This is the second in a series of fanciful political dialogues between a white female Democrat, “Karen,” from New York City, and a white male Republican from Texas, “Obadiah.” Since no one’s meeting in person, assume this takes place on Twitter.

 

OBADIAH: I loved Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech. I’m watching it again tonight, with some friends, while we shoot off our leftover fireworks above anyone wearing masks outdoors.

KAREN: That speech was divisive and white supremacist. He delivered it on land stolen from Native Americans.

OBADIAH: You know what else was conquered from Native Americans? Every square inch of the country except maybe Alaska. You live in Alaska? No? Then I guess you’re giving your property to the tribe that used to own it, right? It would be easy to find online. I mean, to avoid any harmful accusations that you’re a ludicrous, virtue-signaling hypocrite? Just about every people on earth lives on conquered land, except maybe the Basques. I bet you’re standing on conquered Indian land right now. Maybe you should try to hover in the air instead. Invest in a drone. Or a broomstick.

KAREN: But Trump was weaponizing racist symbols as a dog whistle to encourage violence against peaceful protesters concerned about systematic violence against people of color.

White Gibberish

OBADIAH: You say that like it’s a bad thing. Or in fact, a thing, instead of a string of jargon you picked up off Twitter like Silly Putty pressed onto the comics page.

KAREN: Your attempt at “humor” reeks of white privilege, and is incredibly hurtful and triggering.

OBADIAH: That’s my hope. I want to push hysterical leftists like you to some kind of psychological breaking point. To dangle you over the edge of the slippery slope, so you see all the Gadarene swine drowning at the bottom. Then maybe you’ll step way back from all this madness.

KAREN: I will not be diverted from working for Justice.

OBADIAH: Do you believe that God made us all, so we bear His image as moral equals? Or do you think we’re just a piece of cosmic happenstance, blindly evolved through the ruthless survival of the fittest?

KAREN: I believe Science.

No Lives Matter

OBADIAH: I’m going to interpret that as if it were actually responsive to my question. So you believe in Darwinian materialism. In that case, why is racism wrong? Was it racist for the mammals to outlive the dinosaurs, because they were fitter? Should we say that Mt. Rushmore was stolen from the brontosauruses and the T-Rexes?

KAREN: Now you’re just being flippant. Systemic racism is real and serious.

OBADIAH: By your lights, even if it were real, it wouldn’t be serious. It would just amount to intraspecies competitive behavior among some divergent sub-groups of Homo Sapiens. It would have no more or less moral import than the fight for mates among male sea lions on some Antarctic beach.

 

 
OBADIAH: Why don’t you sail down there and protest that? Have you ever seen how sad those low-status, incel males look during mating season? It would break your heart.

KAREN: But you’re supposed to be a Christian. You should care about this. You have no choice.

Planned Parenthood: The KFC of Baby Parts

OBADIAH: I can choose whether to let someone gaslight me. Especially when she’s cherry-picking from Christian doctrines she considers superstitious mumbo-jumbo. And doing so just to win a political fight, so she can grab more power and marginalize me and all other Christians, black and white. Yeah, I can do that. As for my fellow Christians who are black, I’ll talk to them directly. They don’t need an agnostic white savior like you to speak for them. Especially when she supports Planned Parenthood, which was founded and run for decades by real white supremacists. And now cuts up black babies and sells them … kind of like slaves.

KAREN: You claim to be “pro-life,” but you’re really just pro-birth. You don’t favor comprehensive social services for those same children to help them overcome systemic inequality….

OBADIAH: No, I don’t. Some pro-lifers do. We can argue about that among ourselves. But I only want to talk to people who oppose killing babies for the sake of sexual convenience. And who admit that the unborn are uniquely abandoned, unlike ethnic minorities that at least enjoy equal protection under law. 

KAREN: If you were really, comprehensively pro-life, you’d be against the death penalty, and returning immigrants to dangerous countries, and inequalities in health care, and guns. 

The Mindless Garment

OBADIAH: Wait a minute, here’s something we might actually agree on. You’re saying — I think … I might be projecting rationality onto you here, and that could be totally unfair … that if someone adopts a principle, he ought to be consistent about it. Right?

KAREN: Uh, yes. Duh.

OBADIAH: So you’re saying All Lives Matter?

KAREN: No! Do not say that!

OBADIAH: Well, I know why you wouldn’t say it. As a Darwinist, you think that no lives matter. But if black lives are supposed to matter, that would be thanks to their humanity. So the lives of other humans, including white cops for instance, would matter.

KAREN: Don’t twist my words.

OBADIAH: I think your reluctance to follow this very simple logical trip from A to B isn’t rational but religious.

KAREN: What? No, I’ll leave that to you.

Caesar’s New Cult Wants You

OBADIAH: Oh it’s not Christian. It’s post-Christian Wokeism, a religion all its own. You’re part of that new religion. It’s probably the first world religion to start with witch-trials and inquisitions, and impose crushing guilt without any hope of redemption. Usually religions start off with something positive, then decay or degenerate into those abuses. But the Woke cult adopted them right out of the gate. Kind of strange, but there you are.

KAREN: Now who’s the one projecting?

OBADIAH: And in your new religion there are certain sacred phrases, or shibboleths. You’re supposed to just repeat them, word for word, like a magic spell. And one of them is “black lives matter,” which is also the registered trademark of a pro-abortion, anti-family, Marxist cult.

KAREN: Why won’t you just say it? Say “black lives matter!” Say the words. Or else …

OBADIAH: Or else what? Or else I’m a “racist,” whatever the heck that still means? The family is racist, capitalism is racist, America is racist. Visible light, electromagnetism, and entropy are probably racist too. So some affirmative action baby with tenure will soon announce, and everybody will timidly nod and agree.

KAREN: Your white fragility is showing.

Dogs That Whistle

OBADIAH: Again with the phrases that mean nothing at all. Except that they’re threats. “We have cultural power, and CEOs in our pocket, and politicians afraid of us, and mobs we can send to march on your homes and churches.” That’s what you’re saying. It is, in fact, a “dog-whistle” of the kind you people keep prating about. But I’m not a dog, and I don’t play dead on command. Keep using “racism” to describe anything and everything and pretty soon you’ll wear it out. Nobody will care. They’ll say, “If hating myself and ripping up my whole society is the price of rejecting racism, I think it’s too high. Maybe racism isn’t that bad.”

KAREN: There is no future in America for views like yours.

OBADIAH: Again with the threats. You people don’t have any actual arguments, just primal screams, grunts, and howls. Maybe you do belong on the beach with the sea lions.

KAREN: [Reports Obadiah to Twitter.]

OBADIAH: [Account permanently canceled. Moves to Parler.]

 

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.