HASTINGS, IDAHO — When 45-year-old Chuck Winters watched the first one-on-one Democratic primary debate between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (D) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), he says he was “shocked and confused” when he didn’t hear anything he could recognize as political rhetoric.
“I’m so used to watching my Republicans debate,” Winters told us, “and when they debate I hear them remind me that blacks are culturally lazy and violent, that immigrants are all from Mexico and every single one will go on lifelong welfare and drain the system, Muslims are violent and moderate Muslims that don’t specifically condemn terrorism are just as bad as the terrorists, and that the uppity gays are ruining America with their desire to be treated like human beings.” But, Winters said, watching Sanders and Clinton debate left him feeling like he hadn’t “heard any phobias” at all, and “that doesn’t seem like politics to me.”
Winters said as a Republican he relies on “politicians hammering home” the things he needs “to be mortally offended and terrorized by” and when he sees politicians instead talking about humane, considered solutions it makes him feel “all libtarded inside” and he doesn’t “know how to process that.”
“I just didn’t get it,” Winters said, “they were up on that stage, talking about the economy, and not once did they remind people that there are moochers who mooch because being poor is really easy, as Republicans will tell you. Not once did they mention that we have to monitor mosques and tear up the First Amendment because of three isolated terror attacks in the last 16 years. It was very confusing to me.”
Mr. Winters, a non-union electrician who owns six semi-automatic Bushmaster AR-15 rifles “just in case,” told our reporter that “not knowing who or what to hate or fear” leaves him “unsure who to vote for.”
“If I’m not being told that my fellow citizens are ruining America for me,” Winters said, “I might start looking in other places for what’s making life in America suck. I might accidentally stumble onto stories about WalMart and McDonald’s subsidizing their low wages with the social safety net, and that might make me realize that all the hand wringing over job losses if we raise the minimum wage is just a cover for keeping people in poverty-inducing wages. I might realize that it’s just a small number of violent Muslims making a bad name for the whole group. I might realize that the systemic racism we forced black people to live in for centuries is still felt today because we have never really addressed it.”
All of that, Winters says, is “just too much for a simple, good, clean, God fearing, ammo hoarding patriot” to process.
“I won’t be watching any more Democrap debates, that’s for sure,” Winters tells us, “because I don’t need to be challenged in my world view. I need it confirmed. I need my shallow, superficial view points that come from a place of genetic privilege reaffirmed. I need my politicians to tell me that massive corporations really do have my best interests in mind, and that only tyrants in government do bad things. I’ll stick to Republican things, thank you. They’re simple, easy to follow.”
After a pause, “And simple-minded is just how we Republicans operate best. America good, other countries bad. Christians good, other religions bad. Free market, unfettered capitalism good; all other hybrid forms of economics bad. See? Simple.”
