Conservatives are the real snowflakes

There’s been plenty of words written already explaining why calling Trump, J. D. Vance, and the rest of the MAGA branch of the Republican Party—which is to say, the Republican Party—weirdos seems so effective. These conservatives have spent years, so the thought goes, asserting their worldview is the standard, the default, the normal worldview, and everything that deviates from it is wrong, deviant, and yes, weird. Calling them weird flips that on its head.

While that’s undoubtedly true, I think the real reason it’s effective is that conservatives are—and have been for years—snowflakes. This isn’t new to the MAGA wing; it was the real animating factor of the Tea Party, not economics. (It’s never really been about economics; if it was, we’d be having some real engagement over why, if Republicans are better at running the economy, the economy has, for the last seventy years or so, consistently done better under Democratic administrations.)

“But,” someone might say, “surely liberals are the real snowflakes, the ones who want their feelings to be protected from facts?” To which I say: no, imagined interlocutor, that’s transparent bullshit.

I mean, come on. Is it liberals and leftists who’ve been screaming for years that merely seeing queer people in television shows and movies more often now is literal warfare? No, it is not. Have you met anyone truly offended by seeing Christmas decorations or having a cashier say “Merry Christmas?” No, but you’ve met dozens who claim to get the vapors when a cashier, in a store full of Christmas decor, says “Happy Holidays”.

I had a conservative (ex-)friend strenuously argue that yes, in fact, a state giving gay people the right to marry somehow devalued his good conservative Christian marriage. His arguments were terrible, because all the arguments for that position are terrible. No matter what kind of intellectual varnish one tries to give it, the heart is the same as every other culture war argument: No one should be allowed to make my family and I aware of things I don’t personally approve of.

Books show queer people in a positive light? Get ’em out of the libraries, because kids might read ’em, and the mere knowledge that gay, lesbian, and transgender people exist is corrupting. (Everyone knows there were no gay or trans people before Bill Clinton was elected.) Boycott stores that put up rainbow flags, or hire women and blacks. (Sure, you’re not against hiring minorities, you’re just against visibly making an effort to do so. Gotcha.) Don’t teach our children history that could conceivably show their ancestors in a bad light—that might make them slightly uncomfortable. What kind of monster makes children engage with difficult topics?

The anti-MAGA narrative has always had an undercurrent of these people would be laughable if they weren’t so dangerous. But the “weird” argument sticks because it acknowledges one can be both dangerous and laughable. Any guy irresponsibly blasting away with an assault rifle is dangerous. One irresponsibly blasting away with an assault rifle at cases of Bud Light because he was made aware that the beer company sells to trans people, too? I mean, come on. How do you get more snowflake than that?

Actually, forget I asked that. Based on MAGA reactions to the Harris campaign so far, we’re gonna have some real blizzards. Buckle up.