Not About Orgasms

Its tough being a liberal. I can never decide which conservative ideal to stomp all over next. Organized religion, hah! Traditional family values, phewy! The "American Dream", puhleaze! Its all old hat as far as I'm concerned. I don't understand why everyone keeps insisting on being conservative when I settled these issues a long time ago.

Like yesterday, I got in a big debate at work with a customer and two of my coworkers about progressive taxes. I explained very carefully that since the wealthy are able to make and save money much more easily than the poor, there is inherent inequality built into the system which progressive taxes help make right. Duh! But did this fact change their minds. No! As if I hadn't even opened my mouth, they kept insisting that its unfair to tax gazillionares a greater percentage of their incomes than Katrina victims. After all, everyone knows that Bill Gates worked approximately 100billion times harder to earn his money than a migrant worker. If a migrant worker wants to send his children to college, he might just want to "step it up a notch"....or two or three or four.

The debate ended on a sour note, as it always does when I manage to get to the heart of the reasoning behind a conservative's position on any given subject. Usually things boil down to this: People who call themselves conservative don't give a rats ass about anyone but themselves. The world is a brutal place they say. The law "survival of the fittest" is the supreme law of the land. If a particular person or nation is suffering or even dying, well then, that's the way it goes. If a larger percentage of blacks live in poverty, they've only got themselves to blame. Or, many conservatives will admit, and many more will believe, its because blacks aren't quite as smart and well behaved as whites, and that's why so many blacks live in ghettos. So, yesterday, when someone said that he doesn't care about the circumstances in which a person is born, and when he chose the phrase "survival of the fittest", I knew the debate was entering very dark waters, waters which I did not care to enter. There lurked the evil of conservative ideology.

The debate left me a bit shaken. The fundamental nature of conservatism was not a mystery to me, but it had been a while since I confronted the nitemare face to face. Honestly, I kind of thought that I was over engaging anyone in conversations about generalized and polarizing conservative and liberal labels. I'd much rather talk about how orgasms vary in intensity and duration. Or, about how Brad Pitt is Angelina's biatch. Or I'd rather see a movie, or do just about anything else.

I'm just about done feeling superior when I debate politics. I don't quite get the fix I used to. Now, I'm left feeling sad for the heartless conservatives as well as myself, for having engaged in such an assinine exercise. There's no joy in that.

So, I thought I'd write a blog about it. Horray!