2012-09-18: Craziness roosting… all in the family

One of my brothers recently changed his profile photo on facebook. He is in camouflage, proudly holding what I assume is an AK-47, which (in addition to other guns) he has purchased in the apparent belief that he will end up using same to protect his family, and/or his massive stash of food, water, and other survival gear (including a chemical toilet) from the Marauding Hordes that will somehow find their way out to his chic extra-suburban greater LA neighborhood.

There are two major things that I find unsettling about this:

1. The expression on his face. He is Prepared. He is Ready. He appears to have utmost confidence that he will be able to defend his family and his stash against all comers. My thoughts in response are not so charitable. Seems to me he felt the same kind of confidence  — at least initially — when catastrophic (and ultimately fatal) illness struck one of his children. And it also seems to me that his AK-47 will be useless against fire in particular, and possibly earthquake (especially given the topography of his neighborhood)… and even against desperately hungry people, armed or not. Would he really shoot neighbors? I doubt it. Would he be able to mount a plausible defense against a well-armed roving pack of desperate, ruthless people? I likewise doubt it.

The expression almost seems like daring fate.

2. The fact that he so thoroughly has swallowed the poisonous kool-aid his wife and other of (mostly her?) family members have been stirring up over the past 4+ years. My brother claims to have voted for Obama in 2008. While I don't think he is a birther like his wife, he has been listening to at least her syntheses of the same hideous screeds and lies that she constantly listens to and watches — Fox News, Limbaugh, Beck, and the like. For one whose job as a lawyer is supposed to be based on fact-finding and evidence, it seems he has expended little effort in tracking down original source material to verify or refute the lies and distortions emanating from the fear- and hatemongers. Sad to see.

I harbor no illusions about the power of Mitt Romney within the active Mormon community. But still. It is one thing to vote for Mitt because one (a) likes that he is Mormon (and this despite his wild departure from the ideals of the 13th Article of Faith and the related temple recommend question about honesty), and (b) one agrees with his policy positions (however lacking in detail they remain at this juncture) … and it is quite another to be voting against Obama because one believes the crap peddled by the right-wing noise machine. (Yes, there are things not to agree with or like about what Obama has done or not done. I am not an unabashed fan by any stretch.)

My brother is emblematic of others in my family and in Mr Mo’s family who are going to line up behind a guy whose policies, insofar as one can parse them, will damage the country and will adversely affect most of the members of our family. Disquieting, too, how thoroughly they all have jumped on a bandwagon that “grind(s) the faces of the poor’ (cf. Isa. 3:15, 2 Nephi 26:20) and how they join with so many “Christians” in worrying about the “unworthy” poor (despite Mosiah 4:16-19, etc.). Sigh.

Further, there is no discussing any of these issues, and no way to discuss these issues, particularly given how thoroughly my right-wing family has ingested the myth of the “liberal media.” Objective facts that present their chosen candidate or issue in an unsavory light are rejected out of hand as being irremediably tainted by bias. (I recognize that we are all subject to confirmation bias, but it surprises me that they are so quick to accuse my sources as being biased — regardless of how nonpartisan such sources may be — without any apparent awareness or willingness to consider that perhaps their sources are not bias-free. Again, sigh.)

Here's hoping that most Americans will not be similarly buffaloed, and that Republicans efforts to suppress and subvert the vote will be unsuccessful. And here's hoping — for however hyperbolic this may sound — that my brother is not so far gone that he will join the ranks of those bent on armed insurrection following Obama’s (hoped-for) reelection. I think it’s unlikely. I hope I am right.

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