You wouldn’t think a black man in his mid-seventies who has never lived anywhere but the South, and who has been known to blame all America’s troubles on the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., would be willing to go Republican, but that’s why my father is doing.
Here’s a spot of background. My father, though by almost every conceivable metric a better man than I am, is not well educated; my mother used to caution us that, though he had gone as far as the 8th grade in school, given the quality of the schools in rural Mississippi at that time Dad had no better than a 3rd grade education. He doesn’t read much other than the Bible, and his consistently voting Democratic for the past 44 years has mostly been reflexive. He is also a Pentecostal Christian and a lay minister in his church.
Anyway…he watched the tail end of the debate the other night and discovered something he had apparently been unaware of: the candidates’ position on Roe v. Wade, and by extension abortion. Believing abortion to be murder, he was troubled to discover Obama is pro-choice. He’s consulted with this pastor, and the two of them have decided that, although they trust Obama more on the economy, foreign policy, and almost everything else, abortion is a deal-breaker. Dad’s position is basically that the recovery of the economy and victory in the is ultimately in God’s hands, not the administration’s, and that God is punishing the country for permitting abortion (and homosexuality) by means of the economic downturn and the problems in Iraq & Afghanistan. if we get right on that one issue, everything else will thus miraculously fall into place. :dubious:
Why is this thread in the Pit, you ask? Well, for two reasons, the more important of which is so I can end this post appropriately.
[deep breath]
Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck FUCK!!!
