What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
As a resident of Portland, Oregon, I've seen my share of red-faced liberals. Rage is sort of like an accessory around here -- like Birkenstocks. For this reason, I don't volunteer my political opinion, but if someone asks I will certainly tell them. In return for being frank, I have been called a "toady," been told I don't care about other people, and have had numerous inquiries about my ability to sleep.
My very favorite (and bizarre) incident came a few years back. It was not the loudest encounter I've ever had. There was no profanity. No Reductio ad Hitlerum. In fact, only a few words were spoken -- none by me.
It goes like this: I was invited out to lunch by a friend, along with several other of his friends whom I did not know. I got there a few minutes late, so people were already eating. The conversation proceeded pleasantly enough; very general, not political in the slightest. Then, out of nowhere, my friend announced to the guy sitting next to me (I'll call him Mike) that I was a Republican. Mike looked up from his plate, stared at me for a few seconds, then looked back at his plate and said "that's too bad." He sat silently for about a minute and then, without a word, stood up, dropped his napkin on the table and walked out, leering at me as he went like I owed him money. He did not return.
I've never angered a liberal without uttering a single word. Yeah, there are more interesting stories, ones with more fireworks, but this one almost seems like an accomplishment. Like pitching a no-hitter.
Any personal brushes with liberal rage out there?
- Comment (100)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (9)
Comments:
May '10
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I don't have brushes with liberal outrage... I create them.
Apr '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I have nothing equal to that. It's beyond a no-hitter. You didn't even through a pitch. You didn't even take the mound. You didn't even know there was a game! You're back at the hotel, having overslept your alarm while the team is already at the stadium, warming up. And the guy retired due to uncontrolled emotion--blind rage. Congratulations.
May '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
oh, goodness. As a WA state resident, and former Seattleite, I could tell very similar stories.
Brother (or sister), you're not alone!
Mar '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I can't tell you how many times I have met someone for the first time, like a coworker, where political discussions don't come up right away. Then one day he/she will casually toss off some Liberal trope fully expecting me to nod in agreement. When I don't, and the cat (or the elephant) is out of the bag, it's treated like some sort of betrayal, as though good taste required me to disclose the bad news up front.
Apr '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
Leftist rage is the consequence of their emergence from their inbred intellectual environment by exposure to ideas and people that aren't compliant and consistent with their faith.
While my intention is never to antagonize them, it's invariably the consequence of sharing my ideas. So incapable are they of even attempting to see a differing point of view that they often insist I'm only trying to antagonize them by saying things that only stupid or evil people might say.
I'd say my greatest moment in enraging Leftists was at the defunct Utne Cafe online community. At the time I was still struggling with the hope that my own Leftist thinking might be valid by carefully challenging every premise of the Left.
Dozens of them descended upon me to harass, harangue, and hobble me into submission or exile. One even found my phone number and called me from Canada to warn me off. Yet, this was my ideological crucible in which all my Leftist delusions were burned away, leaving nothing but pure critical analysis.
The difference between conservative and Leftists is really differing priorities ... and I've yet to meet a Leftist who knows what their's are.
Edited on August 2, 2012 at 8:27pmJun '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
Brushes with liberal rage? Man, I live in Germany, next question please.
In 2003 I used to go to a "Stammtisch". Brits, Yanks and Germans wanting to practise English would go to a restaurant once a month and sit around and chew the fat in English. I had been going to this one for 10 years.
Then the Bush-hate era started and I parried with non-Bush hate in many discussions. My lack of hate drove the people crazy.
During the Iraq war they said it was about oil and I confirmed their right to support any dictator they want and the opportunity to kill as many American soldiers as they desire. This argument passed through them like neutrinos.
They stated that Americans were mowing down women and children by the hundreds and I just responded with "Well then, you should support the dictator. After all, he kills his own people much better."
My attendance came to an end when one evening a German woman turned to me and for no reason whatsoever shouted : "I hate Bush!"
I said that was her right, but she told me, "But you love him!!" And so that was the last night.
Jun '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
Highlama, I'm sure that's what Belgians said in 1939.
Prepare your arguments next time. When that guy got up and left the table I would have called out to him "Are you moving to Canada?"
Hey, I'm visiting my home state next month, one of the bluest. I'm ready for all my acquaintances (all civil servants, incidentally) to approach me on political topics. I'm ready for them. I'll say : "You don't want to know. I'm a Nazi."
Be prepared.
Jul '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I find it easy to invole rage either because of my being conservative or by being Catholic. Even some of my good Catholic friends can exhibit liberal rage when the subject of politics comes up.
When two couples who were over for drinks found out that I had Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, they were flabbergasted. I asked them why they didn't like her. The group, which included a partner for an international law firm and a Phd in Geology who works in the energy industry, could come up with no better response than "Because she's an idiot!". No one could explain what Sarah Palin had done that was idiotic, it was just seemed obvious to them that anyone who disagreed was themselves lacking in intelligence.
Another time I refused a telephone solicitation from Maclean's magazine (sort of like Canada's Newsweek), saying I found it to be unfactual, biased and anti-American. The caller hung up on me stating that I was just a stupid Yankee.
I'll comment another time about facing down anti-Catholic bias...
Jun '10
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
As a Portlander myself, I've never had THAT happen, but I've certainly been announced as the lone Republican in a room. Other times, I would say that I didn't want to discuss politics, but would be continually baited on purpose for the bulk of the evening. I've been avoiding these situations lately, but this has gone on so long now and has gotten so bad in our society, that I'm planning my return back into the fray. We can't sit around letting it happen anymore.
Feb '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
a liberal academic who was only too happy to eat out on my corporate expense account became outraged with me when I said I would vote for George Bush again. Up to that point I had been a smart and competent scientist, but I became an instantaneous stooge in her eyes. And no, she did not kick in for her part of the lunch tab.
Aug '10
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
True_wesT: As a resident of Portland, Oregon...
I've never angered a Liberal without uttering a single word. Yeah, there are more interesting stories, ones with more fireworks, but this one almost seems like an accomplishment. Like pitching a no hitter.
Great story. Your opening phrase sez a lot, btw. No story that begins with, "As a resident of Nashville, TN," or "As a resident of Waxahachie, TX," is gonna go where your story goes.
And your tale is quite telling about the remarkable lack of tolerance from the Leftist Champions of Tolerance.
Sep '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
So did Mr. Lefty pay for his lunch, or did he stick everybody else with his bill?
I had a suitemate when I first started graduate school who said something once in conversation that stuck with me. It was to the effect that he could never be a liberal because he couldn't maintain the necessary level of anger about everything all the time.
Edited on August 2, 2012 at 4:32pmDec '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
Bemused Canuck: Another time I refused a telephone solicitation from Maclean's magazine (sort of like Canada's Newsweek), saying I found it to be unfactual, biased and anti-American. The caller hung up on me stating that I was just a stupid Yankee.
I'll comment another time about facing down anti-Catholic bias... ยท 2 hours ago
MacLean's is a little better than Newsweek, ok not much... But, great way to get rid of a telemarketer. A few years ago a telemarketer who identified himself as Hamid tried to sell me a subscription to the Chronicle Herald (Halifax's daily), I told him I'd purchase a subscription when they replaced Jim Meek's colum with a syndicated Mark Steyn Colum. Same effect.
Apr '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I haven't managed to spawn liberal rage like that, but I have also been announced as the lone conservative in the room. I live in the DC area and one of my friends works at Media Matters. One Saturday afternoon last summer she was throwing a party with all of her coworkers and at one point (tongue firmly in cheek) she shouted: "He's a conservative! Let's get him!" People who had been fun and polite up until that point stopped talking to me and refused to make eye contact, as if looking me in the eye would cause them to contract the plague.
Apr '12
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
We were out to lunch with my father at a small restaurant. We discussed openly, but the room was noisy, and we kept our volume appropriate.
As we were leaving, the lady at the table next to us was also leaving. She had a baby, stroller, diaper bag, quite a burden. My father opened the door for her. She physically slapped his hand away from the door, shouldered in front of him with the stroller, then loudly proclaimed to the small room: "I don't like your politics. I'll get the door for myself."
Less gobsmacking but more recent was an old friend of mine messaged me asking how I could possibly have bought "Tyranny." Her argument was that I couldn't be conservative since I'm not anti-women or a homophobe, and I'm smart. Apparently, in running to all those Duran Duran concerts in my car, she never noticed my "W" stickers.
Edited on August 2, 2012 at 6:53pmApr '11
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
Once, in Palo Alto, after telling an older couple, politely but firmly, that they couldn't park their high-end Mitsubishi sports car with no handicapped plate or placard in a handicapped spot of the private business of which I was then an employee (they made no attempt to assert that either of them were disabled, by the way), the woman shouted "damn Republicans!" at my friend and me as they sped away. We still laugh about that. At the time, I was the only Republican of the two, but I think my friend switched sides after 9/11.
Anyway, I always think of that as an unspoken plank in the Democratic platform: "we are for the right of wealthy old people to park wherever they want, especially if it sets a bad example for everyone else."
Aug '10
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
We have all forgotten a cardinal rule of good manners : Never discuss politics or religion .
There was a reason for that.
Has everyone and everything been politicized these days ?
I mean , I can handle that readily, but it has affected my social life.
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
During my White House tenure, I was accosted leaving the building one day by an anti-Iraq war protester screaming "baby killer" (remember that old chestnut?). This was made that much sweeter by the fact that one of the dozen or so buttons on her jacket read "Mind Your Own Uterus."
Aug '10
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
When someone tries to pick a political fight with me, I've trained myself to say, "this is my day off. I don't get many of them. If you'd like to make an appointment with my office, I'd be happy to listen to your concerns at that time. Right now, I'm trying to enjoy my dinner/beer/hammock/video game/etc."
Re: What is Your Favorite Encounter with Liberal Rage?
I was in a newsroom. An editor called me over to ask questions about a book review - it was by the FIRE guys, who work for free speech on campus. (One of the co-authors was a member of the Democratic party, I seem to recall.) She started talking about how the authors had a point about speech codes but she'd heard some things in college that were offensive, so, yeah, speech codes. Then she confirmed the name of one of the authos.
"F***ing Republicans," she said.
I asked her what she meant.
"They always have three names," she said in a mocking tone. I stared.
"Like Hillary Rodham Clinton?"
End of that discussion. Instructive, though; you can say "f***ing Republicans" in a newsroom without fear you'll be around one. What would they be doing here?