• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

CHAPTER

10

How to Talk to Your

Conservative Brother-in-Law

YOU KNOW the scene all too well. Thanksgiving dinner. The large extended family has gathered once again around the table to share good times and a hearty meal. The cranberries are ripe, the bird is plump, and that brother-in-law of yours at the other end of the table is at it again. “The Bush tax cut is going to put this country back on the road to prosperity!” The room goes uncomfortably silent and somebody tries to change the subject. The brother-in-law—a know-it-all who treats your sister nice but is an obnoxious ass nonetheless—continues. He goes through the familiar litany: “too many deadbeats are on welfare,” “affirmative action is reverse discrimination,” “they should build more prisons and throw away the key.” Finally, your cousin Lydia, who is home on holiday break from Antioch College, has heard enough and calls him a “racist” and a “dick.” Suddenly Grandma’s special dilled mashed potatoes are flying across the table like an American missile on a sunny morning in residential Baghdad—and a nice, warm gathering of family and friends has turned into the culinary version of Crossfire.

Let’s face it, almost every family has at least one right-wing reactionary of its very own, and there’s not much you can do about it. It’s a statistical certainty that for every two liberals, there will be one person who longs for the days of Strom Thurmond and legally accepted date rape.

I seem to have encountered most of these guys in the past year. Many of them have written me long letters filled with a passion rarely seen on our side of the political fence. Some stop me on the street and try to engage me in some form of heated debate. A few of these times I have asked if they would like to sit down and have a cup of coffee with me (though I don’t even drink coffee, and they themselves clearly have had way too much of it). I don’t engage them in argument but, rather, listen to them rant and rave about Bush, liberals, towelheads and welfare queens. It’s quite a spiel they spew. Their litanies of grievances are long, and they all sound remarkably similar, as if they get their daily talking points straight from Conan the Barbarian. They seek nothing less than ridding the planet of bleeding-heart multi-culturalists wherever they may be having gay sex.

But, if you listen long and hard enough, you can hear their faint and distant cries for help. It’s clear that they suffer from a unique pathology that is slowly driving them insane. They are, at their core, very, VERY afraid. They are afraid because, ultimately, they are ignorant. They are ignorant of much of the world that exists outside their own. They haven’t a clue what it’s like to be black or hopelessly poor or wishing to kiss someone of their own gender. This basic ignorance leads to their overwhelming and permanent state of fear. The fear quickly manifests itself into hate, which eventually leads to a very dark place. They become consumed with a desire to actually harm others, if not by their own hands (they are usually too afraid to do it themselves), then by having the state act in their stead: “TAKE AWAY THEIR FUNDING! ELIMINATE THEIR JOBS! EXECUTE THE BASTARDS!”

This hate becomes not just political but personal, as anyone who has ever been married to one of these guys or had one as a relative or neighbor or boss knows. It is a rough road to hoe when you begin your day with an inherent anger toward everyone who isn’t YOU.

There is no school of therapy I know of to cure this illness; no medication developed yet by pharmaceutical companies for this conservative rage. (Actually, the drug companies need these Republican voters to insure that they will never truly be regulated; so it’s in their best interest to make sure that these angry white guys are never healed.)

I firmly believe that many of these conservatives can be shown the error of their ways. They can be encouraged to think differently about the issues we are