My life, in a nutshell
Bookworm on Aug 04 2010 at 3:53 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Robin of Berkeley nails exactly what happens when, during the course of a long relationship, one person changes politically and the other remains behind.
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I read Robin’s piece and was concerned for her happiness.
Personally, I would find it stressful if my spouse and I did not see the world at least somewhat similarly: I would hate the stress of having to come home to political arguments. I also don’t know how people like Mary Matelin and Jim Carville stay married and in love, frankly, but they do.
Then again, my mother is a Reaganite conservative while my father (the self-absorbed intellectual) is a hard lefty. They have been happily married for 70+ years. They just avoid talking politics, I think…each considering the other hopelessly misguided.
I’m married to a liberal who has watched me with dismay move from ultra-leftism to Reagan conservative over the past 20 years. We have one car, and whenever I drive it after she’s used it, I have the change the radio station from the local Air America successor to our local Rush-Sean-Mark outlet. It’s become an unspoken joke between us since I know we both deliberately arrange to have our respective stations tuned in whenever one of us hands the car over to the other.
I have tried to stay as civil as possible about her pro-Obamaism and refusal to understand that Obamacare is going to kill her. She has a rare genetic disorder that is managed by a twice-a-month drug that costs $10,000 per infusion–$240,000 per year. Our health plan has been paying for it since 1991. She does not understand that Obama intends to drive all health plans out of business, and that the chances of the feds paying $240,000 a year to treat a 65-year-old semi-invalid are going to be pretty slim when they could use the same amount to buy votes in the barrio with cheap innoculations.
So I am developing a lot of scar tissue on my tongue. Sometimes when I walk the dog I engage in imaginary conversations with her where I tell her, at long last, that she is aiding and abetting our country’s destruction. But I know the futility of that. She lives, like most of our friends, in 1972, a halcyon time when printing presses magically created wealth and we were just beginning the long, happy march to Utopia. She thinks only cranks and haters see anything wrong with what’s going on, and is genuinely puzzled by my Tea Party participation. (I do get her to smile, however, whenever I’m planning to attend a Tea Party event and tell her, “I have a Klan rally next Saturday,” or “I’m attending one of my Nazi bashes tomorrow.”)
It has been years since we have had a discussion of anything beyond our son, social life and household matters. We simply do not and cannot discuss politics. Fortunately I have a place like this, and friends like Book where I can indulge my political instincts and not be looked at askance.
It *may* be possible for two people to differ strongly politically yet still hold core beliefs in common at a deeper level. A fictional prototype of this appears in Ayn Rand’s novel “We the Living,” in the relationship between the fierce anti-Communist Kira Argounova and her friend, the dedicated Communist Andrei Taganov.
Here’s Kira, speaking to Andrei:
“…you see, if we had souls, which we haven’t, and if our souls met – yours and mine – they’d fight to death. But after they had torn each other to pieces, to the very bottom, they’d see that they had the same root.”
It’s one thing when a couple meets, marries in the same faith [politics or religion] your kinda on the same page and share the same basic views. I’ll go far enough to say that even if it’s an intermarriage of faith and politics – there should be fewer surprises and rules of engagement should be set up well in advance.
What happens, when one half converts. The conversion is a slow process and one day you come home and see a Christmas tree in the middle of your living room or [heaven forbid] a prayer mat. Just how, do you walk around it and not notice it. Do the children of the two halves have divided loyalties, less respect for one parent? Do parenting styles vary? I guess I am wondering about the differences in value systems and if they conflict on decisions regarding child rearing. What happens when the kids are grown and gone?
Marriage is for an alliance to create and sustain wealth, as well as to raise a family to carry on the name, traditions, and wealth of that name.
Political disagreements aren’t a part of that, in the system we have here in America. Just like cheating and other issues don’t cause politician Democrats to break up their marriage. They need that marriage to “sell” themselves off as a family man to the masses.
“Marriage is for an alliance to create and sustain wealth”…I think that’s been less the case in the US than in many other countries, going back for a while. Michael Chevalier, a French engineer who visited the US circa 1833, observed that Americans were the most money-obsessed people he had ever met..but that, paradoxically, this obsession allowed them to be much more romantic than the Frenchman or Frenchwoman when it came to marriage:
“I ought to do the Americans justice on another point. I have said that with them everything was an affair of money; yet there is one thing which among us, a people of lively affections, prone to love and generous by nature, takes the mercantile character very decidedly and which among them has nothing of this character; I mean marriage. We buy a woman with our fortune or we sell ourselves to her for her dowry. The American chooses her, or rather offers himself to her, for her beauty, her intelligence, or her amiable qualities and asks no other portion. Thus, while we make a traffic of what is most sacred, these shopkeepers exhibit a delicacy and loftiness of feeling which would have done honor to the most perfect models of chivalry.”
“I think that’s been less the case in the US than in many other countries, going back for a while.”
Marriage traditions differ based upon caste and class. Some classes have a tradition that is specific to their circumstances. If you look at Chelsea’s wedding and the marriage of Clinton and Clinton, you can see an example of wealth binding. The Kennedy clan is another example. Byrd maybe. Certainly John and Teresa Kerry. Teresa, inheriting the Heinz Ketchup fortune. Using American capitalism against America. Nice if you can get that gig.
Amongst the absolute poor, downtrodden, and black slaves? Marriage is broken. Thus their wealth has been broken, stolen, and stamped down upon. They’re kept down, never allowed to build and combine wealth so that it gets more and more as the generations grow. The rich elite Democrats grow wealth and power like a tree. But they burn out any competitors in the serf class.
Middle America is hit and go. Some last, some don’t. That’s up to them. Given the separation of family traditions and geographic locale in job searching.