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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2gizCBJ:unicornduke replied to your post “The promised side-post on New York State politics. For background, I…”
I’m actually in the same boat in MD. It’s blue blue blue b/c of Baltimore and DC but I’m on the Eastern Shore, which only got vague development in the 50s when the bay bridge was built. It’s all ag land and full of conservatives who hate everyone on the western shore. idek most people like to talk the talk of hating the dems but they can’t really come up with ways they’ve actually screwed them over so *shrugs*. the number of trump signs is pretty depressing tho
Yes. The farm I spend so much time on is in Rennselaer county, which holds the city of Troy, but is otherwise pretty rural, and so my brother-in-law goes to Farm Bureau meetings and such, and is the only liberal. At one meeting, they were discussing something or other, and then someone called for a vote that they would all go on the record as deploring the Affordable Care act, and b-i-l was like, “But that act allows me to have insurance coverage for me and my family, and allows me to help my employees have insurance coverage; I’ve personally benefited from it immensely,” and another woman in the room was like “the ACA allowed me to get insurance for my son who had a pre-existing condition and has single-handedly lifted my family from bankruptcy and turned our lives around,” and they were still like “no shut up you don’t know what you’re talking about it’s awful it’s Democrats and Obama is terrible”, and so in the official vote, despite wanting very badly to impress these people, my b-i-l was the sole abstainer on the record. (He was like, “I couldn’t do it, guys.” My mom had to explain to him that while it was cute that he was interested in getting involved in local politics, if he did not join the Republican party he would never win a local election, and so he was better off going for non-elected positions. She works for our town government, and has for years, in a $500-a-year appointed position [historian], and is well aware that if she’d had to run for the position she’d never have gotten it despite impeccable qualifications. Literally everyone elected in that building is a Republican; that’s just how it works at the town level.)
And that’s the thing that just gets me about basically every conservative complainer. Like, I could probably name for you half a dozen to a dozen things that Obama’s administration has done that I’m personally not wild about, and some that I actively deplore, but when you ask an avowed conservative what liberal policy has concretely harmed them, most of them rattle off totally fictional things and get angry or ranty, and it’s really hard– I mean, okay, I am not just tooting my own horn when I say that I am exceptionally good at empathy and imagining people’s motivations, all right, sometimes I cry after road rage incidents because I totally understand the POV of the person I was yelling at, ok, and I bet they only cut me off because they were having a hard day, OK– that kind of shit is really routine for me.
But the people with the Hillary For Prison sign on their front lawn [there’s one right by my parents’ house, the neighbor up the street]? Like– name me a goddamn fact about Donald Trump, and they can’t. It’s so incredibly frustrating. Tell me which of Obama’s policies have harmed you– they don’t have a good answer, not a true one with any statistics. Like, shit, I know more about the actually-deplorable shit Obama has done than they do, and I actually like him.
I’m actually in the same boat in MD. It’s blue blue blue b/c of Baltimore and DC but I’m on the Eastern Shore, which only got vague development in the 50s when the bay bridge was built. It’s all ag land and full of conservatives who hate everyone on the western shore. idek most people like to talk the talk of hating the dems but they can’t really come up with ways they’ve actually screwed them over so *shrugs*. the number of trump signs is pretty depressing tho
Yes. The farm I spend so much time on is in Rennselaer county, which holds the city of Troy, but is otherwise pretty rural, and so my brother-in-law goes to Farm Bureau meetings and such, and is the only liberal. At one meeting, they were discussing something or other, and then someone called for a vote that they would all go on the record as deploring the Affordable Care act, and b-i-l was like, “But that act allows me to have insurance coverage for me and my family, and allows me to help my employees have insurance coverage; I’ve personally benefited from it immensely,” and another woman in the room was like “the ACA allowed me to get insurance for my son who had a pre-existing condition and has single-handedly lifted my family from bankruptcy and turned our lives around,” and they were still like “no shut up you don’t know what you’re talking about it’s awful it’s Democrats and Obama is terrible”, and so in the official vote, despite wanting very badly to impress these people, my b-i-l was the sole abstainer on the record. (He was like, “I couldn’t do it, guys.” My mom had to explain to him that while it was cute that he was interested in getting involved in local politics, if he did not join the Republican party he would never win a local election, and so he was better off going for non-elected positions. She works for our town government, and has for years, in a $500-a-year appointed position [historian], and is well aware that if she’d had to run for the position she’d never have gotten it despite impeccable qualifications. Literally everyone elected in that building is a Republican; that’s just how it works at the town level.)
And that’s the thing that just gets me about basically every conservative complainer. Like, I could probably name for you half a dozen to a dozen things that Obama’s administration has done that I’m personally not wild about, and some that I actively deplore, but when you ask an avowed conservative what liberal policy has concretely harmed them, most of them rattle off totally fictional things and get angry or ranty, and it’s really hard– I mean, okay, I am not just tooting my own horn when I say that I am exceptionally good at empathy and imagining people’s motivations, all right, sometimes I cry after road rage incidents because I totally understand the POV of the person I was yelling at, ok, and I bet they only cut me off because they were having a hard day, OK– that kind of shit is really routine for me.
But the people with the Hillary For Prison sign on their front lawn [there’s one right by my parents’ house, the neighbor up the street]? Like– name me a goddamn fact about Donald Trump, and they can’t. It’s so incredibly frustrating. Tell me which of Obama’s policies have harmed you– they don’t have a good answer, not a true one with any statistics. Like, shit, I know more about the actually-deplorable shit Obama has done than they do, and I actually like him.
