washington DC for Glenn Beck's 9/12 project.
So, I think it's safe to say that my girlfriend's Father and I sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum. I had been a little worried beforehand how the holidays might turn out if he and I had gotten into a conversation about politics. It was certainly possible that the tone of debate could get heated and turn into a less-than-pleasant argument. I imagine most progressive citizens have the same concerns when interacting with conservative friends or relatives. But as I found out, the holiday weekend went just fine -- and we did have multiple conversations about politics.
At some point during our stay, An Inconvenient Truth came on TV. I had already seen it previously, and wasn't paying much attention since I was working on my fiction novel at the time. Both the Mother and Father casually claimed that Al Gore was presenting information "as though it were proven fact" -- it, of course, being global warming, suggesting that there was a real debate about whether it was real, and if it was man-made. My gut reaction was pretty visceral, since I'm well aware of the fact that among the scientific community, there really isn't any debate about human activity's contribution to global warming and its effects on the environment. All I could say was, "I'm pretty sure it's man-made." My girlfriend's Father came back by showing me a graph on the internet in which he tried to prove that global warming is a cyclical phenomenon. I pointed out that this graph did not show any appreciable decline in either carbon dioxide levels or global temperature in the past 10,000 or so years, nor did it account for what could have caused a rise in temperature 100,000 years ago. I asked him where he got the information -- he said, "A tea party website." He also mentioned that Glenn Beck had talked about it on his show.
He then moved to the topic of the 5,000 hacked e-mails, spending the next twenty or so minutes on the computer searching for information about how scientists engaged in a global warming hoax (using, once again, tea party websites as a primary source). In that span of time, all he could find was one e-mail from Phil Jones in 1998. I literally pulled up those links shown above in less than five minutes, each of which completely contradicts his claims. I thought it was interesting that in twenty-plus minutes, all he could find was one e-mail that, at its very worst, might have suggested poor methodology used by a single scientist in presenting results eleven years ago. He didn't prove that 5,000 e-mails showed evidence of impropriety or tampering with data, or that the scientific community was engaged in a widespread, sinister, undercover hoax.
A couple of days later, in random conversation, he brought up how he was worried that the government was taking the first step to take away people's guns. He claimed that a gun ban in Australia led to increases in homicide rates. So, once again, we went to the internet. The article he pulled up, actually, showed the exact opposite -- since 1996 when a gun buyback law was put in place, homicide rates (and suicide rates) in Australia went down. I didn't bother to say anything more about it, because I felt the evidence suggested by the article spoke for itself (and the evidence from this article corroborates it).
From there, he went on to show me an essay posted on the far-right website American Thinker, which had quite a lot to say about how Obama and ACORN are bringing death to the American economy, how Robert Reich supposedly hates white construction workers, and how Democrats are destroying the "traditional" way of life. The whole time I was reading this, I just had to laugh, wondering how somebody could possibly read this material and just accept everything in it as undeniable truth. My girlfriend, who was keeping me company, had a similar reaction.
I decided to press him on ACORN, asking him that if our Congress could vote to defund their organization (which amounts to an unconstitutional bill of attainder), why haven't they voted to defund an organization like Blackwater, in which its owner is alleged to have committed murder? This was actually one of my prouder moments in the discussion, as I got him to tacitly admit that maybe they should take Blackwater's money away. Afterwards, he brought up a lot of other topics, including how he believed that 2 million people showed up in DC for Glenn Beck's protest; that cap-and-trade would wreck the economy; that Obama has been "sucking up" to Hugo Chavez; that war prisoners should not be tried in criminal courts; and that a trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would put citizens at risk because lawyers defending him could be American jihadists. When I told him that we've held multiple criminal trials for suspected terrorists in the past, I asked him to tell me when he had ever heard of a suspected terrorist's lawyers going on TV to announce "Death to America." He couldn't say.
To be honest, I was really fascinated by how this man's uber-conservative mind operated, even though I strongly disagreed with pretty much every political thing he said. One thing I noticed about these interactions was that he would jump from unrelated point to unrelated point, usually after I asked him a question. When we talked about ACORN, he moved on quickly to national security. When we talked about national security, he moved to welfare. When we talked about welfare, he moved to civil liberties. It was as though he was never quite comfortable or secure talking about the same topic for more than thirty seconds. My guess is that he doesn't debate these issues with politically motivated people who have differing political philosophies very often, especially given his participation in the tea party movement.
I also have to mention that I was pretty amazed that we were able to hold these discussions without raising our voices, without coming after each other with insults or volatile invective (at least, towards each other). I was worried before the holiday that we would get into a shouting match. It didn't happen. I thought it was far more useful to let him speak his piece, and then at the opportune moment, ask a thoughtful question and debate his points on their merits in a calm but reasoned tone, just presenting the facts as I understood them. It was then that I learned to fully appreciate Rachel Maddow's style of discussion, and how she could keep to it every single day of the week.
Anyway, I think he's otherwise a good guy when we're not talking about politics. One thing I realized about these discussions with my girlfriend's Father is that I wasn't going to change his mind, and he wasn't going to change mine. But that wasn't the point. I felt strong enough in my convictions and my understanding of politics that if I could hold a reasonable debate and present my arguments clearly and cogently, then that was good enough for me.
Nota bene: For any and all commenters, out of respect for my girlfriend's feelings (and mine), I ask that you kindly refrain from writing any personal attacks about her parents. Criticize the arguments, but not the people.
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Update (4:59 pm ET): I'm heading out to a holiday party, so I won't be able to respond to any further comments till much later. Thanks for the discussion so far.