Every once in awhile, I post that I don’t understand our conservative brethren- the people on the other end of the political divide one way or another. Sometime they scare me, but a lot of the time, they just cause massive amounts of cognitive dissonance. These are my friends, my family. They are generally good people, generally intelligent; but yet they seem to be so indifferent to actively hateful towards people who they don’t personally know.
This last weekend, I went to my sister’s wedding. My mom had to pick me up from the airport, and we had quite a drive to get to the house. So we talked in the car. I told my mom about the books I was reading, more specifically about the Quiverful movement. The conversation was a little surreal, paraphrased, it went like this:
Me: The Quiverfull is loosely aligned with the Dominionist movement: they want a Christian theocracy
Mom: What would be so bad about that?
Me: *goggles for a bit, gets a hold of myself* Well, personally, I guess I would be against a group of people that likes to refer to me as a disease, a plague, and an enemy to get into power.
Mom: No Christian says that.
Me: Mom, I’m a secular humanist, bisexual and a feminist. Yes, they do. James Dobson, Pat Robertson, all of these types- I’m something that’s, I don’t know, a contaminate or demon or something.
Mom: Well, yeah, I guess they do say some of that stuff. But they don’t mean you, honey, they mean people who are leading the movements.
Me: They don’t seem to make that distinction
Mom: Well, then those people aren’t true Christians. This country was founded by Christians, you know, to be a Christian nation.
Me: Aw, come on mom, you don’t really believe that, do you?
Mom: Yes, they were.
Me: Mom, most of the founding fathers were Deist, and they probably wouldn’t have even been that if they would have lived in modern times. And if that was the case, why’d they put freedom of religion right in the 1st Amendment? *continues to talk about the Founding Fathers, citing books, quoting people, et cetera*
Mom: Where did you hear all of this?
Me: You did send me to college, we learn stuff there.
Mom: Oh look, a distraction (not literally said)
My mom is a good person, generally. She works as a nurse and she really tends to bond with her patients. She was the one who taught me about random kindness, and she really lives it in ways small and large (donating her time and money, and just being nice to people around her). She’s also an intelligent woman. But yet, when she listens to people talk about “feminists” “secular humanists” et cetera as the enemy, there is a disconnect- she doesn’t think “Yeah, my daughter’s evil”; she thinks “Yeah, those people are evil”. And I’m afraid of that- I’m afraid of how easily they support this language and these actions without thinking about who they hurt.
The second story is from my new in-laws. This week, they finally came for dinner and we had a very nice time. At the end of dinner, I went to my computer to pull up some information, and I temporarily got sucked into the internet, specifically Pandagon. I read one of the health horror stories to Hubby, and Mrs. Hubby’s mom heard me. This touched off a huge fight. I’m not talking about a debate about health care, I’m talking about a full-out, screaming fight. Hubby’s very, very passionate about this because he’s seen our friends lives be effected dramatically by it. I’m passionate about it because I see it as a matter of justice. But for as passionate as we are about health care reform, they are the exact opposite in not letting the government anywhere near it.
During that fight (during which such topics as why Hubby and I had to be lying about our friends being unable to have health care, and why illegal Mexicans are destroying hospitals) Hubby asked Mr. Hubby’s dad if he would pay 50 dollars a month more so that everyone could get health insurance. Just 50 dollars, and we’d have no uninsured. Mr. Hubby’s Dad said he absolutely would not: that is his money, and they don’t deserve it.
That was pretty much the point that I wanted them out of my house. 22,000 people die a year because we don’t have health insurance: he’s basically saying that 22,000 people’s lives are not work 600 dollars a year to him. They’re lives are not worth less than a dollar to him; they don’t deserve it.
My mother-in-law is a nice woman. She just donated an entire day to Habitat for Humanity, and made sure to bring my brother-in-law so he could learn about community responsibility. She works with the American Cancer Foundation. Individually, she’s helped Hubby and I out a lot as we’re trying to get our feet on solid ground. My father-in-law is also a good person. He does work very hard to make sure his family is safe, and well-cared for. He donates to charity, and he doesn’t advertise it. Again, I wonder how such good people can be so indifferent to hostile to people they can’t see face to face, or if they do see them face to face, they ignore or deny anything to suggest that everything isn’t hunky-dory with their current beliefs.
It’s easy for them to see “us” as monsters, and for some liberals it’s easy enough to see “them” as monsters. But I know that conservatives aren’t monsters. When I think of them, I do think of my mom and my family. I suspect that even people like James Dobson care about their family and their friends. Even Dick Cheney loves his daughter. I wish there was some sort of real way to talk to each other, to come to some sort of conclusion about the nature of reality, and have our values come into some sort of alignment. But I just don’t see that happening, some days, and that’s frightening.
Finally, the question about health care has nothing to do with this post, but I wanted to ask it anyway. I’ve finished my preliminary internet research about health care. Would the internets like to see it, or do you want to wait until my paper is finished in its entirety?
Ah, conservative families. Love them and they drive you nuts, all at once. My dad’s a ginormous Republican, listens to Rush Limbaugh, gave me a Dr. Laura book last Xmas. Mom’s whole family is Mormon. My dad just crawled all up my ass the other day over a post on my blog about sexism in the aviation industry (he’s a pilot)…so I know how these things go, and I’m sorry you’re having to deal with it.
I think you make a good point, re: humanizing each other. I think in the end that’s all that can win it; poll numbers show that when people actually know and are friends with gay people, their support for gay marriage goes up. I know my own paganism/queerness/polyamory/feminism has been a seriously humanizing factor for my dad. He can’t quite believe that all feminists are evil baby-killers anymore, because his daughter is one. We can’t win over such deeply-held beliefs with just logic. We have to be human to each other. It’s easy to disregard a statistic, but harder to ignore the person who you care about and who is suffering.
And finally, yes! Moar information! I mean, post the paper too when it’s done, but information can never come too early or too often.
Since you’re a blogger, you *are* a leader by the standards of any theocratic takeover. It may be a selling point to nervous followers that ordinary people (like your relatives) aren’t targets, but it’s amazing how quickly leader is defined loosely. You should have asked your mom if she really wants to live in Iran.
My mom’s the same way as your mom. For her, anytime I mention *anything* bad about religion, specifically Christianity, she gets all defensive and tribal. When I first tried to explain why I’m a feminist to her, she asked the same tired questions of why I hated men and was this my way of telling her I was a lesbian. But I don’t see her as innately conservative so much as having no intellectual curiosity. And it’s really almost more than that; on a lot of things, she’s willfully ignorant. She doesn’t engage in information that will make her sad, or make her think. She may listen to my arguments but doesn’t hear them, and she ABSOLUTELY doesn’t seek out the reality of situations. So while she may (sometimes) vote Democratic, there’s always a disconnect between the hate speech directed at “feminists” or “liberals” and any possibility of me being part of that group.
I may be a blogger, but I’m a blogger that nearly no one reads, so that has to count for something
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“I’ve finished my preliminary internet research about health care. Would the internets like to see it, or do you want to wait until my paper is finished in its entirety?”
Raises hand. Count me in as someone who would be interested in reading your research. Complete or incomplete. I’m not picky.
Me three on wanting to see the research!
I don’t tend to clash with my more conservative family on such things because it’s just not worth the effort. My grandmother turns eighty this year and I will let her go to her grave without knowing that I’m a bisexual atheist. It would probably give her a heart attack. And my aunt tries to convert me often enough without explicitly stating my atheism (she’s a Jehovah’s Witness).
“No Christian says that.”
Boy, do I get this one. And then when I cite Xtians who have, in fact, said exactly that (whatever point it is I have raised) it shifts to “no good Xtian says that,” or “no real Xtian says that,” or “You’re just taking it wrong.”
Yeah, okay.
Same for “No Republican said that,” or “No Southerner said that,” or “No one really wants that” — i.e. to strip women of access to birth control.
Because if they don’t admit it, it doesn’t exist.
delagar, I suspect it’s more “I don’t (actively) believe that, so therefore people I admire and respect don’t.” So since they don’t consider stripping access to birth control something to spend time on, surely that nice Rev. Dobson doesn’t really mean it. It’s just a thing he says.
I can tell you why most whites don’t like blacks and hispanics, but you aren’t going to like it.
Ah, hell, I’ll tell you anyway:
Blacks: We just don’t.
Hispanics: They are here and we want them to be not here.
The healthcare reform bill had a chance before the debate was racialized. Now that it is increasingly being portrayed as taking from whites to give to two racial groups who they can’t stand, the bill is toast.