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IMO, at least, I feel like I was raised in a really good family (even though my parents are divorced). Both of my parents, and my step-parents, too, have a very firm understanding of what justice means in America. None of them would even think of voting Republican (although my step-dad is slightly farther to the right than most of us- kind of an Eisenhower-type of guy. He's a good guy, though. Same with my mom's father).
Anyway, my girlfriend's family are supposedly moderate Republicans. At least her sister and mother are- or, were, as the case may be. They're good folks, too, for the most part.
But the sister's husband is a gun freak. On the 4th of July, the last time I actually saw him, we all got together to see fireworks. My girlfriend and I went outside the house and saw him coming back from his car. He said something about "accidently leaving his gun" in the car. I think he was trying to set me off because we've had gun discussions before, and I let it be known to him that in civilized societies people don't carry guns around. So, anyway, I asked him "What do you have a gun for?", and I can't remember how he responded, something about protecting himself, probably.
We've had other run ins, too. I told him about Bush's connections to the Saudis and he ended up getting really angry and saying something like "You're just trying to destroy the Bush administration."
Then just a few nights ago we all went out *without* the husband, and we got into another pretty heated discussion, me and my girlfriend "against" her mother and sister. They had nothing, truly, and just in general hardly knew anything. It was funny because both of them had been saying how they're leaning toward Kerry, but then suddenly after the debates they said they were probably voting for Bush. My girlfriend and I knocked them around for awhile, got them down to "Bush is just a stronger leader" and then let it go.
I just have a suspicion that the husband has been influencing them.
My girlfriend cried after that, too. She knows she's kind of losing her family, losing respect for them. That's gotta be really difficult for her, because I know how *I* am just in feeling that my country is going down the drain. With her, her family's going to the darkside.
This is hard for both of us, though. I have to be careful not to lash out at them too much.
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