Fireworks lit the sky. A gibbous moon sheltered shyly behind scudding clouds, and the silhouette of Crested Butte Mountain shone darkly against the sky. Another report flashed, and then exploded into cascading red stars. People oh-ed and ah-ed.
“Where are you from?” I asked the man next to me. He was a little older, and I couldn’t tell if I’d met him before or not.
“Pueblo,” he answered. “We just came to Crested Butte for the Fourth of July.”
“Welcome,” I said. “How do you like it so far?”
“It’s great,” he said. “A lot of small towns celebrate Fourth of July with parades, but Crested Butte knows how to do it up right.” Another firework report punctuated his compliment.
“Pretty patriotic stuff, that,” I observed, indicating the fireworks.
“Enjoy it while you can,” he responded. “We won’t be able to after a couple more years under Obama.”
I looked at him blankly, warily, knowing we were probably broaching dangerous ground. Talking politics is always sketchy even with someone whose opinions I know are relatively consonant with mine. Talking politics with someone I don’t know and from a completely different political and social environment is looking for trouble.
“How’s that?” I asked, living dangerously.
“Obama is ruining this country,” he asserted. “You know all those nice, big houses back over there on the hill?” He indicated homes above ski jump hill. “Obama would do away with all that.”
“You think so?” I encouraged. Now that we were out there on thin ice, I figured in for a penny, in for a pound. I wanted to hear a point of view other than the sometimes insular perspective we develop and accept as dogma up here at the head of the draw.
“Hell, yes,” he expostulated. He was getting exercised without even knowing he was talking to a raving and unreconstructed liberal. Like him, I deplore the economic toilet in which we are swirling, but I see a different hand on the flusher. Undoubtedly, I also postulate different ways of fixing the mess.
“I think it is too early to judge,” I responded as gently as I could.
I did not, for example, explain how I thought our economic malaise began back in the day when we came to believe air bucks were salvation and plastic was the key to heaven. You can’t get through the Pearly Gates without a credit rating, and the only way you can get a credit rating is to be in debt. Free lunch? You betcha.
“I don’t think it’s too early to judge,” the man sputtered. “Obama wants to redistribute the wealth. He wants to take money away from rich people and give it to people too lazy to work for it.”
“He has only been in office six months,” I said, trying to calm troubled waters. Instead of telling the guy he was spouting hogwash, I figured the more tactful position would be to wait and see. “I still think it’s too early to judge.”
“I don’t,” he insisted. “Obama is going to turn this country socialist and turn us all into communists.”
Holy cats, I thought. What the hell had I go myself into? This was one of those guys who wants Obama to fail, even if he resurrects the economy, fixes health care, reinvigorates social security and other entitlement programs, restores our standing with respect throughout the world, achieves Middle East peace, conquers the Taliban, executes Osama bin Laden and puts an end to war in our time. None of that would matter; we’d all be pinko, socialist commies.
Several things occurred to me. I could get into a pissing contest with this guy, engage him and argue with him, and probably ruin an otherwise beautiful evening for both of us. Furthermore, no way could I win him over; I could tell he was as set in his ways as I am in mine. What was the point in that? You know you’ve crossed some kind of threshold when tact and discretion prevail.
“Well, one thing is for sure,” I told him. “It’s the Fourth of July, that’s a beautiful fireworks display, and we can all celebrate that.”
And that’s what we did.
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