Stupid Things Conservatives Say, Fourth Iteration

“I am proud of my heritage and our inclusive American culture, which makes me a xenophobe.”

        Well, Bunkey, you had me on this one, right up to those last five words, which make you an imbecile. The words “inclusive American culture” and “Xenophobe” are mutually exclusive. I have little doubt that you are proud of your heritage, especially the all-white, Jim Crow part of it. The inclusive nature of our cultural landscape, however, certainly is far from a “Conservative” feature of our national makeup. It was persons who were at the time styled as conservative who discriminated against Catholics in the mid 1840s.  Look up “1844 Bible riots” and have someone read it to you. These same xenophobes blatantly discriminated and abuse Irish immigrants elsewhere during that time in a wave of “nativist” sentiment.     

       Your nativist ultra conservative forbears formalized that sentiment later, forming the American, better known as the “Know Nothing,” Party. Prominent from 1853 to 1856, they were antagonistic toward Roman Catholics and recent immigrants and members preserved its secrecy by denying its existence.  You know; like the Klan would 100 years and more later? Your forbears stigmatized later Italian immigrants in much the same way at the turn of the century.  California was equally hostile to Asian immigrants from the mid-1800s until the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent in 1941.

       Your initial statement is self-contradictory, but then recent events have made swallowing such drivel somewhat easier, huh? In Trump world, today’s Arabs, and Hispanics are yesterday’s Irish and Italians and eastern Europeans. We are a relatively inclusive society, but don’t you dare try to hijack it as a Conservative movement.  It was Benjamin Harrison (Republican) who signed the order giving federal authorities control over Ellis island, and William Howard Taft (Republican) who signed the (even worse) Angel Island facility on the West Coast into existence.

“I value my safety and that of my family and I appreciate the police and the legal system, which makes me a right-wing, cop loving extremist.”

        Again, it starts as a reasonable statement and then runs into a ditch! We all value our safety and that of our families, but that “all” sometimes includes kids shot for using a cell phone, holding a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea, or reaching for a driver’s license. Know what’s odd? All those examples are of persons of a somewhat more intense pigmentation than you, killed by those same police you idolize. If you believe the police are always right, even when they do things such as sodomize a handcuffed person with a broomstick, and brag about it, then yeah, you pretty much are an extremist. In August 1997, NYPD officer Justin Volpe, and three other police officers beat Abner Louima brutally in a police cruiser, and then back at the station house Volpe sodomized Louima with a broken broom handle while a fellow officer held him down. This is one of far too few cases like this which resulted in a trial of the offending officer, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison.  

        Law Enforcement personnel, like teachers, Nurses and other ‘trusted” professions are actually drawn from a spectrum of persons who opt for such demanding jobs for a variety of reasons. Of the three groups I mentioned, we trust the police to protect us in a more physical way, and the vast majority do just that. Many are exemplary, some average, and unfortunately, some, a minority, are, as an LEO former student and friend (still a friend, but not a student anymore, lol) classifies them, “Badge Heavy.”  It should be troubling to you (but probably isn’t) that in far too many cases, the same actions which would place you and I in jail, are simply blips on an officer’s personnel file. If I shoot an unarmed man in his car in front of his girlfriend, I’d be imprisoned for manslaughter or second-degree murder. If I do it as a cop, I may well do no time at all.

        What is troubling to me is, that while you rant about “personal responsibility” when it comes to most Americans, especially poor and minority folks, that “hold ‘em accountable” zeal just seems to evaporate within you if the accused abuser is a cop. I have no idea why you are so ethically crippled, but it is what it is.   

        And, oh yeah, if you truly “believe in our legal system,” that includes the courts which have blocked several of Trump’s attempts to bypass several civil protections. Are you appreciative of the Federal judges who have heroically blocked Trump efforts to derogate and legally endanger DACA participants? How about Roe V Wade? In truth, you appreciate the institutions when they work to your satisfaction or advantage, otherwise maybe not so much, huh?  

“I believe in hard work, fair play, and fair compensation according to each individual's merits, which today makes me an ‘anti-Socialist’.”

        The late physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, once described a student’s theses as “So bad it’s not even just wrong.”  Your statement above is of that genre. Actually, the first part of the statement is what, if you really believed it, might actually be indicative of the fact that you are a Socialist. 

       You cite “fair” compensation, as if you meant it, but I’m really sure you oppose raising the minimum wage to a level that enables a hard-working person who does the jobs you are “too good” to do can survive. The irony inherent in your bias is that maintaining a low minimum wage also insures more persons qualifying for welfare. In fact, a household with two full time working adults, after withholding of Income and Social Security taxes is still under the federal poverty level should they dare to have even one child. 
       
        Want to lower welfare rolls? Raise the minimum wage! Of course, I’m sure you don’t view minimum wage work as “hard” work. Try some. This is reminiscent of the English landowners and higher ups in the (Protestant) Church of Ireland, who, presented with the increasing numbers of Irish Catholic poor dying of starvation, simply reduced it all to, “The Irish need to learn to live within their means.”  

        In like fashion, I’m relatively sure you and I probably have vastly different concepts of what constitutes an individual’s “merits.”  In my world, “merit” omits net worth as a criterion. Based on your political choices, I’m pretty sure net worth, no matter how acquired is way up your scale. The fact that it is, separates, in a lot of instances, reflexive Conservatives from persons of conscience.