Last night I had the pleasure of having dinner with my uncle. I'm sure you all have a relative like him: working class, likes beer and football, and--despite the fact that the rest of your family isn't--kind of a bigot.
We were discussing the election, and he is voting for McCain. The conversation started out well enough, in terms of it's content. He was voting for McCain because he thought he was "more experienced," because he thought McCain "deserved" it for fighting in Vietnam, and other distinctly non-Wingnutty things.
Somewhere around the potatoes though, things took a left turn into crazy town.
It started when I told him that I didn't watched cable news a lot because I found it to be incredibly biased and sensationalized. He responded that of course it was biased--against McCain! This turned into a rant about how my opinions were uninformed and naive because I don't watch cable news and listen to talk radio, which are apparently necessary for having a well-rounded opinion on politics.
Then we got to the meat of the conversation--he brought out the middle name. "Barack Hussein Obama, Kaitlin. Barack Hussein Obama!" He shouted, as if the fact that Obama's name was vaguely-ethnic sounding was supposed to scare me into not voting for him. "So?" I responded, completely bewildered. "Isn't, like, the first decision made about your identity that you have no control over what your name will be? Why does that say anything about him as a person?" This of course launched him into repeating Obama/Osama over and over again, like the magic power of the fact that they rhymed would show me the truth.
It was all downhill from there: haven't seen his birth certificate, went to school in a madrassa, insulting to America after 9/11, friends with terrorists, socialist, voted to put aborted babies in a closet in the Illinois state Senate.
This last one confused the hell out of me, because while I had heard references to it on this site, I had never researched it because it was obviously complete and total bullshit. He seized on my limited knowledge of proof that I had no idea about anything because this was so obviously true! When I asked him to pull it up on the internet for me to read about, he said he had to watch the game.
I said it was time to drive home.
Tomorrow morning, I am waking up at six to vote at seven before going to work. I am bringing my cousin, who just turned eighteen, to vote for the first time with me. We are both voting for Obama, and in the same precinct as my Uncle. We are very happy that we are going to cancel out his vote.
We are almost there, everyone. We are so close to victory and we have 24 hours left to endure this madness and to make this happen. Don't become complacent, don't despair, don't gloat. If you haven't voted already, do so tomorrow and to quote Jeff Lieber, stay the fuck in line!
The next twenty-four hours are crucial, and they are about the phone call I want to make on January 21st, asking my uncle how he liked watching Barack Hussein Obama take an oath (on a Bible) to uphold and defend the Constitution.
Let's do this thing.