We met at a McDonald’s in Stone Oak, a newer suburb just outside San Antonio – at his suggestion.  When I entered the restaurant with my flag he got up immediately and walked us into the empty kids playroom, so we could talk in privacy.

He didn’t want to be photographed because he said he had been persecuted for being conservative and non-white in his college days when he was actively opposing affirmative action. He had agreed to meet me because he was childhood friends with the father of one of my friends. They had grown up together in Brownsville, in the southern-most part of the US, right on the Mexican border. His family was Mexican-American, although he pointed out that for the most part the Spanish speaking people of the Americas were largely Native American in ancestry. He said he had been, and still was, personally offended by affirmative action because it was disrespectful of his ability to succeed on his own merits. Fighting against affirmative action had started his shift from the Catholic Democrat beliefs of his family towards his current conservatism. He said even as a very young child he had willed himself to excel in school, had fought hard to always be a the head of his class and that this competition to succeed was good for society. Later in the conversation he told me how he had been taught to read and write before going to elementary school by his grandparents, who had learned literacy from the Catholic Church. I noted that this gave him an advantage in school from the very beginning, and probably allowed him to get on his academic success track.

He had ended up going to the University of Michigan after being in the military, and was now a successful Lawyer. While he was in school one of his classmates had been Michael Moore, who went on to be the well known documentary film maker. He said that the two of them would dominate their classes arguing with each other. He ended up not respecting Moore because his arguments were not based on evidence but on ideology and inference.

His definition of conservative was to conserve, in the sense of preserving traditions. He had ideas for improving the country’s economy, education system and military that I had never considered before, or even ever heard of some of them. He suggested that the US pay the same price for foreign made goods as it would cost to make the item in the US, with out wages and benefits. This would both keep more business in the United States and bring up the standards in other countries. I asked him whether that would be called protectionist and he responded emphatically, no. This was such a foreign idea to me that I can not be sure I understood him fully. When I try to think through this proposition after our conversation it seems impossible to implement. But if it were to hypothetically happen it would actually level the playing field of global capitalism and eliminate exploitation based on economic disparity between the first and third world. Maybe in a world like that I would agree with the logic that says people get what they work for and deserve in a capitalist economy.

He believes that primary education, from kindergarten to third grade should be fully nationally funded, and that it should all be bilingual, in English and Spanish. A solid bilingual education has been shown to give students strong academic advantages in the long run. With that foundation they would all be prepared to compete for success. Those who won would be the best qualified people for the positions they rose to fill, and society would benefit from having their competency and authority.

He also believes that there should be mandatory conscription into national service. If people did not want to serve in the military they cold work in hospitals, or some other institution for the public good. This time of service would provide tangible benefits to American society and it would also generate in young people a sense of love for their country, since the act of giving develops a sense of dedication and good will. He said “right now our country is just like my church: 30 percent of the people do all of the work and the other 70 percent just receive benefits and never raise a finger.”
His version of conservative looks very little like what I see being represented by conservative politicians, and he admitted he likes none of the top Republican candidates. I was grateful for the chance to get to hear such a different vision of conservative political perspective, and one that was both compassionate and articulate.

In the morning our hosts gave us a tour of the Ft. Bliss Military Base, which makes up a significant portion of the city.  Then we parted ways: they went to work,  and we set up the tent in a dusty public park at the heart of the city, originally built to hold live alligators. The first man who agreed to talk with me was a Vietnam Vet who described himself first as Chicano and then as Latino. He called me an Anglo, which was the first time in my life I’ve been classified that way to my face. It felt strange to have someone put me into a category I’d never chosen for myself, even if it was just a linguistic descriptor. He was probably in his early 60′s and was working on his degree at the university in town. He spoke very softly, and his sentences led in directions I did not expect, so I had to work to follow him at times. He was interested in Ron Paul, but he’d also been studying Marxist Theory in school and recommended I read Simone De Beauvoir’s Second Sex. He told me that he wore the Vietnam Vet hat regularly because with it,  Anglos acknowledged him – nodded and  sometimes said hello – otherwise he said it was almost like he was invisible. The main divide he seemed to care about in American life was between anglos and hispanics – a word which he said was just a long form of the derogatory “spic.” To me he seemed to be blurring the line between right and left that I have been trying to clarify, but I was interested in the confusion he left me with.

The next man who wanted to talk was also a vet. He came up when I was talking with the first man and asked what we were doing, and then came back to get a chance to talk himself. He was out of work and had recently moved to the city from Bellingham, WA, where he had been elected a Republican Precinct Captain. He explained this as if he’d signed up on a whim and was surprised to have been elected, not as if being politically active mattered to him. He was planning to vote for Ron Paul, especially because of his stance on decriminalizing Marijuana. He has been a born-again Christian for 30 years and that has been a big influence on his politics.  After a while he told me he had dreamed a detailed dream with World War 2 symbols, which he interpreted as a clear prediction that the third world war would begin shortly. He thought it would probably start this year. A grumpy old man started listening in and asking him questions about his predictions, and agreeing that something very bad was going to happen soon. He said he was Jewish, and that he was sure Obama was really a Muslim. I decided to wrap things up. Driving away I asked myself whether this conversation could in any way help me understand our political situation better, and my unsatisfactory answer is that I have to acknowledge there will always be some people who consider their nightmares and fears to be political guidance.

Our hosts were the parents of a former classmate who is a political activist. She arranged for us to stay with her family and have her father talk with me about his beliefs, although I had the sense that he was not entirely comfortable with doing so. He and his wife are both civilian lawyers who now work for the military hospital representing soldiers seeking medical benefits. They had recently moved from Detroit for this job, in part because the economy in Detroit was hit so hard by the recession.

He described living in El Paso as being like living in a suburb of a foreign city, with a wall dividing the smaller American sector from the giant and volatile Mexican city of Juarez. The El Paso paper had been regularly listing ten to fifteen murders each morning, casualties of the Mexican drug wars. As you drive the main highway that cuts through El Paso you can look across the dividing wall into Juarez at the beat-up cinder-block buildings covering the hills.

In our discussion he focussed on foreign policy as the political issue that had shifted his allegiance from the Democratic beliefs of his union leader father towards his current stance. The occupation of the American Embassy in Iran in the 1970s and Jimmy Carter’s ineffectual response had concerned him deeply and pointed him in a more conservative direction.  He is worried that the US is no longer projecting an image of itself as a strong nation to the world, and that this makes our future as a safe, stable country more vulnerable. He was supportive of the Iraq war because he felt that after 9/11 the US needed to take decisive action to show the rest of the world that we would not allow anyone to get away with attacking us. He felt it was appropriate for the US to attack Iraq at that moment because Saddam Hussein was continuing to defy US diplomatic agreements and the US could not stand for such treatment at that point in history. So, because of his defiance at a critical moment, Saddam deserved what he got, even if he wasn’t responsible for the attacks. For the most part he thinks Obama has done a great job with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by increasing the use of drones and special forces. But he didn’t like when Obama tried to open up diplomatic relations with Iran without getting any promises before hand. This, in his opinion made Obama seem naive and he worries about Obama representing America as if he is conceding that The United States is a declining super power. Never the less he doesn’t feel that positively about any of the Republican candidates at this point, and because he does supports much of how Obama has been handling foreign policy he says he might even consider voting for him this fall.

Since there were many places where his views corresponded with Democratic positions, including being a strong supporter of developing alternative energy, I asked him what he was most concerned by in progressive agendas. He replied that he would be resistant to any cuts to the defense budget and that he questioned the level of optimistic idealism on the left. He said, “there is a lot of risk in the world today.”

When we stopped in Yuma for gas and dinner we drove past two people on the side of the road waving homemade Ron Paul signs at the passing traffic. We parked and I went over and asked them to tell me what mattered to them about Ron Paul’s political stances. The man said that he had worked around the world, in Africa and in Asia, and that US foreign policy is oppressing brown people like him. He said Ron Paul is the only candidate, in either party, who would get all US troops out of foreign countries. He has been a Ron Paul supporter for years, and has made signs like these for other election cycles. He said Paul he is the only person he could vote for in good conscience and that he agrees with 85% of his political platform. I asked him what he thought about Ron Paul wanting to defund public school altogether. He replied without hesitation that it was possibly a questionable social experiment, since it has been tried in some places already and seemed to result in only the wealthy getting good education. But he explained that it didn’t worry him too much because, even if it were possible for Ron Paul to win the nomination and become president it would not mean that all his policy ideas would be able to be implemented without modification. He also briefly talked about gold and government control over citizens’ money, but it seemed like it would take a long time to hash out that subject and we both had other things to do. I thanked him for his time and got back into our car.

As soon as we started taking pictures on the grassy turf of the Glendale Town Square we were stopped by a nice security man named Jesus. This manicured “public” park is on city property located at the center of a new private development called Americana that combines a fancy outdoor mall with an upscale condo village – an idealized commercial version of a neighborhood, complete with private security to manage how people behave in public. But really the social environment managed itself. The people walking around the outdoor promenade either paid no attention to my flag or averted their eyes from me – more so than in any other place I have been. My friend Anna asked one couple sitting by the fountain whether they were conservative, and they replied that yes, they were, but they didn’t want to talk because they were relaxing.

After that I went to the Beverly Hills sign, where I asked the first person I walked up to whether he was politically conservative and the man replied that, yes, he was as conservative as they come – so I asked him to tell me why. He was concerned about the US becoming a welfare state, like so many of the people I’ve talked with, so I asked him what he thought we should do to help poor people out of poverty if he didn’t want to give them government subsidies. He said we should get rid of the minimum wage and pay people as little as they would take. That way, in his view, business would be willing to hire more people and they would be able to compete better in a global economy, which would help the US economy in general and then more Americans would have jobs. I asked him what would happen if people took these jobs for such low wages only to be unable to afford to pay for their own costs of living. He replied that if people had jobs and they still were not able to support themselves then they could be given government support on top of their income to survive.  If having a job was necessary to receive benefits there would be more of an incentive for people to work instead of just expecting benefits.

He stated that every time the US has lowered taxes our government revenues have gone up instead of down, because businesses make more money and then pay larger sums of  tax even though their rates are lower. He also brought up what I am learning is a standard conservative perspective on the great depression and the effectiveness of FDR’s make-work policies. He said that after ten years of FDR’s presidency the unemployment rate in the US was still at basically the same terrible level as when he took office, around 25%, and that the second world war actually was what pulled the US out of that recession not putting American’s back to work with government funds.

He went on and on, with warm gusto. He explained how the housing collapse was the Democrat’s fault because they had supported policies that allowed banks to give loans to people without any proof that they had the means or the credit rating to pay them off.(* see note on housing collapse below) He said that it would be better if the US had continued to support the un-democratic leaders in Egypt and Libya.  In his opinion that region has no history with democratic self governance and that their elections will become mechanisms for hard-line Islamist strong-men to take even more control. And he said more.

After a long, spirited and friendly conversation I asked him what he was doing hanging out at the Beverly Hills sign. He said he was a pastor who had owned a chain of Christian bookstores on the East Coast but a few years ago he’d realized that bookstores were going under because of the internet and started looking for a new direction. He believes that god spoke to him and told him to go to Hollywood and minister to people. He thinks that the US is the biblical Babylon, exporting our cultural filth of pornographic movies and TV to the rest of the world and that this indicates that the end times are near. He hangs out in that park waiting for tourists to ask him to take their picture with the iconic sign and then that gives him a chance to talk with them and sometimes spread his mission.

I had a good time talking with him but felt discouraged at the end.  I have heard that both conservative economists and progressive economists claim that FDR’s depression economic stimulus policies prove their vision of how the economy works. If experts can make cases for both beliefs how can it be more than our biases that make us chose one political perspective or the other? I recognize I don’t know enough to argue with his description of how economics and politics work, and that is a problem. How expert do we need to be to analyze what is good for our country?

*housing collapse note:
While we were driving around Texas we ended up listening to Michael Savage, a conservative radio talk-show host, reiterating the argument that it was Democratic members of government, wanting to make housing loans available to everyone regardless of whether they were poor, or had bad credit, who had made two changes to mortgage law that then precipitated the housing collapse. The first of these legal changes, as conservatives tell it, was that Banks were told to stop “red-lining” certain areas as higher risk for loan default and the second change was that Banks were required to stop checking to see whether borrowers had proof of enough income to cover the mortgage payments they were taking on. This was exactly the argument made by the Pastor in Los Angeles, and it was also articulated by the fast and hard talking business man I spoke to later in Lubbock, TX. It was useful to me to hear a media source propagating this explanation, especially because it was being so faithfully repeated point by point by people all over the place.

From there we went to the Fresno County Republican headquarters, a few long, business-center blocks away. The woman at the desk in the small, tidy room was friendly but said she couldn’t talk and told me another woman would be back from lunch in half an hour who I should meet with. But when I came back and found her and another woman in the office, the secretary told me, “This isn’t the woman I was talking about and we are not allowed to talk to you,” then gave me the phone number of the county spokesman to call. I explained that it wasn’t policy I was interested in, but people’s personal reasons for their political beliefs. I kept asking very gentle questions and after a little while they seemed to relax and the second woman offered me a seat.

They were both volunteers and part of a Republican Women’s evening group. My impression was that they were involved in the organization more as a social group than anything else. The secretary said she had been conservative her whole life. The other woman had grown up in a family that voted democrat outside of Baltimore, but she said that was because back then the Democratic Party was the party of the working class, and she almost laughed, continuing that she didn’t think that was true anymore. She also said that she voted Republican because she was Christian and that Christians vote according to values. I tried to gently question that by telling her that I was brought up by a Quaker family, which is also Christian, but that Quakers tend to vote for Democrat because of their different religious values, including Pacifism. They seemed genuinely surprised.

The political issue that concerned them the most was that they believe Democrats are making the country into a welfare state. They had both worked in schools and each told stories about how negatively welfare practices affected their students. One told a story of trying to convince a sixth grader that it was necessary for them to learn how to read, arguing that they would need to read to have a job, only to have the student object by saying he did not need to get a job because, like his mom, he would just get a check from the government each month. The other woman had mentored a 13 year old year girl who told her boldly she wanted to get “knocked up” so that she could get on welfare. I agreed with them that to the extent that welfare becomes a disincentive for people trying to make a good life, it does them and society a disservice.  The most common argument I hear against the Democrats is that they want to create more of a welfare state, which is also described as making the US more like Europe, with its higher tax rates, higher levels of social programs and state funding,  and its economies collapsing under debt while its citizens riot against national austerity measures.

The two women also cited gangs as an important political issue. The secretary said the Hmong are the worst here, but in other parts of town they are Hispanic and African American. I couldn’t tell she was talking specifically about gang activity or just neighborhood demographics. She couldn’t remember the word for it, but said they had just started writing on buildings in the neighborhood, in reference to graffiti. At the end of our conversation the secretary still didn’t want to be photographed but the other woman said she wasn’t ashamed of her politics and consented.

I am looking for conservative and libertarian people to talk with me about their political beliefs – how they feel about the United States these days and what they consider questionable about liberal or left wing people’s view of our shared country. As Americans become increasingly polarized in their political positions I find it difficult to even understand the issues that matter to people who have opposing political beliefs to my own. I would like talk with people on a personal level to try to better understand this gaping divide in American perceptions of our political reality. Just to be clear, I am doing this because I want to listen and learn. I am not out to debate or critique other people’s political views – I am curious, questioning and I want to understand.

I am going on the road to find people who will talk with about about how Americans make such different sense out of our shared political reality. In February I will be touring the SW States: California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas and in April I plan to travel through the Midwest. If you are willing to talk about your own political beliefs with someone who wants to listen and understand but may not agree please contact me.

publicwondering (at) gmail.com

By looking up Republican Meet-up groups on the internet I came across a listing for a Gun Show at the Clark County Fairgrounds. I set up in the parking lot by the entrance to the event. For a while no-one would talk with me, but then two men who thought I was a Ron Paul campaigner because I was sitting next to a car with Raul Paul logos came over and asked me what I was doing. When I said I was left leaning in my politics one of them replied “well then I have nothing to talk with you about, we have nothing in common.” In my mind I thought ‘don’t we have a country in common?’ but I didn’t get it out of my mouth. He went on talking about how he had raised his family and put his kids through college with no student loans and adjusted his lifestyle to fit his means, and how he didn’t want the money he earned to be taken from him to give to welfare recipients who didn’t work and had just as big of TVs as him.  Then they both walked away quickly reiterating that they had nothing to say to a left winger. That conversation is the clearest example so far of what I am learning is a common belief that the Democratic party is about taking money from working people to support a welfare class that doesn’t contribute to our country and just steals from other American citizens.

I talked briefly with one other man about gun rights, his belief the Obama is really a Muslim, and his questions about why the US spends so much money on troops and military intervention in the Middle East when it buys a larger percentage of it’s crude oil from Canada. His percentages were way off but I looked it up and Canada is our top supplier. When I asked he didn’t have his own explanation for why the US Military would be so heavily invested in the Middle East, but suggested that the reason the US has never been invaded is because of it’s well armed citizens being a strong deterrent. I recognized that he was trying to offer evidence for the libertarian stance against military spending money in foreign countries because of the tax burden it causes for American citizens. These were the first conversations I’ve had since starting this project where it was hard to create an atmosphere with people where we could actually consider each-others perspectives.

We made a plan to meet by the fountain in the waterfront park. I brought my flag so we could recognize each other. We talked about  how Americans are becoming more and more divided into communities of like minded people and there are fewer opportunities in everyday life where we face people with different and opposing beliefs. He described himself as a classical Republican with a strong interest in the common good.

In the mall in Edina I spoke with a man who was once a Republican precinct captain but now feels that the party has moved away from his values. He says corporate and military power are really in charge and that American people need to educate themselves about this. We were interrupted by a security officer who was friendly enough to let us keep talking as long as I took my sign off.

We talked about how his political beliefs developed into libertarian anarchism, or voluntaryism, and how he perceives progressive/liberal politics as being based on force. He claimed society would work without the use of so much regulatory and military force if everything was clearly owned by someone and all disputes could be resolved by paying the owner their rightful market price. As a way of trying to show me how property rights are at the core of society he stated that each person’s relationship to their self was one of ownership, which I wouldn’t accept. I also did not grasp how it made sense to him that people could live in society without a system of governance that transcended their individual choices. But he got me thinking about how we justify democratic government through the idea that we as citizens have consented to being governed this way, when many of us have never actually consented.

Outside the Beaverton Library I talked with a woman who votes conservative mostly because of her christian beliefs against abortion. In many ways her politics seemed very liberal to me but she said would vote against anything that would use her tax dollars to fund abortions, and she opposed the government requiring her to buy healthcare. Her husband came at the end and talked with us about how he objects to the Democratic party forcing people around with regulations. Afterwards a man who described himself as an evangelical christian who had been a Rush Limbaugh follower when he was young in the 1990s spoke with me about how he now feels that the real problem is corporate control of government. He believes that the tea party and the occupy movement are both working against the same enemy and hopes that other people realize that. When I asked him what had made his political beliefs move away from the far right he told a story about being called to jury duty and watching first-hand as the tough-on-crime measures he had previously voted for put a man in jail for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.