Reply #121: LOL! But in Okla's defense...... [View All]

[hangemhigh]

I just returned from there for a holiday visit with friends and family, a visit I had been dreading and had posted about here at DU. Most of my family belongs to the freeper mindset in that, "kill all of the ragheads" sick mentality. Well here's the good news, folks-even the bible banging Okies are coming around. There are like minded folks everywhere and the numbers continue to grow.

In a conversation with my Dad about Christianity, I told him that I currently reject it. Instead of a lecture, I got a wizened and sad smile leading to a meaningful conversation about the hijacking of religion to advance political agendas by this government. There was agreement that just as "Christianity" had been hijacked, so had Islam. Although I was told that "God wants you to stop smoking," too, the change in his mindset was not lost on me.

In a tearful dinner conversation about the tsunami, I mentioned that there are likely an equal number of dead Iraqi civilians and that the world has turned a blind eye to it. I got no pushback.

My closest friend of 30 years, the one who literally exploded in laughter when I told her I was working on the Kerry campaign, now has a son in South Korea and is trying desperately to convince him NOT to volunteer to go to Iraq. All of a sudden this war is wrong to her.

Finally, a visit with other friends brought us all together. I had decided to leave things alone, but if the topic of the state of the world came up I would not relent. It did and I didn't. And the takeaway for all of us is that Americans in general, have sacrificed our capacity for critical thinking by looking to MSM for the truth and that something is horribly wrong with America. That's a lot for a group of what I have called wingnuts and worse.

All of this to say that I "get" the joke on Oklahoma, it's one reason I no longer live there and was reticent about my visit. It is simple to open the eyes of others with facts. Problem is, most are conditioned to regard the MSM as factual and the rest of us as "internet conspiracists." I drove this home when the various theories about the OKC bombing came up. Although I agree with them, as devil's advocate I simply said, "That can't be true, it hasn't been on the news." Game, set, match.