Some politicians will love to tell you how if you want to connect with "Real" Americans, you should go to the Diner or some local neighborhood dive bar (you know, where white people hang out). Me? I like bathrooms. Albeit this isn't scientific, and it cuts out 50% of the population (because when I accidentally end up in a Ladies Room I keep to myself, avoid eye contact and get the hell out ASAP), but then again, politically reasoning with women under fifty is rarely a problem.
Last Friday night I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of a very close friend of 16 years, and his beautiful bride. It was really like anything I had ever seen. The wedding hall itself was top of the line. The food was out of this world. To call the drink selection "Top-Shelf" would be doing it is a disservice. I mean, Johnny Walker Blue at a wedding? Unheard of.
What's not unheard of though, is my penchant for talking politics from time to time. An overwhelming majority of the time, I'm the asshole that seeks out the fight. But I have to be honest, that hasn't been happening too often over the last few years. In fact, after Hurricane Katrina, I could probably count the number of legitimate, person-to-person, Left vs. Right debates I've had on one hand. Partially because of my concerted efforts to avoid spending time talking to Bush loving troglodytes, but more so because of the simple truths that we hold self-evident: Unless you were living under a rock for the last five years, you've seen the manifestation of Republicanism in all it's many forms. Be it the economy, the wars, or just sheer competence. If you don't want to sound like an idiot, you're not going to defend any of this.
But then again, there's the fact that we now have a black President. That still doesn't sit well with some people. Which brings me back to this fabulous wedding that took place in one of New Jersey's bluest counties.
Long after I had my Don Draper going on, but before I completely devolved into Charlie Sheen, the Makers Mark Manhattans began to do a number on the bladder so it was off to the cavernous and elegant bathroom (which had a sitting area that I'm still not sure what purpose it served). As I was minding my own business (as always in such a situation) hunched up against the urinal, over my back I hear a lisping jackass berating the bathroom attendant.
Paraphrasing the simpleton, "Really, Obama? Hasn't he taxed you enough? Cause he sure has taxed me enough with his socialism".
As I was washing my hands I kindly asked the jackass how exactly Obama was a socialist. His answer, straight from the Glen Beck school of rationale: "He wants the government to control everything".
I noted that Obama, while, not in the Senate at the time, stated he disagreed with the PATRIOT Act specifically for that reason. His response, to no surprise, "Health Care".
So I took my deep breath and pointed out that the Health Care Reform bill was the biggest handjob ever given to private industry, opening existing insurance companies to a whole new demographic of customers, and my personal objection was that it in no way shape or form was it Socialist enough.
To which he defaulted to "What about the taxes". I pointed out that taxes for all people - except those below the poverty line ironically - are at the lowest point in history since the dawn of the Income Tax. He added that Obama wanted to raise them.
The guppy took the bait.
When I asked what levels he wanted to raise them to, he said "All the way back to Bill Clinton's levels". I didn't even bother to go into how prosperous the country was under Clinton, I just decided to go right for the money shot and opined "So you'd prefer he went back to Reagan for individual taxes". He agreed completely. That's when I pointed out that Bill Clinton actually lowered individual income tax from Reagan levels, and we had a booming middle class, unlike any we had seen in the previous 35 years at the time.
Dumbfounded, he simply told me I was lying.
And that my friends, is how a drunken bathroom conversation can serve as a microcosm of society. It exemplifies the difficulties that reasonable people have in conversing with uneducated, bigoted zealots who rely solely on the Faux News demagogues and how their propaganda continues to ensure electoral victories for these modern day Reaganites, who couldn't give a flying you-know-what about middle class struggles, yet rely almost exclusively on those middle class struggles to keep them in, or return them to office.
I wish I had a solution to offer, and I'm all ears if you've got one. But time and time again, I find myself in these uphill struggles to argue reason against ideology.
I miss the days of being called unpatriotic cause I didn't support Bush's bullshit war. At least then, those dolts could hang their hat on someday finding WMD.
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