It had been a few years since we had spoken and it was mostly my fault but the last time we had been together at a family reunion which happened to be loaded with Jesuits and theologians, I didn't like his pro-bush and pro-war comments. He was also going on and on back then about Hillary and how much money he donated to keep her out of the senate in NY. I told him to mind his own Senate or I would in turn donate money to get rid of Santorum. (He's the one who got arrested for drunk driving on the night before my mother's funeral in my mother's town and we wondered where he was during the funeral. After the funeral, I got a phone call and I spent the afternoon in the parking lot of the county jail waiting for him to be released after I posted $500 bail. Then I had to drive him all over the place to get his car back and call our cop cousin to see if he could do anything... yadda yadda yadda... Hey, thanks for coming. The drinking part was after the funeral. Turns out the cops in my mom's village told me that if my cousin had said he was in town for my mom's funeral that they wouldn't have thrown him in jail.) But I'm just the dumb blonde younger female cousin, so what the hell do I know about anything anyway.
We have a rather capitalist pigs meets liberal theology wing of the family and it makes for interesting and combative reunions especially since they are all practicing alcoholics. I found out during our conversation that the matriarch and patriarch of that side of the family died within hours of each other 2 years ago. Hey, thanks for telling me. No wonder my other cousins never call or write. They must hate me.
So anyway, we exchanged pleasantries and then he asked me about my son and I told him that my son had just graduated from college with degrees in Anthropology and Political Science but he is currently surfing in Hawaii and talking about studying the effects of humans on the environment at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and doing field work in the changing environment... and so on and so on.
The cousin said that the only thing my son could do with that degree was to work for Al Gore. I knew what he was getting at, but I pretended not to get it and I said, "Oh wouldn't that be great?" Cousin thought that my son should have majored in business. I explained that while I got an MBA, I didn't turn into a fascist.
I paraphrase what his response was: "Liz, you and your family ought to get out of that liberal northeastern utopia (yes, he said 'utopia') and see the real America. In 10 years under the presidency of Hillary Clinton, real Americans are going to rise up, with their guns, and overthrow the government. The people in the real America don't care about all that liberal scientific mumbo jumbo and all that socialist crap"
I told him I would definitely go out on a tour of the red states to convert each and every person, reminded him that he lived in a blue state, to which he grumbled and then said I had to go and feed the cat. Good bye.
In this week's Newsweek and I love the cover, we learn more about the well funded hoax to deny climate change. Personally, at this point, I don't give a shit whose fault global warming is. The climate is changing more rapidly than expected and my mom was right (she was the ultimate alarmist, god bless her). Responsible leadership would address what we are to do when the shit hits the fan. At the moment, we are burning a lot less fuel oil because the winters are so nice and toasty in the northeast, but what about the conveyor belt in the melting arctic that feeds the Gulf Stream? It's not going to be a tropical paradise in liberal northeastern America or Europe if the conveyor belt fails. The US News and World Report had an article a few years back about the "myth" of the conveyor belt, but we know that scientists were paid $10,000 each by the fascists to dispute real science. Most people still remember the well funded campaign to denounce that myth. There were lots of articles disputing the "Day After Tomorrow" theory. I saw a show recently about the conveyor belt shutting down within the next few years. Hey, maybe the government does know what is going to happen and that's why they are blowing up the middle east for oil? Nah.How the hell are we supposed to know what is truth when the government that takes my tax money is paying "scientists" to fuck up their findings? I am thinking of getting out of the stock market and investing in greenhouses for my backyard and grow lights.
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