Yes I have a southern accent, I'm a blue collar worker and yes I own guns. That is all it took for my sister in-law to label me a Southern redneck racists conservative. She is from Massachusetts and thinks all of us southerners are the same. In all of the years I have been married to her sister she has NEVER had a conversation with me. I have never pressed the point with her all these years. I'm a patient man and I figure eventually she will pull her head out of her ass and we can talk, bless her pea pickin' heart. We next week we are all spending a week at the beach together. I will try to behave.

WillCarry wrote:Yes I have a southern accent, I'm a blue collar worker and yes I own guns. That is all it took for my sister in-law to label me a Southern redneck racists conservative. She is from Massachusetts and thinks all of us southerners are the same. In all of the years I have been married to her sister she has NEVER had a conversation with me. I have never pressed the point with her all these years. I'm a patient man and I figure eventually she will pull her head out of her ass and we can talk, bless her pea pickin' heart. We next week we are all spending a week at the beach together. I will try to behave.

Wear an "Obama 2012" shirt and an "Overturn Citizens United" button, then watch her head explode from cognitive dissonance.

A hat with a "Liberal Gun Club" patch from Simmer Down might be fun as well...

Get your wife to start an idle political conversation with her sister while you're not in the room. Then show up and start agreeing.

Me, I'd start in on how the UN was out to steal all my guns and Obama was complicit in the theft, just to get her blood pressure up.

Of course, I've been divorced several times already, so take that for what it's worth.

wlewisiii wrote:A hat with a "Liberal Gun Club" patch from Simmer Down might be fun as well...

^

WillCarry, this sounds like a genuine "teachable moment." Seriously.

My suggestion: open a discussion of politics with something that will force your SIL to confront her biases. One angle might be to discuss something where you expect both you and she will share a similar view.

Another is to introduce her to this club and forum. Its very existence challenges the worldviews of many liberals and conservatives alike.

I had a recent experience of "coming out" as a gun enthusiast to a long time (liberal) family friend. He had a very hard time grasping the existence of this club, but he will go home and mull it over, and then, who knows?

(I should add, I would describe this friend as a squishy Liberal, not an ideological leftist, as I see myself. Squishy liberals seem to have much more trouble grokking guns than ideological leftists, from what I have seen. But that is a topic for another thread...)

A good liberal doesn't have that hard of a head. Who's she fooling?


As for southern stereotyping you can't beat David Sedaris in this story.

Want to borrow my "Rednecks for Obama" t-shirt?

Start a conversation with her about her ex-Governor now trying to come off as a conservative. Then mention how Jimmy Carter was by far the most Liberal president we ever had.