We had a 4" snowfall overnight that left the morning a winter wonderland, snow on all the branches. I brought my wife her coffee in bed, as usual, opened the shade and curtains that keep the cold air off our bed, and sat down with my tea for awhile to connect.

She was still agitated at a political argument she'd had with some conservative friends of ours. She was visiting there last night without me for backup, just dropping presents off after work, and they invited her in for a drink and then they ganged up on her. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. She could have left, of course, but she likes to argue. She should have gone to law school and been a brilliant lawyer. She also likes to win, and there's no winning in an argument like that. I don't think anyone gets persuaded by political arguments; there's just information which we use or reject. I saw an article about a study which concluded that our political orientation, whether liberal or conservative, is innate and genetic, and I've believed that for some time. When was the last time you had a poltical discussion with someone who was won over by what you had to say? "Wow! You're right! I've never thought of it that way before!" Perhaps I'm not persuasive enough, but I don't think that's it.

My friend Allen says you can't separate the politics from the person, but for various reasons I should discuss with my therapist, I've tried to maintain friendships with conservative people. Not all of them are the knuckle-dragging primitives who elected Bush. My dear friend and neighbor Bill, who died last summer, was a libertarian who listened to Rush Limbaugh. We did carpentry jobs together for years and sometimes he'd turn on Rush on the radio on the way to work, just to needle me. "My God, Bill! How can you listen to that crap? He just makes shit up!" "He's the only one on the radio who has the courage to tell the truth," Bill would say. So generally we avoided political discussions. What we did share, of course, is a hearty disdain for the government, one broad area where left and right can meet. And to his immense credit, Bill couldn't bring himself to vote for Bush, but would vote for the Conservative Party candidate. I'm burning the dry firewood I bought at his estate sale auction a few weeks ago, and so I think of him frequently.

I don't get Republicans. I can understand the motives of those ruling-class pricks whom I went to prep school with. I got to view them up close, go sailing with their parents and date their sisters. They're interested in maintaining the status quo to protect what they've inherited. But what on Earth motivates working-class people to vote for the party that's always been the champion of the rich and the corporations? What's the GOP done for them lately? Ever? Maybe it's the American Dream: that one day they'll be rich, and then they'll need the GOP to protect their hard-earned money from those tax-and-spend Democrats. Guess what, folks? Chances are it ain't happening.

My mother's family was as conservative as they come, working-class Catholics from Central PA, but they couldn't bring thmeselves to vote Republican. Their immigrant parents worked in the coal mines, and for them the GOP was the party of the bosses, the people who kept them down, prevented them from organizing, and called in the goons to beat up or shoot the men who went on strike.

I had a brief flirtation with conservative politics when I was a freshman at Penn. I slogged my way through Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and saw her speak when she came to Philadelphia. I wrote for the student conservative magazine, and got to interview George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the American Nazi Party, a surprisingly literate, articulate and thoroughly likeable man. I got to interview William F. Buckley too, and later accompanied him to a dinner party. He's one of the best-educated men I've ever met, a true American aristocrat, taught by private tutors and Yale, the best money can buy.

My politics changed after I took a leave of absence and worked as a newspaper reporter for a couple of years, and then at the Philadelphia bureau of Associated Press, and I saw something of how the world works. It seemed to me that the Republicans have never been particularly interested in justice or democracy, and I've watched them steal, or try to steal, every election since Watergate. I've watched them pander shamelessly to the rich, and perform shockingly blatant favors for the big corporations. For them it's all about the protection of wealth, not the well-being of people. I became pretty radical in the Sixties, but I've mellowed since. Marcuse said that a liberal is "a communist with two kids," and I have three.

Have a joyous holiday.