J's Cafe Nette

I came across this opinion piece from the San Francisco Gate last night, and I was so flabbergasted by it I decided to leave it alone until I had a clearer head. Unfortunately, I’m having allergy problems today, but I’m going to try to tackle it anyway.

Actually, I don’t even know where to begin because I don’t know if the writer is putting us on or serious, drunk or sober, crazy or sane.

I think he wants conservativism to die a slow, painful death as evidenced by his first two paragraphs:

Here’s the good news: The Republican party is dying. Slow, painful, twitching, secreting war and intolerance and desperation like a fetid gas, snarling and gagging like Jabba the Hutt being choked by the hard chain of progress and hope and relaxed social mores and an upcoming Generation Next that seems to sense that screaming about gays and women’s rights and Muslims and drugs actually doesn’t do much to move the human experiment forward in the slightest.

Is this not delicious? Is this not cause for rejoicing? According to Pew Research, the percentage of young ‘uns age 18 to 25 (a.k.a. Generation Next) who identify with Republicans has been in steady decline since the early ’90s, and now hovers around a meager 35 percent, down from a high of 55 percent in the Reagan-toxic early-90s, and is still dropping, whereas fully 48 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds now lean Democratic … and rising.

Do any of you conservatives think you are dying as a movement the way he describes it?

Slow, painful, twitching, secreting war and intolerance and desperation like a fetid gas, snarling and gagging like Jabba the Hutt being choked by the hard chain of progress

Do you scream about gays, women’s rights, drugs and Muslims all day? I admit to not being particularly fond of extremist Islamists and I talk about it whenever I get a chance because I see them as a danger to the world and our lifestyle, but women’s rights?

I do think marriage is ordained by God and is between one man and one woman, but I don’t talk about it out of the clear blue sky. It usually happens when it’s being jammed down my throat by the lesbian and gay communities. Otherwise I rarely think about it.

If I don’t run around in public making a spectacle of my husband and myself, declaring I am heterosexual why should I have to watch someone else make a spectacle of themselves telling me about their sexuality, about which I couldn’t care less except I know the act is an abomination to God? I mean, it’s not exactly dinnertime conversation in my house. How about you?

Drugs. Now that’s a topic I talk about to my granddaughter who is nine years old and about to enter middle school. Why? Because it is a problem and she will see it more and more as she progresses in school and in life.

No one wants a loved one to be on drugs and possibly die of an overdose or get some dreaded disease from dirty needles or even from taking drugs that ruin the liver. So, yes, I plead guilty to occasionally talking about drugs to my granddaughter.

Women’s Rights is so 70s. I know they want to get the ERA amendment up and running again, but I honestly don’t even know what they want from it that women don’t already have, so that’s not a hot-button issue with me right now at least.

Is this not delicious? Is this not cause for rejoicing? According to Pew Research, the percentage of young ‘uns age 18 to 25 (a.k.a. Generation Next) who identify with Republicans has been in steady decline since the early ’90s, and now hovers around a meager 35 percent, down from a high of 55 percent in the Reagan-toxic early-90s, and is still dropping, whereas fully 48 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds now lean Democratic … and rising.

Seems Generation Next tend to be more socially liberal and much less worried about the trembling “sanctity” of the failed nuclear family, and are overall less inclined to align with a particular religion. Indeed, it almost makes you want to weep and sigh and go buy a large grass-fed free-range organic hybrid vibrator.

Ah, but there is a flip side. A counterargument. A dark cloud of righteous bleakness and it looms like a giant synthetic cheesecake-scented Glade PlugIn of potential misery.

It is this: According to another set of data, for the past 30 years or so, conservatives — particularly those of the right-wing red-state Christian strain — have been out-breeding liberals by a margin of at least 20 percent, if not far more.

It’s true. The reason? Why, God loves babies, of course. White American babies, most especially. Also: issues of space, religion, sexual orientation and, of course, conscience. Or, you know, lack thereof.

One theory goes like this: Libs are generally more socially conscious and hence tend to actually give a modicum of thought to what it means to pop out a brood of children in this modern overstuffed age. Also, many other liberal bohos are (admittedly) happy selfish suckwads who want all the modern booty for themselves and won’t want to give up the Ducati and the plasma and the biannual trip to Cinque Terre for the sake of a pod of rug rats and 15 grand a year (each) for private kindergarten. Translation: Libs just aren’t procreating like they could/should be.

Conservative Christians, of course, have no such conscience. Among the right-wing God-lovin’ set, there is often little real awareness of planetary health or resource abuse or the notion that birth control is actually a very, very good idea indeed, and therefore it’s completely natural to worship at the altar of minivans and SUVs and megachurches and massive all-American entitlement and have little qualm about popping out six, seven, 19 gloopy tots to populate the world with frat boys and Ford F-150 buyers and food court managers.

I always assumed it might actually be a good thing that conservatives breed so mindlessly, because all those unhappy neocon kids, all those repressed misled tots grow up and eventually begin to (well, sometimes) think for themselves and ultimately do what any good kid does: rebel against their parents’ silly dogma and become a bit more open-minded and hopeful, right?

Not exactly. Apparently, according to the research, four out of five kids actually stick with the political affiliation of their parents, generation after generation, with religious conservatives far more unlikely than their liberal brethren to allow their kids to develop the capacity for independent thought (given how it’s so, you know, dangerous to America). Also, one word: homeschooling. I’m just sayin’.

Actually, research has shown 18-25 year olds are the least likely people to vote and by the time they start to settle down and pay taxes they begin to see a bit more responsibly regardless of how they vote.

He is right about most children voting the way their parents did. Tonto is the exception to that rule.

The rest of the above quote isn’t even worth discussing lest I descend into the depths in which the writer finds himself.

I have two children, my children each have two children, my mother had two children, my sister had two children, and my husband’s parents had two children. Hardly “popping out a brood of children.”

Liberals claim to be the tolerant people. Over the last 30 years or so I have listened to talk radio programs and always wondered why the liberals have been given that moniker. They seem tolerant so long as you agree with them, but very intolerant of your opinion if you disagree.

There’s a lot of hate, stupidity or comedy in this opinion piece. I’m just not quite sure which it is.

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