A surprisingly refreshing Family Christmas gathering . . .

[zbdent]

I had steeled myself for the inevitable "you hate Bush" bash when I started down to my "ancestral home", the "Arkansas" portion of Pennsylvania. ('bout half an hour east of Pittsburgh, to be a little more precise). Hunting, coal, strip mining country.

Although never actually coming out and saying so, three relations tended to SEEM like they would be Bush backers. (Two hunter/NRA types, and the third loved to send me those e-mails from the joke bbs's, which tended to attack liberals/anybody not Bush on occasion).

Lo and behold, the one relative I expected to bait me into an "argument" decided not to come up with anything political to say.

A second, not quite as vocal, but expected to lean Bush (since he owned his own small business), actually surprised me with a lead-in of something which questioned the veracity of some Bush propaganda. ( !!! ) I had a spirited dialogue which ended up informing him of many of Bush's failings. One thing that "bothered" him was the fact that there was the video of "Jessica Lynch's rescue", but there wasn't a clip of a US military person pulling Saddam Hussein out of the "spider hole". He agreed with me that the "news" orgs would be playing that ad nauseum, if it were there. This is the guy I really expected to chew me a new one on bashing Bush, and yet he believes that Bush took out Saddam because "Saddam was trying to kill his daddy".

A third relative decided not to say anything political, especially since he had been laid off for the second time (third?) in the weeks leading up to Christmas (with two young children, but good heads on the husband and wife's shoulders).

Hope springs!

[roguevalley]

1. Good for you. Its hard work changing a lifetime of habit. :)