- Joined
- Jan 14, 2014
- Messages
- 38
- Reaction score
- 41
"You know, I really wish somebody would just blow his head off already," he continued, not missing a beat. I made a non-committal noise in response, took a slug off my longneck, and changed the subject back to the eclipse. This incident was weird, but not for the surface reason.
The weird thing wasn't this retiree I had met ten minutes earlier casually wishing death on a political figure supported by roughly half the country.
No, the truly bizarre thing was how pedestrian this kind of occurrence had become in my own life, how inured to it I had become. It should be unusual for someone to make inflammatory political remarks to a fellow countryman after having known him only ten minutes. But it's not. It happens thousands of times every day in professional middle-class circles like the ones I travel in. In these circles, being liberal is the default, and therefore all liberals are "out": everyone knows that a lib is a lib, and they talk about their politics freely, indeed nearly non-stop in many cases.
By contrast, even moderate conservatives in such circles are usually closeted. They keep their heads down and their mouths shut. If the liberals know that conservatives walk silently amongst them, they sure don't see it as any reason to watch their mouths. On the contrary, they seem to sincerely believe that everyone around them believes more or less the same things they do.
They therefore say the most nakedly partisan, divisive things in mixed company, serenely confident they are surrounded by fellow travelers, blissfully ignorant of who in their lives might disagree with them.”
An accurate depiction of how you must talk around everyone without even realizing it.
From Kitten | Substack
