Ditto!

The Amazing Monochrome Argument Clinic

The faces change — a little — but the talking points remain the same

I’ll just come out and say it — debating conservatives is Groundhog Day, minus the intellectual heft of “I Got You Babe.”

Their ideology is so eerily uniform from person to person it makes me nervous. I can’t imagine how it’s possible without chips in their heads running some What I Think app, updated to the latest version every morning.

However, after a recent article, a reader took me to task. “There are very few issues that unite all conservatives,” they wrote. “The layers of nuance are deep and varied.”

I thought this deserved a reply. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve had several glasses of wine already and another one in hand.

My apologies if I implied all conservatives are exactly the same. Of course they aren’t. They’re all unique. I assume.

I’m sure they can tell one other apart, at least. Most species can. Bottlenose dolphins even call each other by name — but that all sounds the same to me too.

To be fair, the writer I quoted was more interesting than most. Maybe they’re that one dolphin on the nature show with a notched fin and distinctive squeak even the celebrity host can identify.

The problem may be one of perspective — I’m more familiar with the roiling jumble that is the left. Every color and religion. Liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Gay, straight, and a whole alphabet of other possibilities in between. It’s like the effing U.N.

On the other hand, three out of every four Republicans is a white Christian, so they probably see different grades of faith as significant. I don’t.

Seriously. Don’t know, don’t care. I can tell the zillion-dollar megachurches from the liberal denominations that shelter the homeless in their scruffy little buildings. But if you start droning on about the First Church of God v. the First Assembly of God, or Christ the Redeemer v. Jesus the Pennysaver, I’ll be heading for the exit.

As far as I can tell, the difference between Muslim extremists and Evangelical Christians is beards and some lingo, plus only the latter want to run my life. Otherwise, it all kind of runs together.

I don’t think the right has any notion of what real diversity looks like. They have assorted Protestants and Catholics and a handful of others, we’ve got all of those and a bunch more. They’ve got various grades of capitalists, we’ve got everything from Socialists to free-marketeers. Almost a quarter of Democrats are Black, for the GOP it’s in the single digits. For reasons that passeth all understanding, there’s a smattering of LGBTQ+ folks amid the right’s rampaging homophobia, but most of them are over here.

It’s kind of a madhouse, really.

Maybe that relative contrast is why every conversation with a conservative feels like interacting with a cog in a collective cyborg mind. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

And before anyone tries to claim “the left” is the same, please stop. Twitter is not real life, use your brain for more than keeping your ears apart. This side of America’s political spectrum includes — among others — Joe Manchin, AOC, Black trans Christian millennials who’ve given up on wypipo, and the unappealing lump of overweight middle-aged agnostic Y-chromosomes that is your author. The notion of an organized left is laughable on its face.

I can only imagine how that contrast must feel to people for whom “diversity” means a group of white people reading different versions of the Bible.

So fine, maybe if you’re part of the right you can see layers of nuance. But to me, it just sounds like a pet shop full of parrots — heedless repetition of what they’ve been told, noisy squawking, feathers being ruffled, and the sound of nuts cracking. Then the alarm goes off at 6 am, and it all starts again.

All animal action was monitored by certified safety representatives. No dolphins were harmed in the writing of this article.

John Werth is a Top Writer in Humor and Politics, who describes his literary style as “You’d read this if I were famous.” He finds writing more tiring than exercise, so he compensates by not exercising.

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