Another Conversion Story (And Some Comedy At The End)
I have a friend who, when I first met him about a year ago, called himself a "Conservative," said he likes Glenn Beck and routinely gets his news from Drudge, and said he was all into "traditional values" and religion and all that stuff. He's one of those rare people who is able to have a political converstaion without getting upset and stroming off hurling epithets over his shoulder, so we've had many political discussions. When the primaries started, he became a hardcore Paulbot. He even said that if Ron Paul lost the nomination, he'd vote for Obama because Mitt Rmoney is "pure evil." Shortly after Ron Paul lost the nomination, my friend started referring to himself as a Libertarian and saying he was going to vote for Gary Johnson, even though I found that in our conversations, he was starting to talk about Obama in mostly positive ways.
Well, the other night he told me that he was going to vote for Obama because he couldn't stand the thought of Rmoney winning, especially if Gary Johnson votes were the margin by which he won. He also has been overwhelmingly glowing when he speaks of Obama over the last month or so. A while back, I told him the story of how, when I first met my wife, she said she was a conservative Republican, but after being with me for a while and actually hearing the other side of the argument for the first time, she converted to a full-fledged Democrat and liberal (this is the main reason why her cravenly right-wing, Faux News-loving father will never fully like me). I relayed a story my wife once told me, that when she was in school going for her Masters Degree in History, one of her professors told her that the more education she got, and the more she actually saw of the real world, the more she would realize that her conservative Republican beliefs were bullshit.
The other night at the gym, my buddy said to me, "You remember how you told me that the more people experience real life, the more liberal they become? I'm starting to notice that that's true." So, while he still has some Libertarian tendencies, I think I've actually scored yet another conversion, and it's the result of simply being able to have reasonable, logical, mutually respectful conversations with someone who will actually listen.
Now for the comedy part I promised. Last night, he checked the Drudge Report yet again, just for a laugh. Every headline was trumpeting polls that Rmoney was either ahead or tied in. Then there was a report about how some poll showed Rmoney TIED in Michigan. I about fell out of my chair laughing at that one. Michigan? The State that Rmoney has been doing so well in that he packed up and left MONTHS ago? The State that Nate Silver says has a 98.7% chance of going to Obama? I told him to pull up Nate Silver's site and get some ACCURATE infor, and he did. Then my buddy actually said, "You know, I never noticed it before, but the Drudge Report REALLY IS horribly biased." It's fun to see someone who's actually beginning to see the light for the first time.
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