Political discussions with strangers are of course dangerous, but sometimes fun and sometimes surprising. I just met a man who could be the loudest and proudest black republican in San Francisco (there can’t be many!) and I’m truly amazed by some of his opinions. Onward into the strangeness.
Setting: a waiting room in San Francisco. The conversation certainly didn’t start with politics, but it didn’t surprise me when today’s marriage equality ruling came up, and after that it got wide open. As here, I mostly lurked, and 3 or 4 people did most of the talking.
The one admitted repub was asked his opinion on the presidential race. I’ve read that the true believers don’t think McCain is conservative enough and this guy agrees completely; “too old” was the very nicest thing I heard. But he’s sure us Dems are fucked, that Hillary’s non-withdrawal has or will split the party beyond hope, and that McCain will walk to victory. I wasn’t sure whether he thought HRC would actually run as an independent or just that all of her voters would sit out in November. At this point I wasn’t hearing everything he said, because I’d keep saying to myself “he’s so full of shit” and miss part of the rant.
Regarding marriage equality, his opinion was that some federal judge would immediately act to prevent gay marriages. From what I’ve read today, the ruling is about state law and the state constitution and it may well be immune to any federal review. Someone brought that up, Mr Republican seemed to think that federal courts could ALWAYS review state courts, just because. He added something rude about how promiscuous gay men are, and that gay divorces would immediately overwhelm the family courts.
When questioned he had an attitude I’ve seen in other republicans: he was utterly confident that his opinion was correct and yours was not, and you were not just wrong on this point but grossly uneducated. An H-bomb wouldn’t shift his opinion on anything.
I admit, I lead a sheltered life in a deep blue part of California. This is the last place I expect to hear a Rush Limbaugh Republican, and how much less likely coming from the only African-american in the room!
I’m just not used to hearing this kind of nonsense. I don’t listen to right wing radio or read Free Republic, and rarely talk politics with people who don’t mostly agree; I don’t think it’s worth the aggravation.
My condolences to those of you who do have to listen to such garbage regularly.
