If you aren't conflicted, maybe you are not listening hard enough

When we are young, life is so simple and we see with a great clarity. But, age brings on a lot of skepticism, whch I now see as healthy. See, I grew up in outstate Michigan, which is about as rock-ribbed Republican as you are apt to see. One article of faith was that FDR was as close to the antichrist as any of us are apt to see. Walter Reuther and those auto workers in his union were practically communists, at least socialists. The Republican party, on the other hand, was full of hard headed realists whose fondest desire is worker welfare and thus to maintain their place at the public trough.
Recently, the hot topic of debate has been Reform of health care. 100 % of Republicans maintain that what was passed is prohibitively expensive, and they may be right. However, they have seemed at ease with paying for a monstrous tax cut for those who have the most and a very expensive war that was entered under false pretenses. What is a trusting farm boy to think?