Are Seven

Skirting the specifics, this happened: a group of self-described conservatives I know gave an Obama voter that I know a t-shirt as a gag gift: a shirt that said “Obama ‘08″…below a drawing of a monkey eating a banana. After the image sank in, the conservatives laughed, but not just as “Ha ha! Thought you might get a kick out of it”, but hysterical, crying, clutching-their-stomachs laughter that lasted a good full minute.

My disappointment wasn’t in the near-anachronistic racism that I learned long ago to roll my eyes at and even use as a party  story (“They said that?! Really?! No!”). And only part of my disappointment was that, once again, self-described conservatives that I know—not people screaming in TV news soundbites—reveal themselves to be the bigots I would be afraid to call them for fear of stereotyping too hard.

My real disappointment is that lack of true, thinking sparring partners. I know all of two conservatives (my dad and a college friend) who give actual decent arguments, and everyone else I know or meet who self-defines themselves as a conservative is philosophically null. This bothers me not just because of the too-grownup realization that most of even the most passionate people’s opinions are nowhere close to reasoned, but because I’ve become a little bit desperate for a thoughtful conservative take.

No matter how flawed Obama and the Democrat’s plans are, there’s no getting around the fact that political discourse in this country is no more than the Democrats/Liberals coming up with a plan and the Conservatives/Republicans saying that’s it’s bad for America. Simply: the liberals are leading for no other reason than the conservatives are doing nothing but following behind, playing “opposite day” with whatever the liberals say and calling it a political stance. No matter what happens, we desperately need someone would can argue the counter, but right now, we have little resembling that from the conservatives. Instead, we just have hate and thoughtless contrariness.

My story isn’t a unique one. Between me and the people I know giving up stories of close friends and relatives behaving exactly as sort of deeply ignorant, racist and disrespectful people that make the craziest of town hall yellers look like the norm instead of the fringe.

That there’s no actual ideas or real rhetoric coming from conservatives is bad enough. But when they step right into a steaming pile of stereotype, it dirties up even the faintest glimmer of logic and reason that they have to offer.

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