I’ve tried to illuminate the breakdown of political dialogue by listening in on the arguments between a white female Democrat, “Karen,” from New York City, and a white male Republican from Texas, “Obadiah.” This is the latest of their exchanges. Let’s imagine it happening outside a Starbucks in Manhattan, where Obadiah has come on a business trip, from a social distance of six feet.

Each is wearing a mask. Obadiah’s reads “Trump 2020.” Karen’s is a rainbow flag.

 

KAREN: Nice mask you have there. I hope you’re very proud of it.

OBADIAH: I’m not exactly thrilled that your governor has us wearing face diapers at outdoor tables, no. But I don’t want to get arrested, so I figure I’ll play along. Maybe later I’ll join a “peaceful protest” and torch a police station. Apparently you can’t get busted for that.

KAREN: How do you think people of color feel when they see it?

OBADIAH: As a person of pallor, I’m not even supposed to try to attempt that, am I? Wouldn’t that be “imaginative appropriation,” or something? Probably get me “cancelled.”

KAREN: Very funny. Racism is just one big laugh riot, for those born with Privilege.

Your President Refuses

OBADIAH: Double-digit percentages of blacks and Hispanics are voting for Trump. But I guess they “ain’t really black” or brown, are they?

KAREN: They might not be fully aware that your president refuses to denounce white supremacist groups. Not even after four long years, not even during a presidential debate. He thinks they’re “very fine people,” in fact.

OBADIAH: I could try to correct you, but it wouldn’t do any good. Right here on my phone I could call up the transcript of what Trump really said about Charlottesville. How he was distinguishing “peaceful protesters,” defending Civil War memorials, from neo-Nazi scum — whom he denounced in no uncertain terms. I could cite twenty more times that Trump, whose Jewish daughter is raising Jewish grandkids, has condemned racial extremists. It wouldn’t matter. Like trying to wear down Mt. Rushmore with a garden hose. Sorry, does that monument “trigger” you?

KAREN: Trump reluctantly reads statements his staff write for him. But when he’s off-script he goes back to the dog-whistles.

Dog Whistles for Vicious Curs

OBADIAH: See, right there. That’s what I’m talking about. You think anyone who doesn’t follow the paint-by-numbers kit you pick up from The New York Times or The Atlantic isn’t even human. They’re animals, vicious dogs, who don’t respond to reason but only to whistles. If that’s true, then stop using words with me, and leave me to wolfing down this bacon sandwich. When I’m done, I’ll take a whizz on that fire hydrant, okay? But I’ll tell you one thing, I’m fixing to vote. You all can’t take that away from us, though even if we win you’ll try to nullify this election the way you nullified the last one.  

KAREN: If that man …

OBADIAH: Orange Man? Him BAD!

KAREN: If your president somehow ekes out a win in the Electoral College using a system rigged by slave-owners …

Gravity Is Racist. Electromagnetism Too.

OBADIAH: There we go! We dug two inches and hit Crazy. Happens every time. Go on, sorry to interrupt you. Too bad Chris Wallace isn’t here to spank me with his hairbrush. You were saying that … the Electoral College is racist. Wait, don’t tell me … the Senate is too, am I right?

KAREN: Given that it offers far more power per capita to whites than people of color, yes.

OBADIAH: And it was designed to be racist, right? Because the Founders knew that there’d be huge cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, full of descendants of freed slaves and Hispanic immigrants. They could see that, couldn’t they? In their Masonic crystal ball. Hamilton and Madison held seances where they foresaw 21^st century demographics and planned accordingly. They made sure to give South Dakota the same power in the Senate as California. Of course, at the time the Senate had the opposite effect, giving tiny, free Rhode Island the same Senate power as huge, slave-owning Virginia. But that doesn’t matter, right? Because of disparate …

KAREN: Impact, exactly. The impact of the Constitution on people of color is disparate, and that means it’s racist de facto, whatever your sainted Founders, some of them slave-owners, intended.

Do You Renounce America and All Its Works?

OBADIAH: Okay, we’re cooking with gas now. The “racism” Donald Trump is supposed to disavow isn’t a bunch of skinheads crawling out of their mom’s basement. It’s the very structure of the country, even the aspects that never had any racist intent. And the Founding itself, because you believe in the 1619 Project, which claims that the U.S. was founded to protect slavery from King George III. Even though he never tried to abolish it. So Trump needs to renounce both the founding and the governing documents of the U.S. Is that enough?

KAREN: The white power complex pervades our whole culture and economy.

OBADIAH: So Trump needs to denounce that too, doesn’t he? Capitalism, that has a disparate impact, because some whites and Asians have a lot more money than blacks. So we have to get rid of that. And punctuality, professionalism, goal-oriented behavior, and planning for the future. The Smithsonian Institution denounced all that as part of white culture. So they have to go. Let’s run everything like the DMV, shall we? Oh yes, I almost forgot.

The “Nuclear Family” — Black Lives Matter demands we abolish that too. Or did, before it got timid and scrubbed that and its odes to Marxism from its website. The Wayback Machine, that’s racist too, isn’t it?

KAREN: Now you’re just being flippant.

OBADIAH: Oh you’re right about that, ma’am. Since I’m wearing this stupid mask you can’t see my face. I’m not sure my tone conveys adequately just how much contempt I feel for the ideas you picked up like birdseed off the sidewalk. I wish I had semaphore flags I could use to drive the point home in one more way, in case you missed it. Maybe I can make a sock puppet … .

[Obadiah takes off one of his shoes, then a sock. Karen snorts, stands up, and flounces off.]

OBADIAH: Finally.

[He rips off his mask, breathes free, and smiles.]

 

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”