Dreaming, Part Two

 I HAVE A DREAM. Or rather, I had one, a good one, before awakening as usual to harsh reality. In my beautiful dream, a typical American conservative Republican Trump supporter was speaking, perhaps to me, or to a crowd, or to a priest in a confessional, perhaps under the influence of sodium pentathal. He or she - I can't remember which, and it doesn't matter - was addressing climate change. "Obviously climate change is happening, the science is clear. Most of my conservative colleagues and I have long denied it because accepting it would mean that our capitalistic corporate industrial economy must be fundamentally transformed, which means government involvement,  and which means fast change, and that the liberals were right all along - it means many things abhorrent and unacceptable to conservatives. Many of my long held cherished conservative notions are of course false, such as America being a "Christian" country rather than a country of religious freedom, diversity, and tolerance, and about free market capitalism being the only economic system which works well. We like to say that socialism has never worked anywhere in the world, and that we must keep socialism out of America, when in fact socialism works quite well in Europe, Democratic socialism of the sort they have in Denmark, and when in fact government regulation of capitalism,laws such an bankruptcy, patents, and incorporation, all mandated by government intervention in the free market, are necessary to keep the free market economy functioning. When science tells us that homosexuality is cause by a genetic predisposition and that it occurs throughout nature, we tend to ignore this reality because it offends us, and our traditional morality, according to which gay people are sinners by being gay.  We might be better off to just honestly assert that we do not like homosexuality because we are not homosexual, but that if we were, our moral objections to it would disappear, rapidly. We conservatives might do better to simply state our opinions and preferences without trying to use facts or logic to defend and sustain them. We like capitalism because we prefer having the opportunity to become wealthy, and we do not like socialism because socialism forces us to share our wealth with others, and because it limits how much wealth we can personally accumulate. We condemn homosexuality because we are heterosexual.And yes,deep down we want a traditional,it christian America, a patriarchy without other religions in sight, because they make us realize that our religion might not be the only one which has merit." Don't hold your breath waiting for them to say these things.