Tommy is taking a political science class this semester. I have avoided discussing the class with him, because he needs to learn concepts instead of opinions. That was a mistake. Today, he made a post on his blog that is really a cry for help with his first politics paper. Here is an excerpt: “The reason that the south always votes republican goes back to the period of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It was LBJ who signed the Civil Rights bill. He was a republican himself, and since then, the republicans have pretty much always had the black vote. The white vote is generally republican, mostly because Southerners tend to vote the way their parents vote, which is almost always republican.”

After I removed my jaw from the keyboard, I asked Tommy the source of his information. He “just knows” that it is true. There’s only one person who has been discussing politics with Tommy this semester. Politically, that person is the polar opposite of me. I think it’s safe for me to discuss politics with Tommy now.