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there's also this extremely prevalent trope that goes hand in hand with the perpetual lambasting of everyone on the left that we need to Befriend Conservatives, and it is, that we need to Listen To Conservatives, as if we haven't had their views shoved down our throats for years
like every single one of us, universally, is stuck in an ideological (((urban elite))) bubble where we have never been exposed to The Other Side, and THAT'S why we are intolerant of their shitty cartoonishly evil bigotries
leaving aside that it's barely possible to live in america and not constantly be forcefed a steady stream of conservative dogshit, like... many of us have, regrettably and at DEEP harm to ourselves, had plenty of conservative family, friends, and acquaintance
and that is why we absolutely are never, ever, ever, going to do it again.
we don't avoid making conservative friends because we just don't know where they're coming from: it's because we know EXACTLY where these assholes are coming from.
we don't avoid making conservative friends because we just don't know where they're coming from: it's because we know EXACTLY where these assholes are coming from.
my american family-of-birth was deeply conservative. like, deeply. like, i had baby pictures with bush sr conservative. like, clarence thomas was a staple at family dinners conservative.
i don't need a lecture on What Conservatives Believe because that shit was indoctrinated into me from childhood. deeply! i know the shit they talk about at the dinner table. if you think conservatives are bad on television, trust, they are a million times worse in private.
i was about to start getting into details and realized how incredibly traumatic it would be to even BEGIN to touch on the things that were REGULARLY joked about, casually, from the time i was literally a child all the way thru till the last times i went home as an adult
but the casual way that "pro-life" conservatives wish for death and violence on literally everyone, have a callous disregard for all human life, is -- very normal! very everyday! i had to studiously unlearn that shit.
and then they turn around and cry huge crocodile tears on television like oh, boo hoo, you don't want to "tolerate" people who quite literally, want you dead.
and i mean very literally and explicitly. it took me until i was a teenager to really grasp what it MEANT for the country how often i had been in rooms with people who had IMMENSE political power
and openly, explicitly, around our dinner tables, talked about how people who sought abortions should die. how queer people should die. how anyone slightly to the left of them should die. sometimes with amusement! sometimes just casually! sometimes with great vehemence.
(certainly i internalized, as a small queer trans-egg child, what it meant for ME personally, that i was in the room with them. but it took longer to extrapolate what that meant in a broader picture sense.)
it was literally never a secret, being Raised Conservative, surrounded by conservative political figures, that these were People Whose Lives Were Worthless.
different conservatives had different justifications for it! some were outright: yeah we'd kill them ourselves if we could. some hedge more: no, it's GOD who wants them dead and in hell, all i'm doing is telling you the truth that they deserve it.
but there was never any question that there was an Us and a Them and They were a corrupt and wicked enemy whose lives had less value. it permeated all the rhetoric. it seeped into everything.
and after years of being surrounded by people who spend all their energy trying to BUILD A WORLD around the idea that our lives have less value, now we're supposed to give a single fuck about reaching out and crossing that divide?
spare me.
spare me.
i make friends who value me as a human being, not ones who work their damnest to ensure that the ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD does not.
