Reply #65: Anyone who still supports the GOP at this point is fair game IMHO.

[grace0418]

Do I hate them? I'd like to think I don't, but I probably do. At least in a broad sense.

But I can't hate all Republicans, I just can't. When I think of how difficult it has been for me to dig up the truth about any subject in the last 6+ years, I have a hard time hating some of the people who fell for the lies being fed to them. I had to work hard to uncover the truth, and I already knew something was wrong in the first place to even go out looking for it. And I live in a huge diverse city and know people from all over the world who have unique perspectives. I'm also relatively healthy, childless, and I only have one job. Can I really hate someone who lives in a small town, works two jobs, has three kids, a husband on disability and who's only source of information is what she hears at church or on the television (in little snippets between chores)? Maybe George Bush did seem like a nice, down to earth guy to her. Maybe she believed the lies being spread about Al Gore, or later about John Kerry. I'm not saying she's right to make such a choice based on little or no information. I'm not saying she doesn't bear some responsibility to be more informed. But I don't think I can hate someone like that.

I actually need to look no further than my oldest brother. My family, as fucked up and abusive as it was, was raised to be informed and open-minded. All eleven of us are intelligent, creative and hard-working. All but a few of us have advanced degrees and are in rather off-beat professions. But my oldest brother has lead a different life. He had a lot of trouble in school because he was very hard of hearing. The combination of the era and my mother's inability to give one-on-one attention to eleven children meant that he was never given the extra help he needed to succeed, which is a shame because he's very intelligent. I think perhaps because he struggled with school, and had very low self-esteem because of his disability, he ended up rejecting the idea of getting a good education. He barely graduated from high school and spent the next few years partying and getting in trouble with the law. Nothing too serious, but not great either. He eventually picked himself up and started working at trade shop, getting very good at his work very quickly.

Within several years he started his own business, and has been extremely successful. He works his ass off and earned everything he has. He's also exceedingly kind and generous. However, his world-view is somewhat narrow. His friends out in the small town where he lives all have that same world-view. He doesn't travel too much. He doesn't interact too much with people of different backgrounds. He's had really bad luck with employees. They don't like to work very hard but they want to get paid a lot and get all of their union benefits. Some have really screwed him over because he's really trusting. So over time he's developed a distaste for unions. I'm sure on a purely intellectual level he understands the need. But he is one of those rare employers that would treat his employees fairly even without a union protecting them and in return he wants to have hard-working employees. On a purely intellectual level he understands the need for taxes but his early schooling didn't instill much confidence in our education system. And the terrible way this state is run doesn't give him much confidence in the bureaucrats running it.

So to him, right or wrong, he sees a government that makes too many rules, takes all his money that he broke his back earning, and gives him little in return. And when his buddies tell him the Faux News talking points blaming all our problems on the Dems, he naturally feels pretty pissed about that. He's never been a big reader, he just recently got dial-up internet in his house, so he couldn't keep himself informed online, and tv news is hard for him to follow because of his hearing loss. So he believes the stuff he hears. And he votes Republican like all his buddies.

Now I love my brother, but he and I just don't see eye to eye on politics. He doesn't willingly endorse all the things you and I believe Republicans endorse. He never would if he truly understood it. But I can't make him see the light because I'm one of those wacky liberals he's been taught to ignore. He simply doesn't not believe that voting Republican is a vote for torture, lies, greed, war, stealing from the poor, making the rich even richer, ruining the environment. He thinks voting Republican means voting against a nanny state, voting against "tax and spend," etc. You and I know how ridiculous that is, but a lot of people don't. And I just can't bring myself to hate my brother for that.