Anthony Redux
Anthony surprised me a few days ago by replying to a comment of mine on my FB page which (for the most part) is open to the public. The topic was Obamacare and the upcoming hearing on the nomination of Sen. Tom Price as Health and Human Services Secretary. I thought for sure I could enlist Anthony in a protracted extended discussion of it. After all, he works in the health care industry and he is the son of a doctor. His initial response struck me as a recitation of familiar knocks against the president, things which, presumably, a white president could and would have done differently, including getting rid of all the waste and fraud in the health care system which Anthony described as "criminal".
When I asked him to be more specific, the only examples of waste he could personally attest to was the wasted food at his particular non-profit. He then recited an old Republican knock against government subsidies of all kinds: that people will buy things - whether they need them or not - so long as it isn't with their own money.
Again, that last answer just struck me as coming out of a kettle of cranky, conservative economic ideas that have always simmered in his family's background. Don't get me wrong. Anthony is not an ideologue; I don't think his politics go much deeper than a vague impulse to be kind to others and perhaps a nostalgic obeisance to the party of John F. Kennedy, to date, the only elected Roman Catholic president.
But, when pressed to engage in a complicated policy discussion with a black friend, he is apt to recoil, thinking his friend is perhaps even being a little aggressive.
When I asked him to be more specific, the only examples of waste he could personally attest to was the wasted food at his particular non-profit. He then recited an old Republican knock against government subsidies of all kinds: that people will buy things - whether they need them or not - so long as it isn't with their own money.
Again, that last answer just struck me as coming out of a kettle of cranky, conservative economic ideas that have always simmered in his family's background. Don't get me wrong. Anthony is not an ideologue; I don't think his politics go much deeper than a vague impulse to be kind to others and perhaps a nostalgic obeisance to the party of John F. Kennedy, to date, the only elected Roman Catholic president.
But, when pressed to engage in a complicated policy discussion with a black friend, he is apt to recoil, thinking his friend is perhaps even being a little aggressive.