Tuesday, April 7, 2009

My Dad The Republican Communist


Called home last night and got my Dad on the phone, something which often leads to a surreal conversation like the one I had. He's a devout Democrat-hating Republican; a man in a bi-party marriage who scornfully refers to Democrats as "Your Mama's people." Somehow though, his political sympathies have morphed until he's more an admirer of Che Guevara than Rush Limbaugh. He seems to have no clue how weird this is.

Comrade Botsford on the Iraq War and the current financial crisis: "Instead of sending the Marines to Iraq, we should have sent them to Wall Street." I laughed at the image of camo-clad warriors raiding Starbucks coffee shops, putting cuffed and suited white guys in the backs of trucks, and interrogating them at Guantanamo Bay .

"Ain't no Arab ever hurt me," he went on to say. "We don't have no business over there. Now this, all this financial stuff, this has hurt us more than 9/11 ever did." He said nobody's going to keep a body count for how many die as a result of not having jobs and health insurance, but that number could rival our casualties of war.

His views on immigration are more typical of Republicans. He lamented that the hometown school is awash in Spanish-speaking immigrants, or "Mexicans" as he calls them, and he believes it's too expensive to educate them like our own. I sidestepped arguing with him on that point because I've wasted so much time on it in the past. But I noted that there's been recent speculation the Mexican government could fall sometime soon, and if that happens there's going to be a lot more people wanting to come over the border. "I don't doubt it," he said of the potential uprising. "They need to take over and redistribute the wealth. So few people down there have all the resources." He sighed. "I guess we should do that here."

Breathe easy, folks, please don't send jack-booted thugs to the homeplace to arrest my old man. He's not talking bloody insurrection. He's just convinced that the sleeping horde of "good folks" in this nation will rise up and put a stop to all this foolishness in some kind of peacefull, sensible manner.

I wish I was.

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