"A true friend stabs you in the front" -- Oscar Wilde
Maybe it's exactly what we needed. Maybe it just takes some gunshot to loosen people up. I have long held that Republicans are humorless, but some of my pinch-lipped Red neighbors are actually cracking hunting jokes with me this week. It's the closest we've come to discussing politics since Joe from my kid's soccer team sneered "Go Bush" the day after the election.
So, thanks Dick. Maybe your beer-guzzling shoot-out will break the ice, so to speak, and give us all (minus Harry) something to laugh about together.
Soften the party lines and open up dialogue, it's something I've been trying to do since I moved to Oregon from New York City in 2000. Oregon is a purple state, i.e. a veritable hotbed of political issues, where seldom is heard a political word. At least not in mixed company.
Why do people avoid talking about the thing they are most passionate about when the other species is in the room? Is it the specter of lost friendships? When was the decision made that talking politics was taboo, off limits, and who made it anyway? They say don't talk religion or politics at work or with people close to you. I say bulls**t. I say there's no better place or better people with whom to engage in political discourse. And I don't just mean wisecracks about hunting shoot-outs. (Which admittedly, I can't get enough of. Larry David couldn't have made this stuff up!) I'm talking about plain old beer-drinking barbecue debate.
I wrote a book on this topic. Kind of. Actually, I published a book of email exchanges among friends -- three die-hard Republicans and me. We talked about issues! You know, things like education, bias in media, taxes, social spending, Iraq. We also discovered a way to use keyboard symbols to flip each other off, but the point is it's unheard of today in your average middle-class crowd. I forced conversation with three opposing views. We were diabolically opposed on everything (i.e., they were crazy) but still we discussed stuff. It was sometimes troubling, sometimes funny, always enlightening. And as disturbed as the three other characters are (we're all friends, btw, and I'm working on a sequel) I think it was a huge breakthrough that we had the conversations we did, name-calling and all. Score: 1 convert, 0 lost friendships.
There is a deafening absence of political debate in real life -- at least among the middle class, the Average Joes, the swing voters who make and break elections. No one in my two-kid, two-income suburb of Portland is afraid to tell me about his or her church or his or her baseball team (they are quite generous, in fact, with the Yankee barbs). They spew out all sorts of gossip about marital breakups, the downtown street project, whether or not they should have put a donut shop in the new library building. Then we all figure out in this sort of roundabout way through different cues and bumper stickers whether Bob is (R) or Sally is -- gasp -- (D) and that's how we know whether we can talk to the person or not.
What use are political "house parties," chat rooms, Air America, or liberal blogs if we're just patting each other on the back?
Let them shoot at each other all they want, but we should befriend conservatives. Now more then ever, while their heroes are hiding and plea-bargaining. Buy one a beer. Let them see we're not trying to kill babies or throw down Jesus or burn bibles in their front yards. Bill Clinton had unreal approval ratings with these exact same people, in the midst of impeachment, because he was able to do just that.
Make people talk, and listen to them. Accept what they say, but then question it. There are well-meaning people out there who don't want to bother with being informed so they watch Fox. It's a cry for help, reach out to them. Join their softball teams, let their kids play with your kids, coach their Little Leagues, teach their Sunday Schools. Maybe all they need is a little time, love, and shotgun shells.