I stared at the e-mail at the bottom of the list for another ten seconds. I had read and/or replied to everything else, even the bank statement, and that last message had been sitting there every day for a week unread. Occasionally during that week, I had accidentally highlighted the “Subject:” line, and each time I dove for the mouse like a member of the Secret Service taking a bullet, clicking away before even a preview of the message could load and set the wheels in motion. My soul just didn’t have the battery power.

The e-mail was from my dad. The subject line was “FWD: Video of Obama MOCKING the BIBLE.”

It had been seven days; the time had come to put this in the rearview mirror one way or another. To watch or not to watch? Delete unseen, or arm myself with information? Should I send the usual response to Dad: “Interesting! Thanks!”

All I knew for sure was what I would not be doing, namely replying, “Hilarious! Obama really nails it, although the guy who compiled the video is a douchebag whose tone makes me want to egg the next megachurch I drive past.”

In the end, I opted for watch-seethe-”thanks!”-delete.

The bland, grateful failure to engage is as close as I can come to matching Pops frustration for frustration. Pops would dearly love to get this dustup a’dusting; that was the whole reason he had sent me the e-mail (and dozens more like it) in the first place. He’s not trying to sway my vote. He is itching for a scrap, and even pulling out semaphore flags and hiring a skywriter cannot successfully convey the signal that I am not having any. Returning each broadside with the Blank Thanks is all I can do, partly to dodge the scuffle and partly to aggravate him as much as the forwards are meant to aggravate me.

I’m guessing I probably seem like the sort of person who would get knee-deep in this sewer before you could say “hockey mom.” The more I talk to people, the clearer it becomes that they think of me as just this sort of person, the person who is waiting for the chance to push up his sleeves and put up the dukes. That’s not how I see myself. From where I’m sitting here in the beehive, we just want to quietly glide from flower to flower, buzzing happily and making our delicious honey without bothering anyone. But as I go through my day, flitting from daisy to buttercup, people keep spraying me and swatting at me as I try to mind my own pollen until I have no other choice but to plunge my stinger in as deeply as it will go. Once the stinger is out, it will find a home, even if it means getting my thorax ripped out.

I do not go looking for trouble– I will go a mile out of my way on side streets to avoid it, in fact– but if you insist on bringing it to me I will eventually give you a nice return on your investment.

I’m not a conservative, generally speaking. Yes, every time someone mentions Gossip Girl or that skanktacular Katy Perry song about how awesome it is to be one of the Girls Gone Wild I want to have my family spirited away to a Ruby Ridge cabin where we homeschool and sing only the dourest hymns. Generally speaking, however, it’s my understanding that I am an unwitting member of the Communist party. I get this understanding from some of the out-and-out conservatives I know, and I know plenty.

In my daily life, I see my share of venomous (true!) stories about John McCain or President Bush eating babies on film. I’m occasionally very tempted to forward those e-mails to those conservative people. I don’t do it. I don’t make it my business to offend or infuriate the people I care about just because they made the mistake of opening some e-mail. Somewhere along the line, I got the loco notion that confrontationally bringing up politics was a rude thing to do, although clearly I was not raised that way. I don’t say or think, “Dad loves that John McCain. This right here is a direct attack on everything that’s important to him philosophically. He needs to get this from me right now. He’s certainly not going to change his vote because of this, but I want to damage his worldview in some way for no reason. Maybe it can lead to a pointless, protracted argument somewhere down the road.”

I cannot even imagine doing this. I send none of these e-mails. Last week, I disconnected my Twitter updates from my Facebook account, thinking, “I ‘friended’ people who I’m really only acquainted with; they don’t need to be getting these status updates where I attack their candidate. They didn’t sign on so I could freshly offend them ten times a day. That’s obnoxious.”

So: why isn’t anybody worried about offending me?

Because they’re not. They’re really not.

Maybe it’s because they know they can get away with it; all they’re going to get, after all, is the Blank Thanks. I have friends and relatives alike who will wait until I get into a room and bring things up they know I disagree with, things that have nothing to do with whatever we happened to be talking about, just for the sake of sort of loudly braying their opinions like donkeys and daring the rest of us to make somethin’ of it. These people know, though: if anyone does actually rise to the challenge and disagree, go f###ing meth-bananas on rocket fuel. I have a friend who gets so mad in these situations that she starts screaming with you for agreeing with her. You have to keep tranq darts in your crisper just in case.

The only time I ever came close to letting the vessel stray into these waters was the time I wrote a letter to the editor, and I learned a valuable lesson from that experience: shut the #### up. Should I be teaching that lesson to other people? When I get these forwards about Obama trying to outlaw flags for Christians, should I too begin to squawk and caw like a chicken caught in a barbed wire fence?

In the interest of full disclosure, I have been trying to dip a toe into these waters lately over the fact that John McCain is calling Obama the actual, literal, biblical antichrist in language only evangelicals would recognize. You may have seen these ads from McCain’s web site; they were supposedly lampooning Obama’s popularity by calling him the Messiah and the Chosen One. When I saw the actual ads, I thought, “These aren’t especially funny or witty. Actually, the wording seems really stilted and peculiar.” Then I realized, the language isn’t peculiar if you remember anything about the Left Behind books, because it’s the language used to describe the antichrist character in the books. Of course, to know that, you’d have to be the kind of person who reads the Left Behind books.

That’s the truth. That’s actual. Nothing there is satisfactual.

Oh, and it’s working.

Naturally, when all of this clicked for me I thought I might have to stop talking about everything else until election day. I don’t carry a torch for Obama, but I sure would like to lob one at McCain’s head. I feel like that could be the entire case against him. You’re John McCain, and you approved that message.

So I sent out an e-mail about it to people, but even in this case it was as ginger as walking a sleeping baby through a room full of low-hanging windchimes. “Hey, d’you guys see these ads? What do you guys think about all this? Jeepers. Does it… you know, does it feel good? Being on that guy’s side? If you don’t mind my asking? What are your thoughts, for an open exchange of your crazy ideas?”

No response.

Probably for the best.