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I called my dad the other day to invite him over for dinner. He luuh-huuvs a free meal.I knew it was a risky move calling him for any reason this close to the presidential election. As it turns out, even I didn’t know how right I’d be. Apparently with McCain down as much as 14% in some polls, his die-hard supporters are whipping themselves into a panic-induced frenzy, spewing the most stupid, bigoted, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing bullshit sewage they can possibly dream up in their tiny little minds. (I am certaily not smug about Obama’s position. I wouldn’t count out anybody in this race, yet.)
My dad almost instantly began bating me, saying things like: “Liberals are hell-bent on destroying this country and I just don’t understand why!” The only thing my dad loves more than a free meal is a good argument.
We spent the next hour—and I’m not exaggerating—screaming at each other over the phone about the national political scene, me on Barack Obama’s side and him on John McCain’s.
The argument reached its crescendo with him yelling, “WHAT IS IT THAT YOU GET FROM THE GOVERNMENT, ANYWAY? HUH? WHAT?”
Even though I’ve known him my whole life, I was dumbfounded.
“NOTHING!” I yelled back. “I get exactly jack from the government!”
I then went on to holler that in the last six months or so, what with the price of gas and food going up so much, we have virtually no disposable income, which is true. We’ve all but stopped going out to eat. There are no movies. There’s no going to any outdoor festivals this fall. We don’t want to waste the gas or tempt ourselves with the offerings.
We have to carefully budget out “extras” like new clothes for the kid and home improvement supplies from each of my husband’s paychecks, but only after we pay the bills and do the grocery shopping, which I now plan around the weekly grocery fliers and the coupons that I cut out of the Sunday paper.
I’m not bitching—lord knows there are plenty of people on this planet in far worse shape than we are—but I can definitively state that our family is worse off today than eight years ago.
Dad still came over for dinner and it was actually a pleasant visit; he seemed to have gotten everything out of his system, at least for a little while.
That hasn’t stopped him from flooding my email inbox with every single bit of bizarre, myth-filled conservative spam that’s been swirling around the country like turds in a giant cesspool for weeks: Obama’s an Arab! He’s a muslim! He palls around with terrorists! And most absurd—He’s under the control of Al Qaieda! It seems hard to believe, but these people are just as terrified of Obama getting into office as my “progressive” friends and I are of McCain playing engineer to the Bush train wreck.
What’s also both amusing and frightening is that neither McCain nor Palin are able to stop their own constituents from vomiting their retarded bile in public.
I am so proud of my country for finally moving forward. And I’m horrified for those who would drag us back into the ignorant shadows.
