Good News from the Heartland

Did you do your FISA homework today? If not, never fear, real action was postponed until later in the week. No doubt so that the Democratic collaborators can bury the story on a summer Friday. So you still have time. Get to work. Tomorrow.

On a more positive note, I have been pretty hard on Obama lately, so hard that some might think I have been re-thinking my position about those threatening to stay at home or vote for McCain. Think again. Since I never bought the trope that Obama was anything other than another politician I am not, shall we say, quite as crushed as some others might be that he has turned out to be just that.

And I have good news from the Heartland about the impact of racism on his chances.

I come from a working class family, one that contains lots of folks that McCain thinks he can mine using the Republican “code” that has worked since Nixon to create a shield for racists.

Not this time. At a recent family gathering I spent some time talking our about candidate to my uncle. A retired ironworker, Marine veteran, and – among other things – a lifelong racist. Throughout my life growing up he and I had many heated arguments, although I have to admit that most of the heat came from me. He delighted in baiting me with racist pronouncements and I, being young, could not help but rise to the bait. I would leave upset. He would leave laughing.

It was a wonderful learning experience. He forced me to hone my arguments, learn to see through the frame of an argument and not just its details, and come to grips with the fact that just because I may vehemently disagree with someone’s ideas, that doesn’t automatically make them a bad or evil person.

My uncle is voting for Obama. Not only that, but he is a regular contributor and, for the general, has offered to be a campaign volunteer. He is so disgusted by the Republican’s underhanded strategy that he has put on two buttons: One declaring himself a Muslim, and another in support of Obama. And – blustery as ever – he has dared any of the small-minded idiots in his small-minded town to take one of them off. He is outraged by the way the Bush administration has abused our troops and their faith in the judgment of politicians. He is McCain’s worst nightmare and a glimmer of hope for our country.