Meet the Neoliberal Neighbors

Every conversation has its limits.

We have a "yard sign" family (the "In This House: we believe in woke virtue signaling", you know the type), who live in the neighborhood – actually, they live right across the street from our house.

We have a neighborhood of diverse ideological perspectives, most are middle of the road, apolitical types who generally lean conservative, but we do have a couple of homes who tend to lean to the left of the spectrum. This household is one of them.

We have lived in the hood for about a year and a half, and have a friendly, head nodding on the way out the driveway sort of a relationship, but yesterday we actually engaged in direct conversation for the first time, chatting a bit as each of us was dragging refuse to the curb for our semi-annual city sponsored extravaganza of accumulated crap’s all-expense paid trip to the landfill.

Somehow, they knew I was a senior executive for a firearms company, and they had heard I was a former County Chair for the GOP, so they had a general idea of what we were about as a family. I suppose they were just as curious about me as I was about them. A lot of talk was around how we each saw the world, I gave my view, and they gave theirs, after which I pointed to their sign and asked, "Where do you see that going? What is the endpoint?"

It was sort of a loaded couple of questions because the things on that sign were open ended, hypothetical statements of FEELING rather than a statement of facts - for example, "No human is illegal" is true (at least outside of China) but it ignores the fact that humans can and do commit illegal acts, illegal entry to the US is one of them (regardless of the reason). The statement "Women's rights are human rights" is also true, but obviously hinges on the definition of "rights", leading up to one of my favorites: "Science is Real". Of course, it is, but real science is a process of inquiry, not an endpoint. We find things along the way that, once replicated, are considered true until some other research says something else. "Science" includes several differing and often contradictory threads of discovery that often do not lend themselves to "one truth" the way many think the "science" is supposed to work.

So, we spent thirty minutes or so around their mailbox talking about their ideas and without making them angry and defensive, the best answer I could get was "it will be a better world", which, of course, is unfalsifiable nonsense and therefore unknowable.

I probed a little more, sensing I was close to the line, and I asked these hypotheticals: "What if someone takes Black Lives Matter to mean they matter more than the lives of any other race? What if they decide that sacrificing white lives - or the rights of white people - to advance a preferred agenda is just the cost of progress?"

I didn’t go to abortion and the rights of an unborn human vs. “women’s rights” because that is an immediate no-go for neoliberals. I think even they realize making the argument that a developing fetus is a human being they want to kill without consequence is awful, so don’t even go there, you misogynistic bigot.

Well, as it turns out the BLM one was over the line. They have a black son-in-law and a biracial grandchild, so I guess this one was a bit sensitive.

They retreated to the "it will just be a better world" defense and we respectfully parted company - but I could tell that they had never really thought the words on the sign through or understood how such open statements could take on multiple meanings when acted on, not all of them consistent with the "better world" theory.

I have to award points to them for at least talking to me. It is often difficult, if not impossible, to get those with neoliberal leanings to even have that kind of one-on-one interaction.

I would love to continue that conversation.

Unfortunately, we probably reached the limits of our relationship yesterday.

And that is unfortunate for all of us.