Dispatch From the New Conservative Underground: It's Worse Than We Thought

I work in the creative industry, therefore it will surprise no one that I am constantly surrounded by Democrats, most of whom are fairly hardcore liberal. Most of them are not bad people, but they are passionate about their politics, despite the fact that most of them truly do not know what they are talking about. Being a liberal in the creative industry is like being high at a Grateful Dead concert: you don't have to be the one smoking it to be under its influence. Most of the people in my field are Democrats simply because you can't be cool (or even particularly tolerated) if you are anything else, and creative people are very enamoured with being cool. I don't engage my colleagues in political conversations for the same reason prison inmates don't bend over to pick up a dropped bar of soap. I just keep my head down and do my job, and usually we all get along fine.

Today, however, I had my first serious freak-out of the new Obama era.

I was working in an editing suite with three other guys. One of these guys, who I will call Bob, spent a good portion of the day loudly voicing his glee about what the Obama presidency was going to be like. The other two guys nodded and agreed as Bob plowed on, assuming, as a matter of course, that everyone in the room agreed with him.

I have not been so sincerely freaked out in a long, long time.

It started with Bob disgustedly calling those who dared vote different than him "f--king hayseeds". This did not particularly surprise me. I am long accustomed to Democrats utterly belittling and insulting those who disagree with them. A few minutes later, however, Bob mentioned an acquaintance of his who'd attended the Republican National Convention. He said that this person had been appalled by the violence that was committed against many of the attendees. Bob blithely admitted that the violence had indeed occurred, and then explained to this acquaintance, "the fact that you people don't understand why that was justified is why you are going to lose this thing."

Did you hear that? I mean, really? According to this particular liberal Democrat, violence against people who disagree with him is justified.

I should point out that Bob is not a complete whack-job. He's successful. He's apparently happily married. He's a father. He's even relatively likeable when he isn't talking polotics. And Bob thinks that dropping cement bags onto the windshields of busses full of conventioneers and spitting on seventy-year-old women is justified, simply because those people dared to be Republicans.

How, exactly, are people like Bob different from terrorists?

I'd sure like to believe that Bob is the great exception, sort of like the Republican racist or the Boy Scout child-molester (contrary to popular belief), but then I began to recall more of what his party has always been about.

Barack Obama himself never once spoke out against the violences committed against Republicans at their convention. Strangely enough, on our own side of the campaign, one couldn't even mention Obama's middle name without John McCain calling an emergency press conference to condemn the guilty party. Amazingly, however, McCain's strained nobility didn't translate across the aisle. During the last debate, Obama managed to effect an air of wounded transcendence at the idea that someone might have shouted something ugly about him at a Republican rally, but was apparently all right with the idea of bags of human feces being lobbed at Republican conventioneers. Bob would certainly approve.

These are the people who've just won the White House.

This is the same party that spawned Jesse Jackson and his Rainbow Pucs Coalition, which regularly extorts massive donations from corporations lest they be deemed "racist" by the morally impeccable Jackson. Similarly, this is the same party that planted the seeds of the current economic catastrophe by threatening to picket banks as racist if they didn't grant more and more sub-prime home loans. This is the party that foments men like the baton-weilding Black Panthers who attempted to block the polling place in Republican-heavy voting areas, happily resorting to threats instead of debate. This is, in short, the party of simple thug-politics and mafia-style threats.

These are the people who now control the majority of the government.

Bob's party is the force behind the "fairness doctrine", which is interested in fairness in the same way that George Orwell's fictional "Ministry of Peace" was interested in Peace (for those of you who've not yet read "1984", the Ministry of Peace was, of course, concerned with waging war). This is the party that shuns debates of ideas, choosing instead the forced silence of anyone who dissents. This is the party of shouting down the speeches of those they oppose, rather than engaging them intellectually. This is the party of Barack Obama, who refused to debate John McCain in Town Hall-style meetings across the country. This is the party of Al Gore, who refuses to debate anyone in the scientific community (or any other community, for that matter) on the issue of global warming. This is the party of Michael Moore, of propagandistic movies and bumper sticker slogans, of one-sided diatribes of all kinds, but never of rational discussions of ideas. This is the party of belittling and mocking, of comfort in the like-minded crowd, because the group-think of the crowd so easily supplants any need for personal intellectual honesty.

This is the party that admits that the question of when life begins is "above their pay-grade", and yet, even in the face of that uncertainty, defaults to killing that potential life, and then dares to call it a virtue.

This is the party that admires Karl Marx, who taught that truth is variable based on whatever furthers the cause. This is the party that has made that philosophy a synonym for politics.

I hate to say it, but I think things are actually a lot worse than we originally thought. This is the party that is now firmly in charge of our country.

Bob had a lot more to say. He said that Obama was already planning to use his army of millions of online cyber-brutes to harrass his opponants, pressuring and threatening them into fast-tracking the new president's deliciously liberal agenda. Most of the facets of that agenda, Bob explained, had to do with forcing companies to adhere to debilitating "green" retrofittings (much like what Obama claimed he'd cripple the coal industry with) and supplanting "straight-capitalism" with "new socialistic capitalism". Bob wasn't just blowing smoke. He wasn't making any of this up. He knew his stuff. He knew the terminology and the numbers. He knew how this internet army came about (Clinton and Howard Dean) and about the uncomfortable alliance between Clinton's DNC and the new Obama regime. He knew dates and names and specifics. Bob was very much in-the-know.

Maybe Bob is wrong. Maybe Obama really will settle down into the sort of mainstream, centrist presidency that so many presidents seem to succumb to, regardless of political inclination. Maybe Bob doesn't represent his party when he says that violence against Republicans is justified and understandable. Maybe Bob is just one angry, gleeful exception in the liberal Democratic juggernaut that is now controlling everything.

Oh God, I do hope so. But considering the history of the Democratic party, up to this very day, I don't think Bob is wrong at all. I think Bob is, in fact, in the dead-center mainstream of his party.

I used to keep my head down and avoid talking about politics among my colleagues because I was worried about getting into a senseless argument. Now, for the first time, I am actually worried to even admit I am a conservative. Now, for the first time in my life, being a conservative could potentially be physically dangerous.

Welcome to the New Conservative Underground.