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As much as I love reading the "smack-down" stories of the best of my calm, cool, and collected fellow DUers, I have to confess that getting into arguments with Republicans just upsets me, leaves me emotionally rattled and off-center, sometimes for days or in this case weeks.
I am not talking about the Bubba who yells something really clever like "F*** YOU!" as he drives by me at a protest. There's an initial adrenaline shock, but the response is easy: smile and wave. :hi: Maybe yell something in praise of the First Amendment, our shared right to exercise it.
What throws me off is arguing with people I otherwise love and respect in other arenas of life who toss phrases from the RW-talk-radio-echo chamber as if it's a great sport, similar to the way I might tease a Yankees fan. Except of course we're not talking about baseball; we're talking about people who are destroying our country.
A coupla weeks ago an old friend called to catch up, and to invite me to his wedding. We're both Christians. Somehow (uh-oh) we got to politics. He is so smug and self-assured in his moral position: vote for the party that promises to make abortion illegal. (He's male, I'm female, but we'll leave that out of it.) He explained that abortion trumps every issue, even an unjust invasion of another country, because MORE innocent (unborn) people die in abortions each year than have died to date in Iraq. And so on with everything else people care about. It has been 2 weeks since our little chat and I am still shaking. If you follow his logic to its conclusion, it would be perfectly fine if the rest of us were all slaves to the wealthiest .01% of the population, if our only media were state-controlled fascist propaganda (oops, we're almost there already), if our children were all either born disabled due to toxins in our air and water or sent off to die in unjust wars, if elderly and disabled people who could not work were left on the street to beg for food, just as long as nobody was allowed to have a safe and legal abortion in this country. Just so long as all of the women who were determined to terminate their pregnancies anyway either (a) had the means to leave the country to do so, or (b) subject themselves to the risks of back-alley or self-induced abortions. Make it illegal, that's all that matters. That's the country he wants, apparently, and so he votes Republican.
I want to write to him and ask him this, in a less inflammatory way, backed up with facts and links, when I get time to gather my thoughts, and explain that *I* in turn would prefer a country where people have jobs that pay decent wages, and civil liberties, and healthy water and air, and where abortion remains safe and legal but becomes increasingly rare (as it did during the Clinton years) because people with a range of choices, economically especially, have fewer abortions, and maybe eventually because more people are persuaded in their own consciences that this is not the thing to do. But thinking about it this morning on the way to work had me all shaken and upset again, just like the initial conversation. These people don't stop even when I beg them to; they know that they can goad me into a response, and I'm a sucker for it. I wish I could be more calm.
Thanks DU for letting me vent. I'll get back to work now & check in later.
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