Politics at the Dinner Table in anticlimatic

Made it through Thanksgiving dinner without any political disputes between family members. As we’ve become more ideologically mixed that kind of talk has thankfully died out. My voting habits might surprise people, but it’s not really something I feel needs to be worn on anyone’s sleeve. Many do, which is their prerogative, but I avoid discussions as often as I can. The difficulty for me is a recent one. Many folks take it as a personal or moral offense if you have a different life philosophy these days, though maybe it was always so. I don’t know.

Maybe I aught to describe my positions and the kinds of things I look for in candidates. On a class level, I consider myself one of the poors. On the left/right spectrum I’m some degree of centrist. There are many things I like in one aspect, but lament in another. Unions would be a good example of that. I like their potential to elevate less independent minded poors to the middle class, but I dislike the somewhat corrupt political bargain that is inherently struck to make that possible. I get why it has to happen, but objectively find it a bit greasy. I don’t try to make it a habit of voting for someone that doesn’t strike me as competent and straight forward. Often that’s the primary distinction I’m looking for. This election cycle I expected to be voting for some more conservative candidates after a disappointing showing by Big Gretch on Covid, but the people they ran were absolute nutters. Tudor Dixon was pretty, but not someone I’d trust to drive me to work- let alone drive the entire state- based on basic resume comparison alone. Honestly I don’t think Whitmer did as terrible a job governing as a lot of people suggest. Her lockdown politics were petty and intrusive, but I did appreciate her pivoting to opening up before a lot of other blue state govs did, and I didn’t forget that.

The down side is that we are now a one party rule state. First time it’s been blue in my lifetime, I hope things don’t go as far south as they did when we were full Red under Snyder. That was an absolute disaster. I watched my beautiful home town become commoditized as a tourist attraction by “Pure Michigan” state efforts to gentrify and air bnb it from out of state investors. We are still dealing with the fallout from that. Of course it’s not exactly his fault that our manufacturing has collapsed- even over my own lifetime. I’m not knowledgeable enough to know began that rot.

I might do some more political entries just to sort out my thoughts. My girlfriend is a democratic socialist. My brother is a religious conservative. They are two of the kindest people I know. Maybe I’m old school, but I’d never judge someone’s character based only off of their politics. Almost always, at bottom, is a desire to do the right thing by others and by one’s self- and the demonizing, often without realizing, is often more a reflection/projection of self than an accurate assessment of others.