Face to Face with Conservatism

Posted on November 14, 2002 in Neighborhood

I don’t know why I invited the confrontation. Maybe it was that belly of his, which pressed forth through his stuffed shirt like the South Portico of our scoundrel-occupied White House. Maybe it was his know-it-all attitude, the way he showed off his superior “I don’t need anyone else’s advice”. Maybe it was because I felt high because of the news that Wes Boyd’s email brought, that the House Wimpocrats had taken the bold step of selecting a real spokesperson for their party, California’s own Nancy Pelosi. (I think cosmoi from Dalnet #politics described things well when he told me ” the Republican ‘wave’ in the election stopped at the California border. It seems it’s up to California to give an agenda to and invigorate the Democratic party.”) Maybe I just forgot for a moment that I was in a restaurant, not a chat room.

I didn’t barge into the conversation. He invited me. I guess he wanted to show his anorexic girlfriend, who said not one thing in response to him, that he was “open-minded”. He blew it big when I pointed out the problems with the news coverage in the United States, that for any real alternative opinion you had to read the European press. “I don’t need Europe! I’ve got all the press I want!” “And baked precisely to your taste,” I laughed and told him that I’d seen how press agencies allow themselves to be handfed and distorted the news per their management’s whims.

“I’ve said what I have to say to you. There’s no more need for me to say more,” I ended.

“Yeah, it looks like you’d better stop talking.” I turned to Lynn and chatted amicably about the web site and some anti-vaccination articles that I’d seen. It was the old statistics problem that some people didn’t seem to grasp: A and B may co-exist, but it doesn’t mean that A caused B. B could have caused A. Or they could both have been caused by something else. Or they might have nothing to do with each other — complete coincidences.

“It’s like those people who brag about how law and order has brought the murder rate down,” I said. “When the truth is that it’s going down because doctors are better able to save them.” Yes, those darned liberal doctors whose research into more effective emergency surgical interventions had been financed by our government. I noticed him shift imperceptibly in his chair. He didn’t like to hear that, I could tell.