It probably should NOT shock me that not EVERYONE around me is as liberal as I am. Yes, I like the results of Tuesday's election; yes, I think he was doing the best he could with the last four years (given the state of the economy + the fighting with Congress to pass anything, etc.). So, when I didn't see anything offensive the day after in my Facebook newsfeed, I figured everyone else felt like I did - elated & excited & ready to see what will happen in his next four years. Well, I think I accidentally, or perhaps PURPOSELY, hid a lot of my conservative "friends" on FB. Why did I come to that conclusion? Because today I visited a cousin's FB wall in order to send her a message about getting another cousin's address. Her & her sister (and sister-in-law?) were semi-complaining about the results of the election - not in a heated way, but I thought, "Really? My female cousins wanted the OTHER guy in there?" It was a bit strange. For one, the one cousin is very much a free-thinker; she has pretty much done what she wanted in life, and right now, doesn't have a "job-job" but has a farm (I guess) with her hubby and does other creative things. I didn't peg her for being conservative based on those things... which is possibly just my own strange judgment of people. I guess it's tough for me to completely understand why women voted for that OTHER guy anyhow, but at least I'm trying to understand and not blowing the possibility off totally.
My parents recently headed down to visit that side of the family; I didn't go with for a variety of reasons, but one was that when I'm around them (and, yes, this is true for the OTHER side of the family, too, and even my significant other's family = sheesh, maybe it's ME? Na.), I can't say much about ... anything. I'm very liberal, and they are not. They don't ask me about my job, and I don't bring it up. This is a very strange thing for me to say, and maybe I will sound prissy & entitled, but the higher one's education level gets, the less one has in common with those who did not seek out TONS of education. We talked about this in a few graduate-level classes. Like when we discussed gendered language...
Anyhow, my hope for my family and for the nation is that we can put aside these judgments we have and compromise. I'm not right, you're not right, but let's find a middle ground somewhere.
