My sister has finally gone over the fucking line.
I am honestly unsure whether I want to talk to her ever again.
I do not expect everyone to agree with me.
I do not expect everyone to even agree that my arguments have logic or reason behind them.
I do, however, expect anyone who wants to debate or discuss politics and current events to at least listen to my arguments.
I am sick to fucking death of my sister not listening while she’s painting me with a brush the size of goddam Texas because she knows what I’m going to say before I say it. After all, I’m not an enlightened or considerate person, like her. Therefore why bother listening to what I say before reacting emotionally to it?
Last year (2003) at Thanksgiving she started ranting about how evil Shrub is. Going on and on about how evil he is for pushing the No Child Left Behind act, how wrong it is for him to allow any logging on parks lands, and above all how she is thrilled to know that come 2004 he’ll be voted out of office. When my parents and I pointed out, calmly at first, that the push for standardized testing in the public schools is not simply a Shrub idea, and had been championed by such persons as Hillary Clinton, Patrick Moynahan, and Ted Kennedy she would go on and on about how standardized tests don’t really accurately judge how well a student is going to do in life, let alone whether they know the subject at all. Just how well the teacher has mastered teaching to the test. When my parents and I asked what was fundamentally different in the emphasis on standardized testing for NCLB compared, to, say, the Regents requirements here in NYS for a Regents diploma she simply reiterated that Shrub was evil and that NCLB wasn’t helping any. Answering out questions wasn’t important, since she knew we were just out to defend Shrub from her righteous approbation. When I tried to move to a substantive discussion about the issue of logging on Federal Parks lands, and kept trying to bring up that the burden of tons of lumber per acre in some of those forests is at an all-time high - making the situation ripe for massive wildfires, such as the one’s we’d had that summer. In fact, at least one fire had been massively destructive, in part, because certain environmental groups had blocked selective logging in the area that burned because logging is evil. And she just kept talking over those points, going on about how it was wrong to log on Federal land. Especially since the money was all going to Haliburton. (I kept my mouth shut, instead of asking if Tyson would have been better. Honest, I did.) I asked her, several times, whether she’d be willing to consider that sometimes logging is not the worst thing to be doing in a forest, if one wants to control fire hazards. Of course, she heard only the word logging (or something like that, I’m not sure.) and kept going on about how all logging on Federal parks is evil. And that Bush shouldn’t be allowed to do it. When it was gently pointed out that some of the plans for logging on Federal parks go back to the Clinton Administration, she said something to the effect of “But Bush is doing it all.” She didn’t listen, because, of course, she was right and we weren’t. So, when she started interrupting, I allowed my voice to raise when I tried to keep making my points.
At which point she got upset, because I was yelling at her for no reason.
End of that discussion.
Then, in the summer of 2004, when I was discussing the election with her, I mentioned that I wasn’t going to be voting for Shrub, but I couldn’t stomach Kerry, either. I even asked her, if she would be had a problem with me voting for a third party candidate, since NY’s electoral college vote was a foregone conclusion. She said, sure. Since, the electoral college vote didn’t matter. And then kept asking me why I supported the Republicans on this that or the other hot issue. No matter how many times I tell her I am a registered Independent, it never, ever, settles in her mind.
In fact after the 2004 Presidential election when I offered her my condolences about the election results, she’d asked me why anyone could possibly vote for Shrub. So, I begin my conversation by telling her I can’t tell her why anyone voted for Shrub, since I didn’t and couldn’t. And then I began listing the reasons that I couldn’t vote for Kerry, either. In the middle of that discussion, focusing mostly on the fact that the only policy difference between Kerry and Shrub, according to Kerry’s announced campaign that I saw, was that he was going to do everything in his power to block the Yucca Mountain Long Term Nuclear Waste Storage Facility. Nominally, because he had questions about the security of such a facility. At this point I said something to Debbie along the lines of “Once he said that, I stopped seeing any difference of principal between Kerry and Shrub, and if I wasn’t going to vote for Shrub out of my disgust with his lack of principals, I couldn’t vote for Kerry, for the same reason.”
At which point she flies off the handle, saying something along the lines of: “Why are you mocking me? You’re trying to tell me why people voted for Bush and you don’t even have the courage of your convictions to vote for him, yourself!”
Excuse me, Oh Miss High, Righteous, and DEAF, I’d told you before the election, and in the beginning of the conversation, that I didn’t vote for Shrub. You’re the one who’s so goddamned sure of what I’m thinking that you knew how I was voting even after I’d kept you informed of my plans! In fact Miss High, Righteous, and DEAF, not only didn’t I vote for the Republican candidate for president, I voted for the Democratic Senator for my state, I voted for my Democratic US Representative, and for the Democratic challenger for the State Senate seat. Granted I voted for the Republican challenger for the State Assembly seat, but that was because the NYS budget process is so fucked up that I refused to vote for any incumbent. Which I’d only mentioned several times to you before the fucking election.
But she knows I’m a Republican, dyed in the wool, and absolutely unable to listen to any criticism of my candidate, so of course she doesn’t have to listen to what I actually say.
As an aside, she’s also allowed to ask as many personally insulting questions she likes, but if I say anything that might sound condemnatory towards her, I’m tarred with being a typical Republican, attacking my opponents. Even when the statement I’d made was to point out that her question was insulting!
Then, this Christmas dinner she started ranting about how the Republicans are evil people and she doesn’t even have any friends who are Republicans. Of course, she laughed, she can’t choose family.
Gee, fucking thanks. I’m so goddam glad to know you know my every thought and opinion without even asking me. Because, of course, I’m a Republican. No matter what my voter registration might say.
Then, of course she started talking about how Republicans don’t care about rights for people who disagree with them. So, I diffidently ask her how she expects me to believe that Democrats give a damn for the rights of people who disagree with their positions, when the only Federal Law regulating protesters is on the books to keep anti-abortion opponents at least 500 feet from any clinics.
And she then says, “I should know better than to start a political conversation here, because it always turns out badly. I’m sorry I brought it up.” of course that apology was only to my mother. I didn’t deserve one, since I was crass enough to actually call her on one of her outrageous statements.
I really, truly, don’t see why I should bother talking to this wench anymore.
