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All I can think is that I'm staggeringly lucky. My mother voted for Nixon in the 70s and Reagan in the 90s, and used to have little patience with my Chomsky-inspired collegiate rants about how America was the Source for All Things Evil. But as the country's gone steadily more nutso, she's grown ever more disgusted with the Republican right and we've ended up watching the nation's transformation with equal bewilderment. I can't imagine how much harder it would be to watch current events unfold if I had to listen to the person I'm closest to espousing the same virulent viewpoints.