Conservatives Are Toddlers. Junior High Schoolers at Best.

I went to junior high with this kid named Sonny. He was a dick. A real dick. If it was now me instead of then me, Sonny would have worn a broken nose for graduation, instead then me just shut up and endured him. One day he came up to me at my locker. I was wearing a "49ers: Super Bowl Champions" T-shirt. I apologize, I liked Steve Young. "You know why I hate that shirt?" I was slightly confused but expected some absurdly firm voicing of a sports rivalry inherited from his parents. "Because you're wearing it." Even as a 13 year-old I think I was taken aback at how silly this was. What I was really receiving was an advanced course in conservative politics.

Witness this. I grew up in a conservative house, but what we watched on TV was Cousteau and Cosmos. Nova and National Geographic. Something has changed. The idea of playing for a team, for having a side is more powerful than even your own interests. I mean interests as personal, not just economic or political. The majority of conservatives aren't against doing anything about global climate change because of anything in the science or any fake controversy. They oppose it because it is a Democratic issue.

This is frustrating. Exceedingly frustrating but it is also freeing in a sense that I wish the national party would get. As a teenager, once I realized Sonny was fundamentally deranged, I could go about feeling however I wanted about him. I could act however I wanted because his baseline hate for me was established. No matter who the Democratic nominee for president is, they will be reviled as the most liberal ever. No matter who the nominee is, their past will be questioned without regard to truth. No matter who the Democratic leader is, they will be lambasted as a tyrant and no matter what the Democrats propose, it will be shot down as the vanguard of a progressive takeover. So fuck it. If whoever you nominate is going to be the most liberal, nominate the most liberal. If every bit of legislation is running interference for a new progressive age, let's bring it about. Having an opposition that has already decided to hate you isn't all bad, it is just them showing you their hand.