"Dear Bro: Once again you have no pulse on the common American. Perhaps some day you will start to listen to the truck driver, painter, bricklayer, housewife. You have to sit on the barstool and listen to the real people about the economy, gay rights, defense issues and abortion."
- E-mail from Alan Willard.
My brother Alan is somewhat younger than I, and brother Glen is a little older. Both are conservative Republicans. I am the in-between liberal brother. You know, l-i-b-e-r-a-l, that term which sounds like "pervert" or "sleaze" when used in political ads.
Both Alan, whom none of you know because he is in the auto business in Orlando, Florida and Glen, whom many of you know as the erudite cowboy lawyer from O'Brien's in Kyiv, favored President George Bush in last month's U.S. elections.
I went for the other guy.
The post-election surveys tell us that it really wasn't terrorism, the war in Iraq or even the economy that caused those slow-talking rural American folks to flood to the polls like souped-up ant colonies. It was the "family values" issue.
This has me confused: Whose values? And whose family?
Could it be that I am a low-life liberal, a minor league Anti-Christ who is spreading values that are best accommodated in porno magazines, or, for historical reference, at the last days of the Roman Empire. Am I Caligula in a Madison Avenue suit?
Should I be kept away from impressionable children? I never pretended to be all gauzy and Norman Rockwell-esque, but this is ridiculous. Heck, I dropped out of the free-love generation for lack of energy, and came to age long before the Me Generation.
I do admit to having questions of faith, but does that make me diabolical? Or does it make me simply curious? I wonder why in the 21st century the best chance for the world being blown up - or otherwise contaminated for a million years - rests in the hands of various religious zealots. Then, I wonder about America's own religious zealots.
My younger brother's e-mail to me was rather vitriolic, but that is okay, because he is a nice guy, even when he is talking in that boom-box voice at a decibel that could, on a still day, cause buildings to shake and little children to quiver. He learned it from Fox News.
My older brother is quieter, though can be just as unpleasant when talking partisan politics. It is a family trait, practiced most often at reunions and dinner table debates, back when people went to reunions and families actually had dinner together.
For the record, I have a sister named Joy, whom, I believe shares many, though not all, of my values. She is a caregiver and a care-doer, and has been all her life. Unlike the other three siblings, she actually goes to church - and participates.
My worry is that America is in an age of unreason. This has nothing to do with Charles Handy's progressive book on management, which contains some of the same wording, but has everything to do with social stagnation.
It appears that the one-time silent majority is on family values steroids. They glom on to conservative talk show palaver as if it were catnip for the soul. They are loud and they are righteous. But are they right?
I don't know. I only know what I believe.
For the record, this liberal feels that "real people" who can't afford daily necessities really don't care about who is sleeping with whom, regardless of gender. However, it is a fact that 11 states have passed laws banning gay marriage. To me, the issue seems like a distraction from real problems.
I'm against the death penalty, except in the narrowest of instances. I think stem cell research is a rather enlightened program, and, I agree with practically every law enforcement agency that a ban on assault rifles is not a violation of the U.S. Constitution. I think it is just good sense.
Call me crazy.
I believe in a woman's right to choose. This, to me, should be an out-of-bounds discussion topic for the male of the species, especially when drinking, sounding Taliban-like and pounding their chests like great silverback apes.
Years ago, I was called into a meeting with the Reverend Pat Robertson, the very rich and very conservative Christian fellow, by my boss, then-Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. Also in the meeting was Byrd's Judiciary Committee aide,
a Jew named Mike Epstein.
Robertson wanted to discuss the senator's position on abortion, but first, he wanted us to join hands and pray, something he had done with other senators as he made his rounds on Capitol Hill to argue against abortion rights.
Byrd refused until Epstein and I had left the room. But before we left, the senator said, "I'm happy to pray with you, but I have never asked my staff about their politics, much less their religion."
Until recently, I always felt the American tent was big enough for all of us. Lately, however, I have been feeling more the expatriate. It has nothing to do with living in Eastern Europe, for I think I would feel the same in the United States. This need not be.
For whatever reason, the election showed that 48 per cent of the American people don't feel as George Bush does. Whether you use the old math or the new math, my team lost. However, the election was not a mandate for anyone. It was a fairly narrow majority.
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