by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
One of the go-to talking points of one of my well meaning, sincere conservative relatives is the idea that he just wants to be”left alone.”
I really struggle with what he means by this. If I brought up how the state telling a woman what she can and can’t do with her body definitely goes against his mantra, I doubt he would process what I was implying the same way. In his mind, he doesn’t really hold a coherent ideological stance other than a vague, abstract fear that the “woke cancel culture mob” is going to either force him to turn gay or ruin his life just because he’s conservative.
This mentality is also why he just can’t validate my fears of what will happen to ME if the United States becomes a MAGA themed autocracy. Not until I’m abducted by ICE and tortured will it become real to him that maybe he should have joined forces with me and people like me when he had a chance to save democracy.
There is a real crisis in the United States when it comes to Traditionalists. Something about the second Obama Administration broke their minds. Something about how there was a sudden, abrupt change in social expectations and gender dynamics really spooked them. Whatever was that happened spooked them to the point that they are gleefully waiting for a MAGA themed fascist autocracy to consume the United States so things will go back to the way they were — America will, at last, be great again.
But in their eagerness to murder American democracy, they are totally oblivious to how they are directly connected to people — ME — who probably will have an ICE bullet put in his head when he simply refuses to shut the fuck up about our Very American Autocrat is a piece of shit who can suck his cock.
I am well aware of how hysterical that sounds at the moment. But when the United States turns into a white Christian ethnostate — which seems to be an immutable, inevitable aspect of our future history at the moment — people like me will have a choice.
Either we leave the country, never to be seen again, or we risk being “disappeared” by ICE (or whatever agency the autocracy ultimately weaponizes.)
But back to the idea of my relative just wanting to be “left alone.” It’s my impression that much of the rage of my well-meaning conservative relative comes from the regular sensitivity training he has to undergo as part of his corporate job. What is that, however, but the free market working? If it’s a private company doing that sort of “woke” things, then they’ve decided for some reason that it’s in the best interest of their shareholders for the employees to at least be aware of how some people have a different perception of race and gender roles.
And, yet, that’s not how my conservative relative sees things. Without even realizing what he’s articulating, he’s pontificating on his support for white identity politics. He doesn’t believe in democracy because he wants keep white people on top, even as the white birth rate plummets and America becomes a majority minority nation.
There is so much more to talk about, but I’ll cut it short to make this specific point – all things being equal, Blues should secede from the United States and found a Blue Union that is on the same page about what we expect from each other on a whole host of issues.
But, by definition, such a National Divorce would grow horrifically violent and I don’t want that. So, autocracy or military junta it is, I suppose.
