Flying late last week, 3 back to back flights. 2 or 4 am I was up late, annoying the steward and stewardess in the galley by standing in their already cramped space, because I couldn't take the seat back 5 inches from my face and no way to move at all. I'm sure most of us who have flown long haul have been there.
Feeling my oats (all I had left at that point), I brought the conversation round to politics.
Steward A was outraged at outsourcing. So my first comment was that outsourcing was improving the economy and national security of some country, but it surely wasn't ours. A long time flight attendant, sweet and delightful, he was clearly a union guy and a democrat. We both went on a bit about social justice and injustice. After about 15 minutes, the talk drifted round to DADT and gay marriage; I made it clear that I opposed the former and was an outspoken proponent for the latter. We had a great discussion about respective friends and spouses, and the clear need for long-standing partners to have equal rights. We agreed we needed to elect more and better democrats, who wouldn't fold under the pressure of a filibuster. His comment was if the republicans really wanted to filibuster, let them, and make their idiocy obvious to the whole country.
Stewardess B was a fairly complacent and smug (and obviously uncomfortable with the talk about social justice). I pegged her pretty clearly as conservative. Turned out she was libertarian. I picked first the points I was pretty sure we could agree on; that the government had no role in our bedrooms or in our wombs; people needed to be able to make their own decisions about love and reproduction. I listened as she told me about her elderly mom, who was facing hip replacement with limited resources. Then I gently turned the conversation back to social justice; I said we should elect representatives who would treat well the least among us. She was very quiet at that point, but I really saw the wheels turning, that just maybe some government was not a bad thing, if the people in charge really cared. Or maybe I just thought I saw the wheels turning, because it was 2 or 4 am.
I'm in it for the long haul.