The importance of (the right) family

Fathers Day dinner.  Ugh!  I’m so glad that’s over.  My sister organised a joint Fathers Day dinner at her in-laws house in Annangrove.  Annangrove, I learnt, voted over 90% Liberal, and their entire family felt utterly justified in expressing their rabidly right-wing views in the most savage, bigoted and ugly ways they could contrive.  Some of my own family joined them in condemning the left-wing parties, everything they stood for and the people associated with them.  Some even recounted gleefully how they’d verbally abused people handing out how-to-vote flyers for the Greens.  I can only hope this display was evidence of a complete failure to consider that their guests may not share their political views.  It did not seem to be directed at me.  Nonetheless, I felt very uncomfortable and didn’t stay after dinner. 

I think I’ll watch more closely now, what people say at left-wing functions.  At the election night party, there was one woman who was rather strident in the expression of her views.  That was one person among forty though, and in a place where she knew people agreed with her views, if not with the way she expressed them.  Oh well, I guess compassion is predominantly a left-wing value, not a right-wing one. 

I’m glad, I really am, that I married into Alexander’s family and not into one like Dan’s.  Sharing the family after the divorce was more than I’d expected, but that’s the sort of people they are.  I only wish mine were like that too.  I think I’ll remember that if I ever consider a serious relationship again.  The family is important. 

Now I just have to figure what to do next.  I really don’t want to sit through another airing of all that spite again.  I don’t want to get into a name-calling match either.  I’ve heard the quip about mud-wrestling a pig.  Turn down invitations, perhaps?  I could quietly complain to someone, say, my sister, but I don’t really want to declare my views when I’m not arguing them.  I don’t want to argue my politics, just have a pleasant and polite family dinner.