Politics in the family...

Ugg, I hate the fact that my family is so political and so hypocritical about it at the same time. I vote (not all the time, but at least occasionally, whenever I can, as I'm an absentee voter for California, and it's not always easy to get the ballot in a timely fashion). My brother is a registered "independent," but he really leans more towards leftist politics (though he doesn't want to commit to a party, a classic move). The discussion started (surprisingly enough, I don't bring up the subject of politics all that often in my family. I prefer to write about it.) when my brother brought up the goth music he likes to listen to, in particular, the song "B.Y.O.B." (The title stands for "Bring Your Own Bomb," and it's a shaft job on our current president). Among my family members, I am the only one who has views that are right of center, even if they are moderately conservative in nature (very conservative on "moral" issues, but with a greater concern for social welfare and equality than can be found by most conservatives). The argument, thus launched, continued into a wide variety of fields. My brohter made all the standard left-wing whiny comments about Bush's lack of intelligence (Bush has an MBA, my brother has no degree, and a lesser capacity for the English language at times), his mistakes in invading Iraq, and so forth. I let him have it with both barrels smoking about Roosevelt's frienship with Stalin leading to the subjugation of many millions of Eastern and Central Europeans. He tried to compare Iraq to Vietnam, which I had to correct him on (as well as defend the US involvement in Vietnam, which was a just involvement, if badly mismanaged from the start). He also tried to make the claim that Clinton did a better job at avoiding foreign entanglements than Bush. I reminded him of Bosnia, Haiti, Somalia, and Kossovo. Some people just never learn. If you want to play partisan politics, don't play them with me. Personally, I see places where our president has made mistakes (and I'm not usually slow to comment on the mistakes anyone makes, not even myself), but certainly he is far better than the alternative. In the real world, where we live our daily lives and have the responsibility to make as decent as possible (realistically, of course), we have to be aware that no one is perfect, and that the imperfectability of humanity does not mean we should fail in either of our obligations towards those in power: reminding them where they fall short (for they often do), and reminding them that they are our servants, are responsible to us, and can be voted out at our leisure (well, except for those Supreme Court Justices, but that's another rant) or should be voted out at our leisure.