Susi Franco is an OffTheBus grassroots correspondent. Each week she contributes a campaign journal documenting her life out on the trail.
I like to think of myself as an American activist first and member of a specific political party second; what is best for the country is always my primary agenda and I strive to put partisan considerations on the back burner. Having articulated that, at my son's wedding in Florida Saturday night I unwittingly ran smack into the brick-wall ideology of the rigid right, head-first at about 100 mph.
Frankly, politics were the last thing on my mind, a rare circumstance seeing as how every day begins with coffee and voracious scanning of 8 to 10 pundit newsletters and websites for politico-info-nugget updates.
I was nervous about the nuptials, excited, anticipatory and running very late thanks to my firstborn son, who was rushing home from work and responsible for driving us to the venue.
After a sweet, poignant ceremony and a storm of blinding digital flashes capturing the adorable couple in their special moment, we milled about with our various adult beverages, meeting our respective new family members. At the buffet table I could not help but hear a conversation of my nascent in-laws.
"Well, everybody's talking about Sarah Palin and her not having any ex-PEER-i-unce, and I'm sayin' who evuh hearrrd of Bah ROCK Oh BA-UM AH, until this last spring ? I mean, whey-ah did he coooome from and what has he evah doooone?", asks my new cousin, who shall remain nameless in the interest of marital longevity for my second son.
His companion forwards "I know, and it's like, who ever even HEARRRRRD of him befor-ah? I just think he's DANE-gerous, has that Muzzz-lim name and all, there's gotta be some stuff there that just ain't good for Ah-meerrr-i-cuh", she theorizes.
The political activist me is all set to jump in the phone booth of my fervor and don my Armani super-cape, emerge full of Democratic zeal and educate these unknowing folks re: the facts. Ahem, the real facts, not the shadowy shibboleth of neo-con quasi-rationale. (Is my slip showing there?)
Wading into the midst of "I really like her, she's real folks, ya know ?", I carefully explained Gov. Palin was just found complicit in abuses of power in her administration vis a vis TrooperGate, certain this would temper my new familia's enthusiasm for things aw-shucks-Alaskan. I mentioned Gov. Palin's 27 million in pork barrel spending and the fact that she and her husband were quite active in AIP (not to mention hero-worship of rabidly anti-American Joe Vogler), to cecede Alaska from the union, certain the cleansing fire of truth would baptize them into at least questioning thier position.
I was wrong.
I was the bewildered recipient of exasperated (if somewhat polite) sighs and stares, then outright ranks-closing. Suddenly the deviled eggs were off-limits to me. I got it. They could talk about the Democratic candidate in whatever disparaging and wildly inaccurate manner they chose, mimic-ing the latest viral email-propaganda forward they'd read, but the actuality, the reality of the news I offered simply held no relevance because it did not mesh with their perceptions, which they embraced with the same conviction they hold their religious beliefs in.
A nasty sense of 2000 déjà vu washed over me. I was both intrigued and disturbed by power of the brain-washing these folks had succumbed to. I realized that no amount of fact would de-program this crowd. Deflated, I suspiciously sniffed the Kool-Aid.
It wasn't that I expected them to put Obama-Biden bumper stickers on their F-150's, only that I hoped for a more balanced view of the political landscape and an informed dialogue. They deserved to have the facts. I have greatest reverence for facts and regard their reality as comforting, incontrovertible; issues of MSM bias aside.
Having a truly Quixote-esque moment, I grasped that it just wasn't the time to pursue this quest. This windmill could not be railed at long enough to make any dent. Besides, the potato salad was dwindling rapidly. Resolved to tuck my tongue back into its holster, I endeavored not to stand out so sorely as both a Yankee and (God help us) a Liberal. The group gave me that "Oh, crap, what have we married into?!" look and collectively moved a few steps further from me, as if to safely distance themselves from my contagion.
I endeavored to see, really see these people, part and parcel of the same crowd who had ensconced all-hat-no-cattle Dubbya into the Oval office and were thereby at least passively responsible for the mire we now find ourselves fanny deep in. I wondered what sort of cataclysmic event had to unravel before their very eyes so that they, too, could see. I guessed our current economic free-fall wasn't enough to make them question their choice. I supposed the calls to "kill him" at recent rallies set off no alarms, shook no crumbling bricks loose from their mortar. I realized the negative, fact-devoid campaign McCain-La Palin has sadly chosen to pilot is strangely vindicating, even attractive to this demographic.
Forlorn, I cut myself a small slice of fondant-enclosed wedding cake and couldn't help likening it to the GOP race: ostensibly, artistically composed on the outside, and full of unhealthy and systemically threatening goo on the inside, waiting to become an executable program once consumed.
I tearfully watched the happy couple drive away into the night, cans clunking merrily behind their vehicle, on to their new life together, leaving me to contend with nouveau in-laws and political convictions, struggling to keep the two separate, like church and state. My oldest son put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed, saying" Let's go home, Mom, party's over."
Not quite yet. I refuse to give up, even in the face of stolid McCain-ery; there is hope.
There is still hope that this time, America will choose wisely.
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