A constant theme here in Kos-world is what to do with friends, neighbors, relatives who are lunatic fringe conservatives. Solutions range from just ignore them/change the subject, to run for your life, to fight to the death. I finally have come to the conclusion that there simply is no rational response to irrational behavior. I am not a quitter, but honest to God, how can otherwise intelligent people be so clueless?
First, some context. I live in the reddest of red states, but I live in a blue county. The combination of being a university town and a population that is 64% African American led to a 69% vote for Obama in 2012 when the state voted 55% for Romney. But this is the old South, the unrepentant South, the defiant South. Traditional conservative values: Tea Party need not apply. Thad Cochran won by 68% in the primary against Tea Party darling Chris McDaniel, then 71% in the runoff in this county. That race was a near tie statewide
So let me tell you about a conversation with my friend Camille that illustrates the contradictions in the conservative belief system.
I avoid talking politics, race or education with Camille. She has a Ph.D. in Educational Research. We were colleagues for a number of years. They were stressful times; it was complicated. I avoid talking about those days. She is a native of this area. Her grandfather was a cotton merchant with offices in London, New York and Greenville, Mississippi. His mansion was built at the turn of the 20th century and had all the luxuries of the day. His son, Camille's dad, was a modern farmer, educated at the state's land grant college in all the latest research in crop management. Her brother now farms the same land.
Camille was married briefly to another farmer. She worked in public education for nearly 40 years, retired with state retirement at age 60. She began drawing Social Security at the youngest age possible: 62. She receives a check each year from the earnings of her brother's farm, although she has never lifted a finger in the farming or in the business. Her mother used her inheritance for a down payment on a house for Camille when she was a young divorced mother. She inherited money when her grandmother died, when her grandfather died, when her mother died, when her father died. She inherited a better and bigger house when her dad died.
So last week we were talking on the phone. She had just finished talking about how she will be eligible for Medicare next year. I was talking about budget restraints at the university. She said that the country and the state were broke. She went on to say that soon the only people that will be able to afford college will be those that can afford the Ivy League. She said that the state needs to shut down the 4 regional universities because we can't afford them (she spent her career at two of those universities).
She went on to place the blame for our economic decline on poor people who "won't work" and "want everything handed to them". She went on to say this is not political.
What she doesn't get:
1. All the ways that she has had things handed to her all her life
2. The number of benefits she is receiving from state taxpayers
3. How comfortable her life is compared to the poor people she scorns
4. How conservative policies are robbing her inheritance and that of her children and grandchildren
5. How conservative policies are benefiting the rich, and she is no longer a part of that group
6. How benefits for baby boomers (which we have earned) are a bigger drain on the economy than welfare and food stamps
7. How the poor who won't work and live off those who do include her own son-in-law.
She is like so many, raised to believe that poor black people are keeping Mississippi at the bottom. Perhaps she sits too high to see how dismal it is at the bottom. But if the GOP remains in power here, soon she will find herself much closer to the bottom.