Fact, fiction and family.

Like many of you this Thanksgiving, I sat down to the bird and baked goods surrounded by my extended Republican family. (Lord love ‘em…) And like so many similar gatherings of the last few years, matters of national import were treated like a dozing great granddaddy: they were gingerly tippy-toed around so as not to disturb the reverie. But after the dishes were cleared, we were left with the lone out-of-town relative who was staying with us. The one who is an evangelical. Who watches only Fox. Who still believes there are WMD in Iraq. And who still doesn’t believe in global warming. (I could not believe there were really any of these people still out there. And yet here was a big one, staying right under our Bright Blue Dot roof.) I am happy to report that he welcomed discussion—actually initiated it. And no one died. We were actually able to talk like reasonable people about things that matter to us both very much. However, I respectfully submit that I think he’s totally insane. Just as he probably thinks me. So many things he said were so revealing, and so depressing, about so many of our fellow countrymen. But there’s one observation made among many that really haunts me:

Here is a man who is such an unquestioning Catholic that he believes a statue of Jesus spoke to a nun (which He may have) and told her to build a multimillion dollar shrine in the piny woods of Alabama (which she surely did). And yet he doesn’t believe in global warming because “there isn’t enough proof.” In other words, he thinks it’s more likely that God would speak through a statue about creating a building, than that He would speak through world-renowned scientists about saving His own special creation. Our Earth.

Would someone pass the Wild Turkey. Please.