I’ve been going back and forth on this lately. After the undeniable pasting our side took at the polls, I I’ve been seeking out and sterilizing any bullshit rationalization(s) I’d been harboring, boiling down the lesson(s) to their ugly essence so that what I would be left with - however unpalatable - would point the way forward. It’s something everyone should be doing, because when you’re as wrong as we just were, you must be absolutely mercenary with your suppositions. Throw out everything that isn’t concrete fact, and work from there, because lying to yourself is more dangerous than ever.
One proposition I’ve been contemplating has been offered by numerous critics, and that is the idea that we have — fairly or unfairly — shut out a large segment of the population because we find their views on certain issues appalling. The suggestion is to engage those voters, those people we’ve summarily dismissed with a quick label and no second thought. It was an interesting suggestion to me because it challenged my assumptions.
But with all due respect to helpful critics who have been scolding us for refusing to engage the “heartland voters”, for writing them off as worthless or a lost cause or whatever, I’m sorry, but no. Fuck no.
I have spent most of my adult life trying to engage these people. One on one, as the critics suggest, or in groups, in friendship, in good faith, desperately trying to connect with them and get across our common interests. I have met with increasingly less success in my lifetime, and over the past eight years, I have stepped up this effort, frantically trying to have a conversation with these people. Any conversation. And I have been struggling with the aforementioned criticism this past week, wondering if I’ve erred in some way. Perhaps I’m not approaching them the right way. Perhaps I’m not persistent enough. But you know what? That is the bullshit I need to sterilize. I have done everything my not-inconsiderable ingenuity has managed to conjure up to have a conversation with these people. I did not get to have that conversation.
What I got instead was unFriended, Ignore-filtered, blocked, death threats and then blocked, and/or “Get raped” and then blocked. Any evidence - statistics, official data, the historical record, public records, scientific studies, et al were just me “getting offended”. A quick, “U mad bro LOL,” and blocked. Everything I said was disqualified because: I’m a librul (I’m not), I’m a Dumbocrat (I’m not), I never served my country (wrong again), I’m on welfare (I’m not), I’m a SJW (“Get raped” again), I’m a East/West Coast (insert various epithets here) (I live in Wisconsin), I’m a “cuck” (more impotent name-calling), I’m an atheist (finally, a true one), ad infinitum. All followed by a quick exit (blocked, filtered, unFriended, walked away from, door slammed in face) or more of the same, and then a slow exit. But usually, it’s just the quick exit.
And don’t I dare so much as mention our most vulnerable citizens, or everything is about race and evil men and hating Christians and special rights and not even all of those, because they’re gone so fast they barely have time to whine about what a scumfuck feminist SJW atheist librul Obammy-phone-wielding welfare lazy not-getting-raped-enough asshole who-should-die I am.
So, no. I don’t mean to be dismissive, but, no, you do not get to tell me that I’m the one who wrote these people off. Fuck that. I’m not the one who refuses to have a conversation. I’m not even joining them in refusing have a conversation, because - glutton for punishment that I am - I continue to plead every day for these people to talk to me. Seriously, I get messages and comments of bewilderment from liberal friends all the time, wondering how in the world I put up with it. And put up with it I will, until the icy scythe of death shuts me up for good, because that’s my jam.
So, thank you, helpful critics, for the suggestion. Any suggestion is welcome - especially in the current climate, where more people seem to be interested in assigning blame than lifting a finger to fix the problem. But you’re wrong. We have not failed to engage these people. They stopped listening a long time ago, and nothing we say is getting through. I know this because I watch my words bounce off them every day.
It was a worthy idea. A very optimistic (though bitterly humbling) idea: swallow our pride and steal the support right out from under the crooks who continue to prey on those very people while claiming their votes. But it won’t work. It is not the path back. We’re going to have to find another way. So, please, helpful critics, do us all a favor and stop suggesting it. It’s a waste of the precious little time we have to form and execute an effective response.