Thanks

My father broached the subject slyly enough, saying "Did the elections come out the way you would like?" I said yes, figuring I had to be honest. He replied that he was scared of what the next 4 years would have been like if McCain had been elected with the prospect of extending what the last 8 had been like. I made a comment on how scary Palin was and he agreed with me. To my shock, and without him actually saying it, I came to the realization that my folks had voted for Obama. Hallelujah!

Then we went on to discuss something else not related to politics. Those couple of sentences were probably the longest political discussion that we ever had. My parents just did not talk politics when I was growing up. It wasn't that they didn't care. They always voted. But when you are struggling to make ends meet, the nuances of foreign policy or trickle-down economics just don't matter that much.

I know you shouldn't make assumptions about people. But with your folks, you figure you have 'em pegged well enough to at least predict who they would vote for.

I'm pretty sure that my parents voted for Reagan once, but I'm not positive. My father is a veteran of the Air Force and the Vietnam War. He's been active in the VFW. His social circle has always been farmers and mechanics, not professors and artists. My parents always have liked to live out in the country with a minimum of interaction by the government. If not Republican, they at least leaned libertarian, though I know for a fact that they would have no idea what that term means.

But my parents also taught us to respect people regardless of their race or their economic station in life. It would irritate some of my parents' friends because they would rub elbows with the people on the "wrong side of the tracks" just as easily as they would the mayor. Those people on the other side of the tracks had more in common with us and I'm sure my folks preferred their company. They rightly saw that we had more in common with the poor black or Hispanic person than we did with the rich white guy at the top of the hill.

The modern Republican party has successfully fooled a large portion of poor whites that they have more in common with oil barons and trust-fund babies than with the hard-working people working next door that might just happen to be a different color. Thankfully, and maybe I should have know this all along, my parents saw through this and made the right choice. Maybe the apple didn't fall as far from the tree as I had thought.

"It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength." -- Maya Angelou