Voting paranoid

This morning when I was driving to work, I passed a bunch of people who were stationed in Rosslyn holding signs for Kerry. It was weird, because there were like 6 or 7 people on the over pass...two with a LARGE sign, and then all the others with smaller ones. Why do people have to hold them? Why can't they affix them and leave? There was a guy right before the key bridge as well, changing directions to face oncoming traffic with the lights. I honked. But it was strange.

It made me think of my dad. One thing you need to know about my dad was his flair for "non-traditional" viewpoints on things. (That is putting it mildly. And nicely. I don't want to speak ill of the dead.)

When I was a kid, I once asked him during a presidential election who he voted for, and he replied, "I'm not going to tell you." After much pestering, he said, "Well, what if they decided to hang all the people who voted for a certain candidate? Then where would you be? Would you be glad I told you then?" Of course, I had no response to that. So he never told me.

Many years later, after several fights over "that liberal rag bullshit" known as the New York Times, I can only have guessed who he voted for. But at the time, it sure was a strange response. He just didn't tell me. It was weird.

And I thought about that this morning watching the Kerry supporter standing on the side of the road. Someone COULD just kill him for being a Kerry supporter. I don't know if the world is beyond that or not. And it freaked me out a little bit.

Could dad have had a point?