While at a party at Lawrence Person’s house, I was surprised to hear him say that the reason the Democrats lost the 2006 midterm elections was because liberals had been calling religious conservatives stupid. Now, I’ve had more interaction with Person since then, and he’s said any number of things that I have given little heed, but this particular comment has stuck with me. I just like the idea that conservatives have had their feelings hurt, and that has altered the political makeup of this country in some measurable way.
So I’ve been making a special effort to not use words like "retarded" or "bag of doorknobs" when referring to creationists or the Bush administration’s foreign policy. (I have however continued to use those words when referring to vegans or people who believe in acupuncture)
It’s been hard. When hundreds of thousands of people have been killed for no discernible reason other than the profit of Halliburton, or when the U.S. economy has been tanked and the budget deficit exploded into surreal realms of debt, you feel like you have the right to throw around some hurtful words.
And sometimes, those words are completely redundant.
This is a photo of a house in the ultra-smarmy-liberal Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin. Word on the street is that the Confederate flag went up shortly after the international food market across the street put up some foreign flags. Although there are many things about Texas I would change if I could, its flag doesn’t have the immediate association with an oppressive slave state, so I don’t have much sympathy with the "My Confederate flag means I’m proud of where I come from" argument.
In the next photo, it’s important to note that the occupants of this house are an old white couple. Every night they take in their signs and their racist flag, perhaps so that vandals can’t run their signs through MS-Word’s spellchecker while they’re sleeping.
I mean, one guy working alone I can see, but how can two people working together not have access to a dictionary or the entire damn internet?
Or perhaps I have it completely wrong, and the reason they’re voting for McCain is that he’s merely a social kinda guy, instead of the most horrifyingly sociable candidate.
