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“The only way to not be a bigot is to not think at all.”
Beautiful! ;-)
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Brilliant. Thank you.
Your posts perfectly encapsulate my experiences working in CA.
One day I was in a hotel restaurant with co-workers I’d known for years. I was the only conservative and many people had long ago concluded that since they liked me, I must be a liberal. After all, liberals=good people and conservatives = monstrous, evil people.
One colleague thought it was time to out me. He made a pointed remark indicating I wasn’t a liberal and there was a collective gasp; the laughter died and one women said my name plaintively as if asking me not to disappoint her and to refute the “base” accusation that I was a conservative. (it was as if the word “conservative” was tasteless, explicit profanity)
Suddenly they were caught. They would either have to choose between their 15 years of first hand experience working closely with me (often 70 hours a week under extreme pressure) that had created their opinion of me as their friend, or they would have to follow liberal dictates and henceforth consider me a bad person. If they didn’t automatically ostracize me, then according to liberal dictates, they would be vulnerable to vile accusations of being “conservative”.
I deflected partially because I still had to work there; I made a remark indicating that I didn’t think children should be imprisoned and tortured. I think this slice of compassion was enough allow them to reason that I was merely (politically) ignorant and not a “true” conservative.