I work in a hardware store. A customer wanted some spray paint, and advice. In Phoenix, there’s a law that the spray paint has to be locked up, so ours is behind sliding glass doors. So I’m talking with this guy, and he starts complaining about how the current Democratic mayor of Phoenix created this requirement: “We gotta get him outta there!” I’m not going to argue politics with a customer, but I can point out an obvious fallacy, so I told him the requirement is many years old, and predates the mayor. This guy doesn’t miss a beat, he shifts the blame to the previous mayor, “that Democrat, Stanton”. I say that it goes back before his time, too, but this guy just talks over me.
Conversations like this one happen about 1x per shift. They don’t bother me much, and I enjoy telling others about them.
But here’s what’s odd. Every one of them has been white, male, conservative, and over 50. No exceptions so far. I’m also white, male, and over 50. Do they assume I’m going to agree with them because of that? Or do they bring up politics everywhere? If so, why just the white, male conservatives?
Pretty much, yup. I get it all the time. Just grunt in response.
Be glad they’re not openly racist with an axe to grind and assuming that, because you look the way you do, you’re openly racist with an axe to grind, too. Know how many [N-word] jokes I’ve been told, unsolicited, from perfect (white, male, conservative) strangers in the past few years? More than I can chalk up to randomness.
I’ll never forget the time a Jewish mailman noticed my Yarmulke and joyfully greeted me in Hebrew. We started talking about how nice it was to be Jewish. Then, he started on a slur-laden rant about Arabs.
Two of my favorite restaurants (Bishos and Prince Of Pizza And Falafel) are owned by Palestinian Americans. Every time I eat there, I hope for a time when we can all live in peace.
The mailman seemed to want either ethnic cleansing or just genocide.
America’s conservative movement is a white supremacist movement. Its adherents live in a perpetual state of aggrievement against non-whites. Racists always assume everyone else is racist, but too scared to speak up.
A few weeks ago, I was visiting my roommate in his room, and he was glad for the company. One of his friends, about his age, and about 20 years older than I am, came in.
Now, me and my roommate are both white males; I’m 40, and he’s 65.
This other friend of his, also white, got to talking about football; the NFL playoffs were going on at the time. And he suggested that there should be a requirement that all NFL teams be 50% white and 50% Black.
I didn’t miss a beat on calling him on his bullshit. “There’s more races than just white and Black. Moreover, I’m more in favor of just letting the best players play.”
You work at a hardware store. That’s the kind of place REAL AMERICANS frequent, since ‘liberal snowflake socialist [add your keywords of choice]’ don’t know the meaning or value of hard work. It probably feels like a safe space for virtue signaling.
Yep - my husband is in outside sales, most of his customers are hardware stores and some of them have become the gathering place for older men. Whenever my husband is at one in particular , where the hanging out population tends be white , male , Christian , Trumper they try to talk politics with him - they assume because he is an over 50- Asian, he must agree with them. There are one or two hanging out that my husband knows for a fact don’t agree - but they keep quiet, I assume because they fear they will be ostracized.
Part of it is that. And probably another part of it is that anyone who isn’t a white, male, and over 50 doesn’t want to bring up politics with you, because they figure there’s too good a chance you’ll be like these guys, and just start ranting about demmie-crats.
The right wing echo chamber works on perpetual outrage. They’re trying to compensate for their dwindling demographics with higher political engagement and they’ve basically designed their entire echo chamber to create bullshit outrages that their target demographic can’t stop talking about.
I think we all know people who we basically know what they’re going to rant about on any given day based on a quick check of the fox news headlines.
A significant part of their target demographic has been convinced that everything they love and know is being taken away and/or changed and/or given to someone else and, being used to being in power and having people listen to their authority based on their age/race/whatever, they freely and openly talk about the bullshit they’ve been fed
Ignorance is loud and confident; former priviledge slipping away is loud; outrage is loud; bullshit is loud; people who view themselves as the top of society are loud. They aren’t the only loud ones, but this explains, in part, why you disproportionately find yourself hearing about this stuff. There are definitely radical leftists who will talk loudly about politics with stranger, but they are proportionately much fewer.
Interesting thread. Makes me glad to live in a place where the default assumption is that everyone, regardless of race, culture, gender, or age, is almost certainly a Democrat.
People generally feel free to make rude cracks about Trump or whatever, but people rarely try to initiate actual political conversations with strangers in my experience; that’s what we have the Bears for.
I’ve not too familiar with Larry David. I don’t get the joke.
Your comment did make me realise I was unclear. I don’t think ‘I had dinner at a Palestinian restaurant. They should give me the Nobel Peace Prize.’ I do think that if we can see each other as human beings and not just an enemy with a label, if we can share common (delicious) food and common experiences, then that’s a good first step to not hating and killing each other.
Why would I take off my yarmulke before dining at Bisho’s or Prince? As far as I’m concerned- not only am I not being rude by wearing it, I’m doing a good deed by showing that it’s okay for Jews to patronize them and we can just get along.
