Black and white?

Children see everything in black and white. Things are good or bad, they love something or hate it, a March day is windy or calm. Once they have determined, according to their rules, how something is, it is difficult to change their minds. I can remember, when my children were young, they could not understand that my brothers were Jewish. Jews ate only kosher food, did not use electricity on the Sabbath, and would never even think about driving. It took a while to convince them that there were many types of Jews. Maybe that was their introduction to shades of gray.

Learning about shades of gray is not a bad thing. Most of us are neither all good nor all bad. Of course I am sure all of us can point to exceptions, and I am not going to argue whether a mass murderer was or was not good to his mother, but for the most part, in life, we must learn to accept, and work with, shades of gray.

My question is, do we see fewer shades of gray as we grow older. I remember, when my grandfather was in his 80s, that Israel could do no wrong. It didn't matter what the circumstances, what had happened, what the reality of the situation was, Israel was right in every action. I gave up arguing with him. If I wasn't with him, then I had to be against him, if I wasn't white, I was black, if I argued that an Israeli action might have been ill-timed or inappropriate, I sided with the anti-semites. Better to keep my mouth shut and respect my elders.

I bring this up because I spent the weekend with my in-laws. They are, in general, sophisticated New Yorkers, modern, enlightened, cosmopolitan. However, this presidential election seems to have removed the color gray from their vision. They are some of the most fanatically anti-Bush people I have met in some time. Every paper was scoured for anti-Bush comments. Every pro-Bush article was heaped with derision. I could not talk politics with them, because they saw no good in Bush what-so-ever. In their opinion, the entire last four years have been an unmitigated disaster, he did nothing good, and never could.

[Side note: they do not seem to be pro-Kerry right or wrong, but support Kerry because he is the person running against Bush. Would they support anyone running against Bush who had a chance of beating him?]

I see the parallels between my in-laws and my grandfather. Some places I'm smart enough not to touch. I do hope that by Thanksgiving they will have relaxed from whatever the results of the election may be!