Why is it that I keep reading these snide remarks in the press, usually from pundits who wouldn't dare be caught in a Holiday Inn in a red state, that it is the liberal intellecutal elites in this nation who deserve all the scorn? Why is it incumbent on blues to "get a clue" and understand the mind of the average Bush voter, as if we're this uniform pack of snobs? Would somebody enlighten me on that one? Do they just want me to shut down my brain? I mean, my mind doesn't work that way.
Let me try to use simple words for the intellectually challenged. I have to do this thing in my life called thinking. Thought is important to my day. It helps me perform tasks and contributes to my sense of well being. Sometimes I even think while performing other essential activities like driving, eating or urinating. While I am thinking, I sometimes like to fit things together in my mind, like little pieces of jigsaw puzzles. I enjoy looking for patterns and thinking about how ideas relate. I also read a lot. Books other than the Bible (which I have read twice). I have read many opinions of all political persuasions. I have read them with this mind that thinks, imagines, and analyzes things everyday. With all this reading, I have yet to see one writer capable of putting together an argument that can persuade me that a vote for George Bush makes any kind of logical sense. Pretzel logic, maybe, but real logic, nope. Now I have seen plenty of writers make a strong case for the president using irrational arguments. Plenty of compelling irrational arguments out there. Highly persuasive. So, you see, I am from a blue state and I am kind of capable of understanding my red brothern. I do try. I try to understand how you are afraid of men in turbans. I understand your allegiance to the flag. I understand that a strong military makes you feel protected and strong. I understand that you would rather have soldiers dying in Iraq than civilians dying here, and I understand that you see that as a valid connection, even though I don't. You see, we understand more than you think, and sometimes we even share the same concerns. It's just that we don't agree with your solutions much of the time. We don't claim to have all the answers, and we don't think you do either. So we reject much of what you believe. This is known as disagreement. It does not make me evil or an idiot. It just makes me different from you.
This is what gets us in trouble with the other side. That's what red state thinking fails to comprehend or accept, that someone else might have a right answer or a better answer than them. And that's what makes us so mad. We try to bring up important subjects, to debate and persuade and maybe even be persuaded, and then watch stunned as our listeners swiftly shut down, close off. They stop hearing. You start talking about facts and reasons and their eyes shift. And they're off to talk with someone just like them. What I get from such conversations is a sense that the red state believer feels very threatened when forced to think. I do not know how thinking became such a demonized part of their life or why it is there to be feared and avoided, but the phenomenon is real. I have observed it.
I reject the notion that blue state liberal elites are all snobby intellectuals too conceited to mix it up with the rest of the population. That's a slur. It's more accurate to say that many of us blues have been pushed to the margins by a red majority who are afraid to think, afraid to question their core beliefs, who feel threatened by diversity, who project their ignorance and biases upon their enemies, and who then never invite you to dinner or the backyard barbecue, skip your house at Halloween, and look on you with suspicion and disapproval. You get cut out of the community awfully quick if you raise a voice that challenges the status quo.
So I ask the big question. Now that the reds are clearly in the majority, don't they have a responsibility to try and understand us a little? Let's open up the dialogue. Couldn't they be a little more openminded? I mean, if we're so hopeless, where's the pity? Don't you feel sorry for us? Where's your compassion, conservative?
You know, philistinism can be just as snobby as elitism. I'm tired of being smeared and slimed for thinking, for being smart, for reading books and newspapers, and then have experts say I just don't get it. OK, 49% of us don't get it, then. And you know something else? Card carrying members of the liberal intellectual elite can pump their own gas, and they even know how to cuss just like they do at the NASCAR track. So to all you who would write us off for what we think... we're not going to back down... we aint goin' nowhere. Unless it's Canada. Maybe then, we'll talk.
