Brian from Oak Lawn writes in...

...(or is it Evergreen Park? I can never remember.) I know that you explained your political metamorphosis in one of your blogs. But it baffles the hell out of me.

I'll bet it baffles a lot of people. Just the other day when I was having lunch with my old friend, Jose, he asked me my opinion of health care reform. As I gave him my answer he just laughed, shook his head, and said something along the lines of, "I remember when you were a Libertarian!"

Part of my metamorphosis occurred when I realized one day that there were two worlds: the Utopian, free-market, libertarian one that existed mostly in my head, and the real one that existed outside of it. And as much as I wanted to believe that the former would one day come to fruition, I had a revelation watching Peyton Manning in a commercial on TV:

"Hey Jesse. Bummed about that gut? Wish you had rock-hard abs? Look, I'm going to be honest. Unless you're under the age of 23 or a professional football player, it's probably not gonna happen. If I were you, I'd just buy some bigger shirts."

And that's when it hit me. It's probably not gonna happen. Maybe I should just buy some bigger shirts. And by that I mean maybe I should just start living in the real world instead of the fantasy one in my head.

My friend Brian and I traded e-mails back and forth and it was clear that he was no fan of Obama's. So I asked him what specifically he did not like about the 44th president. His response:

A short list of dislikes of this man's policies include his stated views on the following subjects: enlargement of federal bureaucracy, immigration, tax policy, health care takeover, invasion of privacy, his affirmation of global warming (coldest summer in 100+ years, clearly the BIGGEST scam ever perpetrated), racism, apologist rhetoric, condescending attitude, abortion, his personal disdain for America and his subsequent denial (as evidenced by his lack of willingness to expound our virtues) of all of our thousands of attributes.

I wrote back, "That's a lot to chew on." So we focused on health care and foreign policy. Like I said, we went back and forth until it became clear to me that we weren't talking to each other so much as we were talking past each other. Brian is an intelligent and reasonable guy, but it was obvious that we were starting from diametrically-opposed assumptions. (I didn't ask, but he must read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal religiously and watch a lot of the Fox Network.) It only reinforced my opinion that this country has gotten so polarized that it's becoming difficult for even some friends to talk to each other.

Another opinion I have is that white males (and some females) are getting more and more angry and bitter. I know this is hardly a new observation, but I feel like I'm seeing it firsthand for the first time. And it's scaring me a little. A good friend of mine who is from the U. K. and liked the U. S. so much that he became a citizen here warned me more than once that Americans were going to have to change their lifestyles. In his opinion, the glory years of the post-WWII period were rapidly coming to an end. The population of the U. S. consumes far more of the world's resources than its numbers would warrant. Coupled with the "flatter earth" that Thomas Friedman talks about and the standard of living here is bound to decline relative to the rest of the world. I wonder sometimes if whites are beginning to intuitively sense that their heyday is over and are getting resentful. It also reinforces my angst about the nativist direction this country might take if the economy doesn't recover soon. We could be in for a scary time.