By HARRY STEIN
June 28, 2009 --
The phone messages and e-mails from fellow conservatives started coming early on election night 2008 and continued well into the next day. Some were anguished, some merely fatalistic. But all featured at least a dollop of gallows humor.
As the dimensions of the disaster became apparent, my friend Cary announced he might have to skip work.
"For how long?" I asked.
"I'm thinking a year."
Who could blame him? Obama may be our worst nightmare, front man for every species of noxious, left-wing activism going, but at least he generally makes open-minded noises. In Manhattan offices like Cary's, the Chosen One's acolytes often don't even bother pretending to be civil toward those on the other side of the political spectrum.
Conservatives come in all stripes, but those of us who live in New York tend to share certain characteristics, Starting with independent judgment, a fair amount of backbone and, yes, the capacity to laugh at (if not necessarily with) those around us. How else to deal with all the stuff that would otherwise put a crimp in your day -- the sweet old lady in the elevator snarling about "those goddamn Republicans," the street lectures from 20-year-old environmental zealots, or the random leftist idiot at a dinner party waxing self-righteous and quoting George Soros?
The fact is, conservatives living and working among the liberals, among them but not of them, are not unlike field reporters for "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom"; we know them better than they know themselves. Since there is an approved left-of-center position on every subject -- just check out The New York Times or NPR -- We know in advance how they'll react to every controversy, every utterance by a public figure; we anticipate, politically and public policy-wise, their sighs, their frowns, their ups, their downs.
Yet, as we are frequently reminded, they know us hardly at all. What they think they know is this: Conservatives are greedy and hard-hearted -- when we're not busy being racist, sexist and homophobic. We're not merely wrong. We are evil.
Living contentedly among liberals, then, requires a fair degree of finesse. My own little town, Hastings-on-Hudson, is in most ways as attractive as the name suggests, a leafy suburban enclave for the most part populated with kind-hearted and generous souls. But a word of warning: Don't get into politics. To say Hastings is liberal is like saying Saudi Arabia is Muslim. We are a more bucolic version of the Upper West Side -- the very area from which many of my neighbors decamped in settling here. Almost all of them vote Democratic for the same reason they watch their diet and floss their teeth -- it's what smart, responsible, healthy, forward-thinking people do.
This is to say that when at a neighborhood gathering, if one of these people suddenly learns that your views deviate from everyone else's on the war, affirmative action, big government, feminism, the reliability of the Times, (or hell, fill in the blank), his or her face will register stunned surprise and deep confusion. You can almost see the wheels turning within and hear the electronic drone: Does not compute. After all, in most ways, you seem reasonable; your knuckles don't drag the ground. Yet, the things coming out of your mouth sound so wrong -- almost conservative!
How to survive with your sanity and good cheer intact? First, for intellectual sustenance and emotional succor, we conservatives learn to seek out our own kind. This is not always easy, since many of us tend to lay pretty low. Still, like communists of old, we have ways of sniffing one another out. For instance, at a social gathering, as soon as the talk inevitably turns to the manifold glories of Obama, I always look around to see who else is staying silent. Bingo -- a soulmate!
Sometimes such a being will simply appear out of the proverbial blue. Not long ago on, I was stopped at a traffic light when She emerged from a shop hauling some trash out to the curb, a heavy-set, middle-aged bottle blonde wearing a "Freedom is NOT Free" T-shirt.
"You're pretty brave to be wearing that around here!" I called out as the light changed.
"Hey," she shouted after, "I don't give half a fñ-ñ-ñ- what anyone thinks!"
Not exactly my style, but in these parts right-wingers can't be choosers. I returned to Main Street later that day, hoping to find the woman and get her story, but no one had seen her or seemed to know who she was. It was like trying to hunt down the elusive One-Armed Man in "The Fugitive," and after a while I began to wonder if she might have been a figment of my desperate conservative imagination.
Something else some of us like to do, just for kicks, is stir up ideological mischief at dinner parties. Given the depth of liberal hypocrisy on certain issues, this is easier than it might sound, and occasionally even provokes actual thought in one's prey. My favorite tale in this regard comes from a friend who lives in Park Slope. She reports creating level-red discomfort, when the talk on a recent evening turned to gay marriage. Everyone was for it, of course, including my friend. "But wouldn't it bother you if your own children were gay?" she added, all innocent curiosity. "After all, isn't it natural to want your kids to mirror your experience? To have a traditional marriage and raise children in the traditional way? I can't think of anything that would make them more foreign."
She reports that, hearing this, the liberals around the table "got very flustered -- because of course they feel exactly the same way. There was a long silence, and then someone said: 'I would be much more upset if my kids were Republican,' and that let everyone off the hook. But afterward, one liberal friend came and whispered in my ear 'I would be really devastated.' "
Indeed, if one keeps things polite in such situations, those on the other side are all but helpless, robbed of their chief weapon: Insults. For many liberals in these parts, dismissive contempt toward the other side is a reflex. So, for the enterprising conservative, pointing out, "that's not an argument, that's name-calling" is enough to stop them dead in their tracks. After lifetimes spent casually referring to those on the right as "haters" or "fascists," they are truly unaware there is anything wrong with it. While afterward they'll continue to believe you are a fascist, and say so behind your back, at least you'll have a momentary triumph.
For conservatives in places like New York, that's about the best that can be hoped for. As a species, adamant liberals are not exactly known for graciousness. Even in the wake of their triumph last November, many seem Constitutionally unable to stop bashing Bush, Cheney or Palin. And talk about gloating. Having in many cases defiantly left on their Kerry-Edwards stickers through Bush's second term, can anyone doubt that, even if unemployment reaches 20%, their Obama stickers will still be in place on the Volvo when it gets towed off to that great recycling heap?
Of course, that's just another difference between us and them -- we tend toward optimism and good grace. Rotten as times seems now for conservatives, we face life as it is and press on, plucky as colonial Brits in those old movies on TCM. Just a day after the election, one friend remarked that he'd already taken the McCain sticker off his car, adding that Obama was our president now, and he was willing to give him a chance. "Still," he added, smiling, "I kept on the one for the New York Rifle & Pistol Association -- just in case anyone thinks I've gone soft."
Harry Stein is the author of 'I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug and Terminally Self-Righteous" (Encounter Books), out now.Home
I am including here the remarks of a commenter to the article for emphasis:
Funny - Not that democrats are perfectly polite, but this sort of arrogance and self-righteous ignorance reminds me of nothing so much as the average Republican. Remember that you guys are responsible for creating Rush Limbaugh and George W. Bush and Sarah Palin and Ken Starr and D. Cheney (hey, the Post's profanity filter won't let me write his first name, I've just discovered) -- to take just a few names at random -- and have never put any distance between yourself and them. Until that changes, I think that rather than call Democrats arrogant and hateful, you ought to look in the mirror.By the way, while I lean left, as a thinking person I always reserve the right to have political opinions from all across the spectrum; and I know many other people on the left who would say the same. But right-wingers tend to go all the way on every issue, from deregulation to Israel; they buy the whole conservative package. That, to me, is evidence of an interest in ideology rather than facts.
How tolerant. If we give up our beliefs he's willing to consider us acceptable. I'm certain he's clueless about the ramifications of his posting. It's the leftist demonetization mentality at work. I'm certain he has never listened to or read anything by the people he mentions. He just knows in his heart they are evil.
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