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and I've never been more confused in my life.
I was raised in a conservative, RW, fundamental Baptist household. My dad is a former military guy. Both my parents loved Reagan and dad Bush, and have supported W "because he's against abortion". Doesn't matter that Bush can only hand over the final decision to the states, as long as he's against it in the first place. They also believe that the Middle East should be "blasted into glass" and that Ann Coulter is "brilliant". They're avid Faux watchers who love Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, and believe that Keith Olbermann is a "trouble-maker". However, they feel that W went about the "war on terror" in the wrong way - so they are voting for McCain to "get the job done right". They will continue their fight in saving the unborn - and the frozen embryos - while hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern people die, because "they are born terrorists - they hate us, and we're gonna get them before they get us". And if we have to lose a few of our own because of it, well....they signed the papers, and it's part of their job. It's all a part of defending the great US of A.
Par for the course for my parents, so no surprises there.
Here is where the confusion kicks in. My brother, also former military, despises W and thinks McCain is a lunatic. He asked me who I was leaning toward, and I answered "Obama". No sooner did the word come out of my mouth, when I got an earful about how Obama is a Muslim, and that he can't believe I would be so "naive" as to vote for someone who has "Hussein" in his name. He also has a big problem with someone whose name sounds so close to "Osama". When I asked him if he's ever bothered to read up on Obama, he told me he has no need to. He's voting for Hillary. Um....okay.
I was gabbing with one of my friends over the weekend. She's from St. Louis, Missouri. She's a conservative Christian who voted for Bush twice. When her daughter dated a black guy last year, she wasn't very happy about it. This past Saturday, I asked her if she was voting on Tuesday, and when she said "yes", I asked her if she would tell me who she was voting for. I wanted to know which one of the three (McCain, Romney or Huckabee) she was looking at. When she said "Obama", I hit the floor - when I collected myself, I asked her "why Obama?" Her stark answer - "Because I believe he actually cares". Knowing her the way I do, I jokingly said "Um, you do know he's black, don't you?" and I just about hit the floor a second time when she said "He's just as much white as he is black".
Huh.
But this morning was my eyebrow-raising moment. I live in the most rural section of southern New Jersey. Mostly farms, run by older white folk. They're church-going, NRA supporting, gun-racked pick-up trucks with "Semper Fi" stickers plastered on the back. As I drove through the country roads on my way into town, it wasn't the thousands of beautiful migrating snow geese flying over my head that caught my attention; it wasn't the municipal trucks slowing down the traffic as they collected the dead deer from the sides of the road.
It was the repetition of big blue signs on farm fields shouting "OBAMA 2008".
From this day forward, I will not even entertain the MSM's "recent polls". I will not allow them to cause me any further disillusionment. As agnostic as I am, I can't help but think of that popular Bible verse that I was forced to memorize as a child.....
"All things are possible, to him that BELIEVES."
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