Dear Conservatives: You Were Right

Back before I was a radical leftist, I was basically a mainstream liberal--while I was too young to vote, I identified with the Democratic Party and was a big fan of Obama. Naturally, as a typical liberal, my big enemy, politically, was conservatives, and in an increasingly partisan time, it seemed like liberals and conservatives were constantly locked in a state of war. Every time anyone argued that Republicans or conservatives were being racist or insensitive to racial issues, or sexist, they were accused of playing the "race card," or the "sex card" so naturally I quickly disregarded the idea of the race card and the sex card as conservative propaganda.

Even as I shifted to the left, declaring myself a socialist and distancing myself from Obama and the Democrats, I still focused my ire against conservatives, so naturally I didn't give any more credit to the idea of these cards than I ever had before. Even as I became increasingly left-wing and radical, declaring myself an anarchist for some time, and became increasingly harsh in my criticism of liberals and Democrats--seeing them, too, as my enemies now--I never gave much thought to the idea that maybe the right-wing criticisms of liberals had any merit anywhere. But that's changed now.

So, here it is: I'm sorry, conservatives. You were right about this much: there is a race card, and there is a sex card, and liberals do play them shamelessly. Of course, I'm not going to pretend that every time a liberal has accused a conservative of racism or sexism, it was just them playing the race card. I do think there are major issues in terms of racial and gender inequality in the US, that conservatives--and for that matter, to a lesser extent, liberals--allow to go on, and make worse. But I do see now that at least some liberals are utterly willing to make spurious and absurd accusations of racism and sexism to try to discredit their opponents.

What made me change my mind? Being a Sanders supporter. Clinton has insinuated Sanders is sexist and racist; her sycophantic foot-licker Amanda Marcotte has put out a hundred thousand million articles smearing Sanders and his supporters as a bunch of racist-sexist "Bros." Joan Walsh, another devoted guard dog of the status quo, has stated that she "reject[s] the moral superiority of a coalition led by white men vs. the will of black, brown and female voters" and has tried to paint Sanders supporters as largely sexist more than once. Even I've been accused of misogyny by Clinton supporters.

Amanda Marcotte, self-appointed Clinton

propagandist

  (picture from Twitter)

It's hard to overstate the total shit-headed stupidity of all of this. Even Planned Parenthood, which has stupidly decided that Clinton should be the first presidential candidate it endorses during a primary--ever--has admitted that "Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are both rated 100% on Planned Parenthood Action Fund’s congressional scorecard for their perfect voting records on women’s health and rights." Sanders has also received a 97% score from the NAACP. So trying to attack him as a sexist or racist is extraordinarily dubious.

As for the campaign to paint his supporters as racist or sexist, that ignores that there are plenty of women and minorities who have supported Bernie Sanders--in fact, he's the favored candidate among young women, and has done well among young minority voters as well. Claims that all his supporters are white males are nothing but bile vomited up by the self-appointed Goebbelses of the Clinton campaign, happy to serve as her Ministers of Truth free of charge.

So it's very clear that there are liberals who "play the race/sex card" against leftists--who claim that because their candidate, Clinton, is a woman, and the leftists' candidate, Sanders, is a man, that must mean they, the liberals, are the more supportive of women's rights, and must mean even that the leftists are sexists. The addition of racism accusations on top of that simple-minded garbage acts as the rotten cherry on the top of the shit sundae.

It's hard, then, to believe that there aren't at least some instances of liberals pulling the same slimy tactic against conservatives. I certainly don't think that every conservative is a racist or a sexist, and liberals like Walsh, Marcotte, and Clinton herself have shown themselves to be so willing to make spurious accusations, or at least insinuations, of racism and sexism, that it's impossible to imagine that no one in their same toxic ideological circle has done the same against a conservative.

So, conservatives, I'm sorry. I still hate your ideology, and have issues with many of you as people, but I'm sure some non-racist and non-sexist conservatives have been accused of racism or sexism baselessly. Hell, I even have a friend--no conservative at this point, but perhaps one in the past--who was accused of racism just because he slightly preferred McCain in 2008. So I suppose I should have known better. We may not be able to agree on much at all, conservatives, but this we can agree on: there are too many boys crying wolf among the liberals--slanderers with no souls, no sense of decency, and no qualms about making that fact clear to the world.