Posted on 07/24/2013 1:11:12 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
I’ve had many infuriating conversations with my incredibly conservative, Republican stepdad. He’s laughed in my face for pointing out with facts the inadequacy of Mitt Romney during the 2012 election. We argued over the political reputation of Obama in 2008. We’ve also silently disagreed about immigration reform, birth control, gun control, and health care reform, because we both know how that conversation will end. Every time I turn on the television in his and my mother’s home it’s already on Fox News. Every time I get in his car the sexually frustrated, diabetic voice of Rush Limbaugh rattles the dash of the old pickup.
I’ve always just accepted his ignorance though. I stoke the fire every now and then out of boredom, curiosity, or just to give my mom an alternative opinion than the one of the man she lives with. But recently I hit a ceiling with LarBear (as I affectionately refer to my stepdad). Having grown up in Nashville, I never thought I would be reduced to tears out of sheer frustration after having a political conversation with a man raised in Philadelphia. But I was, and it was during a discussion of the Zimmerman verdict the day after it was announced.
This time I decided to come out of the gate swinging because I needed to take out my frustration with my country on someone close to me. In a rant that I’m sure my parent’s neighbors heard, I angrily listed all of the facts and then posed to them the question that I really did desperately need an answer to: How did this happen? I genuinely thought that LarBear might say something moderate about state’s rights and then pontificate on how my generation would have to save the future, and then I would be able to breathe a little easier knowing that it’s just Florida that needs to be sunk like the Titanic. Instead he gazed into his whiskey and refused to make eye contact.
“Do you not think it’s wrong?” I asked hoping he was just mulling over an eloquent way to communicate through our divide. “Well you know, you can’t make it about racial implications, Chloe.” I felt my face turn red. “You mean to say I can’t make it about race?” I asked starting to raise my voice, because nothing makes a racist more of a coward than using terms like “racial implications” when what they really mean is race, the color of someone’s skin. "Racial implications" are not a real thing — they’re an idea that makes racists feel better, an idea placing the emphasis on the thing that makes them uncomfortable rather than the fact that they are uncomfortable with it.
The rest of the exchange went as follows:
Larry: “Well there wasn’t enough evidence to determine if racial implications were involved."
Me: “That’s not even a real sentence. And Zimmerman’s crime and the trial is one giant racial implication. It doesn’t need evidence, it’s a matter of right and wrong.”
Larry: “It’s not politically correct to say racial implications played a part.”
Me: “It’s not politically correct to kill black children.”
I sat in my car crying because I was so mad at him and the situation in general. For as often as our political views don’t align, I’ve still always revered my stepdad as an intelligent man. But the argument we had went beyond anything intelligible. It was a feeling I had seen on television before in debates and on shows like Meet The Press, in which one addresses a conservative with facts and in return is met with complete nonsensical Fox News propaganda.
And that’s the problem with this country more than anything. There are no longer standards for productive discourse. Conservatives have been pushing forward legislation that is bigoted, racist, religious, and dangerous, and instead of having to articulately explain why it they want us to revert back to the 1700s, they start saying things that don’t make sense.
Which leads us to my ultimate, less important point: that HBO’s The Newsroom is a great show. It’s great for many reasons, one of which is that while you’re watching it you can pretend that there is actually some forum where Jeff Daniels holds corporations, legislators, and public figures responsible for their actions and statements. For me though, it was the first time I felt a unified notion of camaraderie with my fellow liberals, because even though it’s fiction, if this show has an audience then I’m not alone.
There’s a moment in season one where Sam Waterston is defending the show within the show to Jane Fonda, the head of the network. Fonda’s character is pissed that a show on her network is attacking the right wing nutjobs that fund the network and whom she has to directly do business with. She accuses the show of being biased to the left. Waterston’s character then has a brilliant response. He says that the show represents the center, because the center is neither left nor right, it is where the facts are.
This article was supposed to be more about The Newsroom and less about a conversation that I had, but that conversation I had is a prime example of why I think that The Newsroom is way more important than just a television show. Slowly the GOP is self-destructing, and with the potential for Texas’ next governor (or perhaps even the next president) to be a Democratic woman, it’s not far-fetched to say that the tides are changing. There will always be conservative fodder on TV for their followers to salivate over. But I can only hope that if such an ideal format for news exists in fiction, it won’t be long before broadcasting the actual news won’t be considered attacking the GOP — it will just be the news.
The left never needs evidence. In fact, they avoid it whenever possible because it generally refutes their positions on the issues.
I love how the writer of this piece seems to think he had a rock-solid, logical argument when all he had was liberal hysteria.
If I were his step dad, as soon as he said "it doesn't need evidence" I would have burst out laughing.
That's the prop to the foundation of their sick Utopian fantasies. Kick that out from under them and the whole rotten edifice collapses around them. Tears and rage ensue. They have nothing else. Nothing.
Even if GZ was a racist, so what?
Racists have a right to live and defend themselves if attacked, just like everybody else.
TM wasn’t killed while harmlessly minding his own business; he was killed while deliberately trying to beat a man’s head in, a man that he had attacked first.
But most importantly of all. Even if GZ swung the first blow, and TM was only defending himself, the state of Florida ABSOLUTLEY FAILED TO PROVE IT NOT ONLY BEYOND A REASONBALE DOUBT, BUT WITHOUT EVEN A REASONABLE CASE THAT IT HAPPENED THAT WAY.
GZ deserved to walk, if only because the case against him was so incredibly weak.
Ultimately the problem is she fails to listen to arguments presented and instead substitutes what she wishes the argument was.
With the Zimmerman verdict not a single person of any prominence said that it’s okay to hunt and kill black teens. Not one. The left insists on making the issue whether it’s okay to kill black teens when the issue is whether it’s legal to kill someone beating you to death. It was. That’s why Zimmerman is walking.
She’s going to keep on being an angry bitter racist person till she educates herself.
Rather odd someone claims to have studied all the evidence then proceeds to show that they haven’t.
There was no evidence preceding the attack that indicates George did anything to provoke it. Evidence is based on... evidence. They don’t consider theories that have nothing to support them and evidence against them.
She has made a television show her reality. I think there is a psychological term for that.
You cannot possibly imagine how compassionate and restrained I am with young Progressives. I always say “please, refill my water” or “we prefer a booth over a table” and we always leave a tip even if the service is marginal. Even though he or she may have a BA in Hispanic Gay Lesbian Transgender Studies and $90,000 in student loans and generally considered to be an abject failure, we are always happy to assist someone to overcome Progressive adversity and built a productive career with Denny’s, IHOP, etc.
-PJ
This seems like the pot calling the Corning Ware black.
STOP THE PRESSES YOU CAN STOP HERE....HERE’S THE DEFINITIVE REPORTAGE ON
THE ZIMMERMAN CASE ...YOU HAVE HERE A VIDEO STARRING THE INESTIMABLE
BILL WHITTLE WHO’LL TREAT YOU TO THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERY LAST ASPECT OF
THIS TRAVESTY ON MR ZIMMERMAN....HE DOES A JOB HERE ONE WORTHY OF THE
GREAT ANN COULTER’S EXPOSITIONS OF THE TRUTH...TAKE A FASCINATING
WATCH. AFTERWARDS YOU’LL HAVE ALL THE AMMO YOU NEED TO DESTROY AN LIB’S
FAIRY TALE FANTASTIC SPIN ON THE TRUTH OF WHAT HAPPENED TO MR. GEORGE
ZIMMERMAN....GOOD ON YA BILL!
http://granitegrok.com/blog/2013/07/bill-whittle-afterburner-the-truth-about-trayvon
What a pleasant daughter she is.
Maybe not, but blacks do it all the time, and nobody says squat.
She's right - unfortunately. It isn't politically correct to kill black children. Even when the black "child" is a bigger and stronger thief on drugs who has already inflicted serious bodily harm, has threatened to escalate to murder, and has the capability to carry out the threat within seconds by either using his superior strength to take the firearm or by using his superior strength to keep beating an innocent man's head against the concrete. Killing such a predator is completely legal and should be celebrated, but it's not politically correct.
“Typical liberal nitwit. One day she will wake up and realize that “Stepdad” was right. I really wish she would do that sooner than later because she is really making an ass out of herself.”
Highly unlikely that she will ever “wake up”, more than likely she’ll continue on the path she’s on blaming any problems she experiences on others, especially her step-dad.
These libs just list out the basic facts of a situation and see racism immediately, they accuse conservatives of not being nuanced.
Look who the simpletons are now.
But obviously most libs couldn't get past the original false narrative. Chloe thinks she deals in facts, but she's not interested in facts. She's only interested in pushing forth her narrative about black kids constantly getting gunned down by racist white guys. I don't know what could convince her otherwise. Her step-dad sounds like he's been through a lot with her. I'd like to hear what he thinks about her.
Slowly the GOP is self-destructing, and with the potential for Texas’ next governor (or perhaps even the next president) to be a Democratic woman, it’s not far-fetched to say that the tides are changing.
*****
She’s behind the tides.
Texas has had two women governors, and the first was almost a century ago.
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