I will never learn, I guess. I just can't seem to learn to keep my mouth shut (or my keyboard from typing).
I went to my cousin's Facebook page, where she had posted her opinion supporting the President's health care plan. I responded on her page disagreeing with her. That started a round of debate that ended with her "unfriending" me. I should have known better. First of all, it was her wall, not mine. Second, she is an academic, teaching at a university, holding two doctoral degrees. She is as liberal as the day is long.
After she "unfriended" me, I realized that I had offended her and I apologized, explaining that I had thought we were engaged in honest debate, but that I was sorry I had posted on her Facebook page. She responded by saying that my views were "so far to the right of hers" that she didn't know what to say, and that I had "embarassed" (sic) her. I apologized again for embarrassing her, and we are agreed that we will not discuss religion or politics in the future, which is probably just as well for the sake of family peace. In truth, I doubt we will be discussing much of anything in the future.
Now I am well aware that most of the people on my mother's side of the family are well-educated liberal Democrats, and that their religious affiliations, if any, are mainline liberal denominations, while I am but a lowly conservative with a mere associate's degree obtained late in life, and an orthodox Missouri Synod Lutheran to boot - a mere member of the hoi polloi, the great unwashed, so anything I say or think can't be taken seriously, and must be a source of great embarrassment to those in their ivory towers. But while a part of me is angry with myself for even going there in the first place - I shouldn't have posted my views on her wall - her patronizing tone ("I feel qualified since I'm a lawyer and my husband is a political scientist") were clearly intended to let me know that she didn't consider my views to be of any consequence - I'm angry that I've allowed myself to be embarrassed as a right-wing yahoo Nazi oaf, which is undoubtedly how I came off to my cousin and her liberal friends. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
This is typical of the disdain displayed by the government and the liberal media this past weekend toward those who participated in the 9/12 march on Washington DC. It did not matter that vast throngs (and anyone who really thinks it was only 65,000 people is just living in denial) descended upon the capital last Saturday, or that they were orderly and that the message they carried was very clear. The President made sure he was out of town, and the mainstream media just ignored it or tried to downplay it. So on the one side were a lot of people - and I do mean a lot of people - from all walks of life who are just sick and tired of business as usual from our elected representatives, and who really want things to change, really change, and on the other side were those elected representatives hiding, no, cowering, not even having the courage to face the people who had put them in office, because after all, those tea-bagging red-necks couldn't possibly have points of view that have any validity, now could they, and they might be dangerous right? They might have guns, right?
Is it any wonder that our elected representatives have no respect for us? In an age when credentialism has eroded the value of even a baccalaureate degree, what hope have we, the ordinary, hard working citizens of this country, most of whom will never graduate from an Ivy League school, much less with an advanced degree, of being heard? Why is it that we have no right to be taken seriously? why is it that we are considered no more than peasants, to whom the rulers (our elected leaders) can throw a few favors in return for our loyalty? Perhaps in the past those favors have bought our loyalty. I hope those days are gone. I hope that we are better informed and better educated now. Perhaps in the past our house was divided more by class and education than it is today. It's just too bad that political elitism has to divide families as well.  
So will the house of the United States be divided