Brotherly Love

 

All I need to do, if I want to know what is going on inside the mind of a right wing ultra-conservative is ask my brother his thoughts and presto, he enlightens me. Jim is my only sibling and over the years we have had many seriously heated debates on topics, ranging from the invasion of Iraq (“war to find WMDs/rid Iraq of Saddam/spread democracy/whatever…”) to the Deepwater Horizon oil well blow-out (“caused by environmentalists”, according to Jim) As you can imagine, Thanksgiving dinners with our parents and later our children and our parents were lively, to say the least. A steady diet of daily FOX News watching has made normal conversation impossible with the old boy. As we have aged we have come to the conclusion that if we are to have any relationship at all we need to stow the political debate and stick to “safe” topics like the kids or books and movies.

I am happy to report this has worked for many years and also to realize that political and otherwise polar opposite identities are quite normal with two male siblings who have no other brothers or sisters. Whew. Our insane knock-down, drag-out battles were perfectly normal and I take some small comfort in that. Now that both of our parents have gone to their reward, my brother and I have even less call for communication. I envy those people with close and loving siblings. My wife and her sister, for example, would be happily living together if it weren’t for my impedimental existence.

Recently I received an e-mail from my brother and in spite of our neutral topic arrangement, he decided that this particular Forbes Magazine editorial would finally sway me over to his camp. Bless his heart. I saw the opening line at the head of the piece and immediately deleted it. “This president is rewriting the constitution and is doing what he damn well pleases. The sad part is no one is stopping him!” all in caps, of course. Now, some of you might think, “How will he ever know if that editorial might have been the very truth he needed to know to make that jump from left to right?” Trust me, I knew. I will say that I have been true to our pact and never send him any progressive/liberal/socialist essays, columns or editorials, although I have been tempted many times.

The great irony is I agree with him on this particular subject of the constitution being shredded, but it isn’t Obama alone doing the deed and that’s where I feel my brother is misinformed. Jim’s party of “NO”, the party that has obstructed all things Obama, even if the original proposals came from the right, they are immediately suspect if Obama supports them. Fact is Obama has continued and even expanded many Bush régime policies, the right refuses to acknowledge this fact for fear of having to say something they like about him. The far right, fully owned and operated by Corporate, has been introducing Orwellian legislation, chipping away at the first and fourth amendments, designed to suppress free speech and invade our private lives. The right to protest and address grievance has been a hallmark of our free and healthy democracy for over two hundred years. Laws restricting, and/or making it outright illegal to point out wrongs perpetrated by the powerful is cutting off the safety valve that has kept our country from exploding into violence. If our traditional method of gradual, peaceful change is being snuffed out, it will only create the breeding grounds for violent change.

Add to this the Supreme Court’s wrongheaded conclusion that racism is no longer an issue in the US and so by their decision to strike down the heart of the voting rights act of 1965, the people’s voice becomes weaker still. President Obama has signed into law every single restrictive assault on our constitution that has come across his desk. I would think my brother along with the far right law makers and protectors of the power elite might give him “kudos” for implementing what they want, but no. As for what passes for the “left” these days, they have been neutered for the most part, due to their ownership by the same Corporate Cash Cows providing the finances that allow them to keep their legislative positions.

OK, so I’m going to guess what Jim was trying to tell me with that editorial I deleted. Was it perhaps raging about Obamacare, somehow taking away our “freedoms”? Why do Tea Party people feel the need to make the word “freedom” plural? It drives me crazy. I digress. Or was it, “Obama taking away our right to bear arms.” What is this obsession we have with guns about, anyway? I just wish these patriots were as upset about the very real threat of the death of the first amendment and less so about the imagined eradication of the second amendment with the fantasy of government thugs marching into our houses and confiscating our guns.

Or, maybe the editorial was a warning of gay marriage becoming a constitutional amendment. This is a sore subject for Jim. After many years in the Episcopal Church, he has recently gone back to the Roman Catholic Church, where we both received our religious indoctrination as children. His return was prompted by his Episcopal Parrish’s acceptance of gays and performing gay union ceremonies. I find, yet again, more irony in his return to the Holy Mother Church just when a revolutionary new pope has been selected. As I wrote last week, Pope Francis is perhaps the most Christ-like Pope in a thousand years and unfortunately for Jim, a proponent of Christ’s compassion for the poor, the sick, women and (sorry bro’) gays in the church. I’ve said it before, irony is God’s comic relief and I just can’t help but enjoy a little minor schadenfreud with the timing of Jim’s return. Before you judge me, my brother called me to gloat when W. was re-elected.

I wish I could gently explain to Jim my thoughts on the compassionless one percent and the fact that he is not a part of that exclusive club in spite of what he may think to the contrary.  It would seem we are both hard-wired in our respective camps of “we” and “me” ideologies. The deep chasm between us, in most likelihood, cannot be bridged and that is sad, but I still love Jim. He’s my brother.

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Alex lives with his wife, Anna in Key West, Florida. He enjoys writing poetry and prose and making the complacent uncomfortable.