Years ago I hated having any sort of political discussion with my grandmother.<\/p>\n
I won’t say that I was then the raving progressive that I am today; over the past decade my politics have moved steadily — and progressively — to the left. It’s not a reaction to the Bush Crime Syndicate, per se<\/i>, but a recognition that there are profound<\/i> problems with the social fabric in this country, where the chasm between the haves and the have-nots is widening to dangerous proportions and threatens the American dream.<\/p>\n
My grandmother comes from a different time and a different generation.<\/p>\n
She was about as rabid a right-wing Republican as one could get.<\/p>\n
She hated the Clintons a decade ago. She knew, just knew<\/i>, that Hillary Clinton had had Vince Foster murdered. She railed against President Bill Clinton; he was a terrible<\/i> president and brought shame upon the country.<\/p>\n
I discovered a little more than five years ago that her political views were shaped entirely<\/i> by what she listened to. The radio in her kitchen was on constantly<\/i>, and it was tuned to the right-wing talk radio station.<\/p>\n
The radio died. Her political stridency for the right-wing talking points parroted by Sean Hannity and his ilk faded.<\/p>\n
I’ve tried exposing her to a heavy dose of NPR. The thinking being that if right-wing radio makes her talk like a Rush Limbaugh dittohead, then NPR will make her talk like Scott Simon. It hasn’t worked.<\/p>\n
But!<\/p>\n
My grandmother doesn’t hate Hillary Clinton these days.<\/p>\n
At least… not all of the time.<\/p>\n
She had no idea who’s running for President, except<\/i> for Senator Clinton.<\/p>\n
She gets upset when the news attacks Clinton. “They’re being unfair and mean to her!” she’ll say.<\/p>\n
Then thirty seconds later, she’ll say, “I wish Hillary would get out of politics altogether.”<\/p>\n
It’s a strange, weird, whiplash-inducing ride she’ll take people on.<\/p>\n
She’s excited that there is a campaign going on, even if she’s not exactly sure how it works.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, she still likes Bush. I don’t think I’ll ever break her of that.<\/p>\n
Even if I do sometimes sneak through calling him “Petulant Bush,” saying it very quickly so she doesn’t pick up on the slam. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
That’s me — tricksey and false. \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Years ago I hated having any sort of political discussion with my grandmother. I won’t say that I was then the raving progressive that I am today; over the past decade my politics have moved steadily — and progressively — to the left. It’s not a reaction to the Bush Crime Syndicate, per se, butContinue reading “On My Grandmother and Politics”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[273,159,258,4108],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-george-bush","tag-grandmother","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-politics","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}