Elizabeth’s Journal

What Are They Thinking?

It’s hard sometimes to get inside the mind of someone whom you respect but can’t understand why they have a particular opinion, or why they do/fail to do something. Often this gets illustrated in those old male/female discussions, but these days it also comes up with Bush/Kerry voters—i.e., how can Person X be a Bush supporter when normally they are so sane? (For Bush supporters, just replace “Bush” with “Kerry” in that sentence .)

On the male/female side, I got to ask Dale a question last night. I’ve started putting the placemats on top of the water bottle when they’re not in use; the table looks neater that way, and it’s nice to see the pretty wood. When he sat down for dinner, he put his own placemat on the table—upside down. Now I have to admit that kind of thing bothers me and always has. I remember Paul, my college boyfriend, one time purposely turning around all the cans in the kitchen cabinets so they were upside down and not facing the front (I think Jennifer may have been there too?), because I was saying how I liked them all to be facing the right way. Anyway, I asked Dale if he didn’t even notice that the placemat was upside down, or did he just not care. The answer was that he didn’t notice, but even if he had he wouldn’t have cared (although he probably would have made an effort if he was setting the table for a “nice” dinner).

Re the Bush/Kerry thing, there’s a revealing article in the current issue of Texas Monthly—a back-and-forth exchange between William Broyles and Paul Burka, who taught one of my favorite Plan II classes and who was also the editor of my thesis. (If you log in and register with the site—you don’t have to subscribe to the magazine—and use the access code “ENCHANTED”, you can read the whole article.) Paul, who is one of the most rigorous thinkers I know and has made his career based on his ability to dissect a story and see past people’s verbal artistry to their actions, is going to vote for Bush. !!! So I was fascinated to read the article and see why. Frankly, it was totally unconvincing and I was disappointed in his failure to make a good case for his stance. But I do understand a little better now what is going on in the heads of otherwise intelligent people who are going to vote for Bush.