In Which I Abandon Old Views

When I was growing up, whenever my parents would go to vote, the net result on the elections would be identical to if they had both stayed home and cleaned the refrigerator instead, except that we would still have a dirty refrigerator. Dad would vote Republican, and Mom would vote Democrat. The exceptions to this were school board elections, in which Mom, a public educator, had veto power over Dad's vote, and the biannual congressional election. Every two years, my parents would form an electoral truce and gang up in another futile attempt to vote Tom Delay out of office.

When I turned 18 and became the third voting member of my family, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh on a daily basis. His vitriol and malice had temporarily pickled my brain, and so for a few years, Mom was on the losing side of the family. Then I got a job delivering pizzas for a summer. The way my shifts worked out, I tended to be in the car at the same time the Roger Gray Show was on. Gray is a member of a very rare breed: a moderate talk radio host. Eventually, he was drummed off the air.

I think what turned the tide for me was a caller who phoned into Gray's show one day when I was delivering two large pepperonis and a two-liter of Coke. I don't remember the details, but it dealt with welfare.

Caller: Here's some nonsensical rhetoric about big government that will be completely forgotten in about two minutes.
Gray: Right, and didn't you call about the homeless?
Caller: It's costing too much to support these people. Maybe it would be best just to let them all die.
Gray: No! We're a better country than that.
Caller:

Apparently, people actually thought that way. That was pretty frightening to me, and was the initial push down the long slow slide to the left. I'm not a part of Delay's district anymore, so I can't vote against him. But my brain is freshly rinsed and squeegied, and I don't listen to talk radio anymore.