how to go in circles and circles and circles again...

We're back from Sweden. We voted.
All these things mean nothing anymore after an afternoon at my grandparents.

I bought these pants that turned out to be good pants but a tad too long, so I asked my grandfather - a tailor - to make them shorter for me. In return for the favor I'd drop by for coffe and cake.
That may sound strange but it is in fact more fun for my grandparents to make coffee and cake than it is for me to be there and engage in a conversation most likely to make me go nuts.

So while grandpa was tinkering with my clothes, I taked to granny in the kitchen. She repeatedly told me that her neck hurts (what's new?) and that the went to a gym class today which she didn't like (no news there either). Mom and I think she's got some sort of Alzheimers or Dementia or something (test results still unknown) so I don't mind her being repetitive.

But then she started to tell me about how great the elections went yesterday because the social democrats won. She's right they won, but when I tried to explain that our great coalition parties may still come first and second, but they lost almost 6 and 9 percent of their votes, which technically makes it a loss for them, she started arguing that the front-runner of her preferred party (W. Faymann) is most qualified and that he at least is not as weak as his predecessor and all will be well now.
In an whim of attempted self-torture, I plunged into explaining that the chances are very real that her party will not be in government even though they came first (insert complicated coalition system here), and that we might very well have a right-wing government for the next period. Her mind bailed on me and she kept explaining to me that this won't happen because of her very strong front-runner. I wanted to give up on that issue right there and then and my mind screamed at me to let it go and be happy she didn't vote for the right-wing party, but somehow I couldn't and kept on discussing politics with her.
I do this every four years after the elections. Lately, I've been doing it every two years because of the instable governments we've had. I should know better by now. It seems I don't.

So coffee and cake was served and grandpa joined us and we started talking about the social justice problems in Austria and I was blind sided by xenophobic remarks. My grandfather had voted for the social democrats, I know that, because he votes for them since he turned 18. But somehow the xenophobic rhethoric of the right-wing front-runner of the freedom party (H. C. Strache) crept into my grandfathers vocabulary and stayed there. He probably had watched the speeches and discussions of that guy before the election and this is what happened.

In a way I'm thankful that this happened today. Because now at least I can explain to myself why those right-wing idiots increased their votes by 7 %. But on the other hand I still feel the urge to bang my head against a wall.