Saturday evening, the Wife and I attended her brother’s annual party. We’ve been going for years and see a lot of the same people, who are hopelessly Liberal, but put up with us, as Conservatives. It used to be a huge party, but despite improvements to the campground, attendance has waned to a few dozen.

He hired two bands, so half the people were with them. It is a pot luck affair, but the bands don’t contribute, so there was barely enough to eat. We brought a giant tub of Thai slaw, as usual, but I ended up sampling a half dozen potato salads – a rare treat, given my diabetes.

The Wife danced to the bands and I did what I always do – ask people about themselves. Of course, being nihilists, no one ever bothers to ask anything about me. I complimented the musicians who were done playing, which they never tire of.

All evening, I refrained from offering any opinions which might be upsetting, but on Sunday morning, I found myself talking to a dentist and a dairy farmer at what passed for breakfast. The dentist seemed normal, but the farmer was nuts. I mentioned that I thought they used every spare minute to put up silage.

“That’s just converting diesel fuel to milk.” he replied.

I have no idea what he feeds his cows, but he went on to say the commercial dairy no longer takes his milk because the fat content is too high, and he only milks for part of the year and even then, only milks once per day. He spends the rest making cheese.

He’s trying to find a way to pass the farm on to his kids, without a tax burden, and dreams of retiring to the Caribbean. He ventured a worry about the economy, and I made the mistake of indicating what I thought was happening. He mentioned Russia annexing Crimea and I began to explain how 94% voted to return to Russia in 2014. That led to an explanation of Russia in Ukraine.

Suddenly, the brother-in-law came walking by and said, “Russia’s losing.”

I looked at him with exasperation and one of his flunky friends asked, “Where did you hear that, on the internet?”

I said, “Thank you,” to the dentist and the farmer and walked back to the house to wake up the Wife.

I’ll probably have to do this again next year.

After eight years of battling the Russian false narrative, it still bothers me that so many otherwise reasonable people are so misguided. I suspect many who know better never betray their thoughts, lest they get the treatment I regularly receive.

Of course, I live for the day when the truth becomes apparent and irrefutable. Until then, they remain convinced the future is chaos and there’s nothing to be done about it.