Politics and Religion

The two topics I was told repeatedly I should never bring up in conversation.  Which has probably led some to assume I was slower than average.  Mom had a quote for that, too: “Better to stay silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove any doubt.”

The first presidential race I remember was between a guy named “Nixon” and a guy from Minnesota named “Humphrey”.  Tubby filled me in on the details. 

                “His name is Hubert Humpdink Humphrey.  You have to use his whole name because he’s like a governor or something.”

This probably made some interesting conversation starters amongst my playmate cousins.  I was already well known for having a full vocabulary of all the “good words” and for leading the crew with my own early versions of TED Talks.

On the night of the election, it seemed the house was full.  I am not sure why everyone would have gathered at our house to watch our black-and-white TV with its fuzzy screen and a propensity to roll and flip the picture. 

The whole scene was confusing to me.  The adults were sitting around, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and watching some old white guy on TV talking about numbers and states.  When was the race? I had been hearing about the race for months.  When were Nixon and Hubert Humpdink Humphrey going to be on screen and start running as I had been promised?  I wanted to see the old men in their suits running in circles; obviously, it would be a race to the death at their age. 

Realizing I had been bamboozled with the whole promise of running for the presidency, I wisely kept my questions to myself.  I had already learned Mom’s quote about remaining silent.

Nixon won, of course, later raising Dad’s ire with his willy-nilly messing with the daylight savings time change.  This led to Dad sliding downhill for a few hundred yards and crawling back, losing Dad’s support during that time.

I watched the fall of Saigon with the same wide eyes that had watched injured soldiers carried out of the jungle on the evening news for all my life.  I was glad that no more of my cousins would go away to that scary place and come back different men than I had known.  Tubby was close to draft age by that time, and I had been worried.

Dad and Mom found Jimmy Carter hilarious.  His accent tickled him, and the news story about him on a fishing trip in a boat, being chased by a rabbit, sent them into hysterics.  I don’t think Dad thought of him as a farmer; raising peanuts without farm animals would have been what Dad considered a hobby farm. 

One night, another old white male anchorman told the nation that President Carter was suffering from hemorrhoids.  Dad looked over at Mom on the couch and told her, “Call the radio station, tell them Steve has hemorrhoids too; the country has to know.”

I don’t know why Cousin Steve was included in this; as far as I know, he wasn't suffering from any afflictions.  Dad had a habit of using sarcasm when he encountered something he found incredibly stupid. I refer to that piece of my genetic inheritance as my “inner sarcasta-bitch”. 

Dad found Reagan, “that old fart”, amusing.  He was a little taken aback when Reagan called ketchup a vegetable to save money on school lunches.

George Bush Sr. didn’t make much of an impression, one way or the other, with Mom and Dad.  Although Dad was proud of Desert Storm and the American show of force.  I don’t think Dad ever got over the embarrassment of Vietnam. 

My parents were of a different generation.  Dad lost a brother in World War II, fighting the Nazis.  Another brother served under Patton in the Army Tank Corps.  Mom had brothers who served in the military, losing one brother in Korea.  To them, the threat to democracy was real, and the price paid in service to their country was high. They knew the people who had fought and died to keep America safe from the threat of the enemy outside our gates.

I wonder now what they would have thought of today's news reports.  A country torn apart like never before by politics.  Families and friends are taking sides, unable to see past the political beliefs of the person they love.  Hippies in the sixties and early seventies protested the Vietnam War, but it never touched rural Minnesota to any extent.  The racial riots of the sixties, the fifties communist “cleansing” of Hollywood, none of it affected a small dairy farm in the middle of nowhere, Minnesota.

Now the anger and bitterness have swept into even the most isolated farmhouses.  Family ties and friendships are torn apart as we take sides for or against.  The evening news no longer reports; it seems to incite. I don’t remember what happened the day after Nixon and Humphrey’s “race”, or any day after any election.  But I can confidently say that the next morning, we all got up, ate breakfast, then went outside and did our chores. 

Neighbors still visited; family still stopped by or called; friends were still friends.  Mom and Dad didn’t have much education, but they knew that the world still turned, and family was still family, and friends were still friends, regardless of who won the race. 

Is it impossible to look past a person’s beliefs and responses and hold on to decades of friendship and love? Do we need to insulate ourselves in a group of people who only share our opinions?  What a dull world and what a wasted opportunity to learn and grow.

A woman, a mother, a widow of a veteran, a wife, someone’s daughter died in Minnesota.  I think we can all agree it was a tragedy.  We may have different opinions on whether it was justified, but as human beings, we can all agree it was a tragedy.  It is possible to agree on that and disagree on the facts of the matter before and after.  As human beings, we can mourn the extinguishing of the light of a fellow human without turning it into a cause for hatred to destroy our families and friendships. 

Illegitimi non carborundum  

(Don’t let the bastards grind you down.  Don’t let the negativity destroy you)