ConZervative

I need to edit the description of this blog to add, “Also, I vent about work.” Because that's what I want to do right now. I'm having a hard time becoming part of this team. I'm coming onto a sales team that doesn't have a lot of hours to allot to training/meetings/getting organized, and they didn't hire particularly talented or outgoing people to boot.

The last team I was on like this was top notch. My manager has good ideals but no tools to complete them, and the team isn't especially welcoming to me as the new full time assistant. My boss wants me to take charge and coach and get things down pat, but the girls are so far behind on training that I don't know where to start with any of them.

It would be one thing if they were genuinely enthusiastic and just didn't have the technique, then I could just course correct. I have to actually summon some energy out of thesen I didn't understand. girls. They lean up against the wall while they're helping customers.

I'm sorry. They're really nice people, genuine, nice people who want to do their best. But their best isn't being brought out and I need to find out a way to do that.

Maybe I've bitten off more than I can chew, but all I can do is try to chew faster I guess.

Anyway. Today I was sitting at the train station because my train came way earlier than I thought it would, and I overheard a daughter discussing someone with whom she had gone to school, with what I assumed was her mother. They were referring to the person as a “he” and the mother said something to the effect of, “I can't believe what they made him do,” and the daughter was saying, “I know.” I heard the mother say something like “... made him sit with the girls .... why?” And then a ton of other informatio

I was confused until I realized they were calling a she a he. They were pretty upset that the school considered a girl a girl.

Now of course, I don't know all the details. I could be talking about something much bigger than that conversation yielded.

But it got me thinking about the transgender movement in the country right now, and I wanted to talk a little bit about it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a lot of what these people stand for/claim to stand for. I do think there's a lot of things wrong with most of it. But I'll break it down.

I don't think there's anything wrong with being an individual and expressing your likes and interests with your clothing and makeup. I don't think it's good for people to judge someone who feels more or less feminine/masculine than they may be expected to. I don't think there's anything wrong with asking your friends and colleagues to respect the choices you've made with your body expression.

I think there's a lot of things wrong with telling people that their mental illness is not an illness.

I think any state of mind that makes you want to mutilate your body (cutting, self-harm, self-amputation, wanting to cut your own dick off) is an illness. Like, I'm sorry. My brother hung himself when he was 15. He was just a kid. Don't try to cause your own body damage. Your'e unwell.

I like the way Ben Shapiro describes it. You're not helping the sick person by telling them that they're not sick. You're not making anything better for them. You're just making them feel better. It's like telling someone who is poor that it's everyone else's fault. You might be making them feel better but you're not actually contributing to the change of their situation.

You're not helping a person with gender dysphoria by telling them that gender dysphoria isn't an illness. You're not helping someone with schizophrenia by telling them “Yep, the toaster really is talking to you.”

First, the country moved in a diagnosis heavy direction; everyone who has trouble in school is just mentally ill (it can't be because the school system was designed to create factory workers out of women, and is also designed to even the playing field between men and women by creating an environment women can learn much better in and that men will have lots of trouble with).

Now, of course, the country is moving in an acceptance direction. “You're not sick, you're just misunderstood.”

That doesn't help sick people. We should really be trying to help them. The suicide rate among people with gender dysphoria is many times the suicide rate among other groups of people. The attempt rate is off the charts.

Please let's just help them.

Good morning! I'm on the train when this was written, and also probably tomorrow when it gets published. Hello from the past!

There was a beautiful sunrise this morning; the sun came over one horizon and a huge cloud came over the other and they met int he middle and it looked like two sunrises almost.

I'm working for maybe 9 days straight this week because I'm going on vacation to Florida in a few days. I'll be able to post a lot there – or maybe I'll take a break and let everyone catch up.

A girl at work texted my boss to call out for her first ever shift ten minutes before she was supposed to be there. My boss wasn't even at work at the time – this girl texted the wrong person to call out for her first shift.

It got us talking about the kids these days. Now, I'm 22 – I'm one of the kids these days. But I've been in the professional environment long enough that I don't seem it. But I got what she was saying;

For most people there's a huge difference between calling out and texting out. Me, I don't see much of a difference as long as the text is responded to/confirmed at the right time (i.e, two hours or more before a shift). Aside from the fact that anyone can get into my phone and text my boss anything they like, I guess. But other than that, I don't see much of an issue.

So we were talking about how the millennial generation is the last one that does have a problem with that, because while they were introduced to/invented technology, we were raised on it (well I'm actually an older gen Z so I should be saying “they” but anyway). We didn't learn how to text on a razor before a keyboard (ok yes I did but that's beside my point).

My boss is having trouble threading the needle before being stern with the new, younger girls, and understanding the technological disconnect. Honestly though, the part where it was texted was the only thing we disagreed on. The part where she didn't give us a couple of hours notice is totally unacceptable, and the part where she didn't call the actual store, but a manager who she didn't even know was there – like no. Like fuck no. I would have told her to not show up for her next shift.

So I'm also threading a needle; being part of this generation but also being partial to traditional values and respect is a hard place to explain to people that I'm standing. Often, we equate youth with rebellion, and sure I've done plenty of that. But my moral compass won't sound like most of the people in the recent generations.

In fact, a lot of people my age are offended by it. Especially when I talk about its practices. On the surface, it sounds nice (“Don't tell people what they can and can't do”) but in practice they don't like it at all:

Don't tell business owners what they can and cannot do with their businesses.

Don't tell business owners who they must hire.

Don't tell business owners and their employees what the latter must be paid.

Don't tell business owners who they must serve.

Don't tell people what they can and cannot own (guns).

Don't tell people what they can and cannot imbibe (drugs).

Don't tell people who they can and cannot be with (gay marriage).

Don't tell people what they must spend their money on.

And so on.

At least, not unless you're their parent. And they're a child. Then, tell them all these things, I guess.

We were talking about how men and women are different. Normally I'd start a chapter like that with “Aside from the obvious physical differences ...” But I couldn't even do that. There are feminists and transgenders' rights activists who claim that even the physical differences are not present at birth, but present themselves based on how the parent of the child treats them throughout their childhood.

This is nonsense, obviously.

But I wanted to talk about a couple other aspects of feminism and where I think it's gone wrong. If you're interested in this sort of study, check out Christina Hoff-Sommers, the most brilliant feminist I have had the privilege to listen to.

Feminism seems to have been a movement where women were standing up and trying to prove – be it the case or no – that they were just as capable as men were. I mean, great. Of course, women and men have different strengths and should play to them, but I get the idea; women are just as valuable as men, just as important to the symbiosis that they inhabit together. So I can get behind that.

These days, however, feminism seems to want to go backwards. Girls at colleges who hear opposing viewpoints claim that they need therapy, and that the patriarchy has violated them. A law student at Harvard Law asked for the word “violated” to be removed from the curriculum because it was triggering to her. There are books and entire subjects that women across the country – women my age – are claiming they cannot study because it is too mentally scarring for them.

They're claiming that they can't handle men coming on to them at all, and that a man just looking at them wrong is a violation. That men desiring to sleep with women is disgusting, especially if they show their desire, but if they don't, they're pigs who have unrealistic beauty standards.

Newsflash, it's not that you're ugly, it's that you're a bitch. Who is ugly.

Men want women who are aware of themselves and their appearance. Women who make an effort. Typically not the kind you see on magazines, but the kind who puts some though into their outfit for a date. Men typically don't want women who think all men are pigs. Men typically don't want women who have tried out enough men to seriously believe that all men are pigs.

(I'm speaking in terms of short to long-term relationships; for casual sex men might not consider these things so much).

Women in this country are claiming they have been molested if a man sits wrong on the subway; meanwhile, in the middle east, girls as young as seven are being married off to strangers. In Europe, Familial Rape Gangs where fathers, sons, cousins, etc., go out for a night of actual molestation of teenagers are becoming a thing. In Europe (Rotherham in the UK, if you feel like Googling it).

The part about women suddenly trying to claim that we are fragile and unable to learn certain subjects is the least upsetting of all these developments in Western Culture. We need to turn from this kind of behavior. We need o go back to the days when we were trying to prove that we were just as capable (even if in some areas, we're not. But that's okay).

I think, since I'm a girl, feminism is one of the most important movements to me. The first wave was really important, of course – we needed to have the same rights as men. Of course, if you disagree with that, even this blog won't be right wing enough for you.

The second movement was pretty important too I think, because it was a social movement and women wanted to stop some bad behavior in the workplace. Okay, that's fair. I've been made really uncomfortable by men before (although the people in my life who have treated me the most poorly have always been women, with the exception of my ex husband).

But the modern movements have gone too far, in my opinion. So I'll talk to you about what I think about women;

I believe that men and women are different. No, not very different, not different species, just different in a lot of ways, some of which affect our behaviors, toward each other and members of the other gender. Our minds work differently and our tendencies are often opposites.

Since there are a lot of psychological and physical generalities I need to make, it would be good for anyone who has trouble hearing titles an definitions to try and think realistically. I know, everyone is a special snowflake and no two people should ever be grouped under one definition, but actually as a species we are more similar than we are different.

So of course there are abnormalities as there are with any statistics. When I say something like “Men are taller than women,” let's get out of that elementary school reaction we like to have, nOT alL meN aRe TALleR tHAn ALl wOMEn

I know. We all know. But on average, men are taller. The average man is taller than the average woman. If you take ten random men and ten random women, there's a good chance that their average heights will differ based on this statistic.

Anyway; one of the biggest differences between men and women to date is that men tend to be more interested in working with things, and women tend to be more interested in working with people. You hear feminists cite the “9 out of 10 engineers are men” statistic – basically true – but you rarely hear the flipside of that coin, “9 out of 10 nurses are women.”

Why?

Engineering pays more. So that means the inequality is unacceptable.

Men also tend to be willing to put more hours into one thing, whereas women tend to like to keep a healthier work/life balance. Men will devote to a career they want more obsessively and will sacrifice more of their free time or family life to it. Women tend not to want to work too much overtime or sacrifice their social lives.

This is one of the biggest reasons that there is an earnings gap between the genders in our country (note: I did not call it a wage gap); women tend to take lower paying jobs that support a family life better, and men tend to take jobs that require overtime and sacrifice. Also, more women in this country work part time than men. Women take time off to have children. We have other things going on.

Women are also less likely to ask for a raise. We're also less likely to pursue a career based on its financial stability. We're more driven by passion.

So what does this mean for men? Men are the ones working the jobs where there are high death rates. Men are a million times more likely to be injured on the job. Feminists will talk you to death about work statistics but they usually forget the ones where, you know, the boys die (men are also much more likely to be homeless and commit suicide for a number of reasons).

These are just the economic differences.

To clarify; I call it an earnings gap because a wage gap sounds like we make different wages for the same work. Which of course we don't because that's illegal (which actually I don't think it should be illegal but we'll get to that later).

What the feminists and progressives seem to have done is they've taken all the money that men have earned and all the money that women have earned and divided them without controlling the experiment for things like THE DIFFERENT CHOICES THE GENDERS MAKE THROUGHOUT THEIR LIVES.

That's like saying there's a “children's gap” where women have more children than men – without controlling for the fact that women are typically the ones with the reproductive organs required to give birth. So of course women will have more children over the course of their lives than men will.

And of course men will make more money than women. More men are CEO's, more men own businesses, more men are willing to sacrifice everything to achieve their goals.

It's not a wage gap. I think most of it is a willingness gap.

I was talking with my dad over the winter the next year about all sorts of things that had been happening, like current events. I brought up Milo, and earned my father's pride and approval, I think (not because I had said I liked anything about him, but just knowing the name I think impressed him). We talked about Milo a while, who at the time was my only real link to the conservative/alt-right movement among the newer generations. My dad suggested a couple other conservatives I might like to listen to if I was trying to hear other opinions than the ones I might have heard in high school.

Enter: Ben Shapiro. Probably one of the most intelligent men I have ever listened to. An amazing author, an amazing lawyer, and an inspiration to me. If you haven't heard of him, but you just did, and you like Jews who love their wives and know how to run circles around leftists in debates, check him out.

In Milo I had found an entertaining antagonist of the left, who never apologized for anything and got famous that way. He was exhilarating to listen to, and he said things that no one else could say, especially about groups of people he belonged to.

In Ben Shapiro I found a voice of logic and reason, whose arguments I could take and use in my life in circumstances like the one we went over in the last chapter. He's very young for everything he's done, and he is more political of a speaker than anything else. Where Milo speaks more in social tones, Ben speaks in political ones.

From this came a curiosity about all sorts of people on the internet. I listened to a lot of Sargon of Akkhad, a European who didn't drink the cool-aid, Christina Hoff-Sommers, The Factual Feminist who doesn't stand for the modern feminist misandrist movements, Dave Rubin (whose video with PragerU called “Why I left the Left” opened my eyes to a lot), and Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and professor, a man I could listen to speak for years (and plan to), and someone I wish I could call a mentor.

It was sort of a self-education. I listened to these men and women debate, do college tours, teach classes, and hold events, and I tried to tune in to as many debates as I could so that I could hear what the other side had to say.

Except the leftists who came to protest never had much to say besides ad hominem. They called Milo a homophobe (he's gay), Peterson an alt-righter (he's more of a liberal actually), Christina a misogynist (she's a she) and Ben a transphobe. But no actual arguments to anything they have to say. Because why would you argue with rational points when you can just tell the person that they're not allowed to say those points.

I'm not going to tell you you're wrong. I'm just going to tell you that you have no right to be right.

The next few chapters will talk in more specifics about these people, things they've said ish, my take, and why I continue to listen.

It looks like I'll be able to do do at least a couple posts every week on here, and although I'll try to keep it focused I'm sure I'll vent some too. I work in retail with girls in my generation and older, and I'll admit it's difficult sometimes to bring my opinions into the conversation. Maybe I can let them out here instead.

I commute a really long commute to work every day, but I bring this little laptop and I can write and sip my coffee on the train, so it isn't that bad. Soon I'll move into the city and save even more time.

I thought I'd talk a little more about me (: since that's so much fun. This is a newer job so I'm still trying to find my balance between work and home and relationships, but I think it's a decent balance. My current relationship is pretty incredible, so I have some amazing support.

I'm hoping to go back to college once I move into the city, maybe online. I started my degree, but life happened and that train derailed. I've pretty much gotten everything else back into a great groove, except that part.

But looking at the state of today's colleges, I may be grateful that I didn't finish my degree in person. Colleges aren't very friendly towards Conservatives these days.

When I was a kid I thought I was pretty ugly, not in that way like “Ugh I look gross” but I genuinely thought I was unappealing. Through middle school and high school there was really no doubt in my mind that I was unattractive. I didn't grow out of my kid weight until maybe 2 years ago, and I expected that to happen when I was fifteen like most girls. I think it might have too if I didn't love cheesecake so much. My face was covered in red spots and blotches because I couldn't stop scratching at it. My hair was a mess of frizz when all the other girls probably had straighteners and all sorts of product to use. I never got asked to senior prom.

Then, out of the blue, when I was 19 I got a job working in skincare. Now, I wish I could say that that's when everything changed but it is when things started to change. I learned about what was up with my face, and what was with up with everyone else's face too. And how to help them. I started wearing cosmetics, which helped me to look prettier and also helped me stop touching my face because I looked so pretty I didn't want to mess it up.

(If you're reading this and thinking to yourself “mAKeuP DOEsn't MakE YoU PreTtIER” then I've got news for you.)

I also discovered that I am very good at sales. I had great training and at that age I was 100% malleable, which meant they could completely make me how they wanted me. I was a top performer where I was working. I asked for my first raise ever. I got it.

I also started to see what people my age were like grown up, because now we were. I didn't like it much. There was a particular girl who I worked with that I didn't click with very well; she was unattractive, not good with hygiene, timid and such an introvert. I didn't know why they hired her, she was completely wrong for the environment just visually. Anyway, complete and total liberal. Way out there. Hard to listen to her talk. Didn't shave her pits. You know the type. Would go off about how men are such ____'s all the time. As if she'd ever gotten a date with one.

I'm sorry. I'm being mean.

Anyway, there was this day that we were talking – not even about politics, just about life – and it was becoming more and more apparent that we had complete and total different ideas about how life ought to go. All she wanted was free stuff, no sense of personal responsibility, wanted someone else (the government) to just take care of all her problems. And a song came on the radio called Admission to your Party by this boy band in Europe. Except since they were European, she was hearing Body instead of party. She went off about the patriarchy and how this was such a rapey song – EVEN THOUGH, EVEN IF SHE WAS RIGHT, HE WAS STILL ASKING – and how women were victims of this kind of thing all the time and how dare we play such an anti-feminist song.

I told her to go look at the title. They're from Europe. They have an accent. He's saying party.

Stuff like this started to happen a lot. Just outraged people trying to find things to be outraged about. I started to get sick of people my age, especially girls. Constantly getting down on men. Constantly talking about how they were victims, even though they were some of the luckiest people alive, were getting degrees, had great boyfriends, while I was dealing with hell at home.

But this was before everything happened, and I didn't know why I was disagreeing with them at all, or how to counter their ridiculous claims. So when I tried pushing back, I didn't have a lot of my own evidence or research to cite.

When that job ended, my marriage started to really go downhill. I don't think I'll talk much about that year (except that that's the summer PokemonGO came out, and that summer was amazing).

I moved out of my apartment with my husband that winter. I've been moved out ever since, up to and after the divorce. We were married for four years, two living together, two not. The two years we weren't, I tried everything I could. Marriage therapy, space, giving him money to help with all the stress he said was the cause of his yelling. He would shout at our therapist, take space and never ask if I was okay, and spend the money on vape.

It had to end. I was really sad about it, because I was so young when we met and got married. It's all I wanted, for this to work out. I never liked the idea of having a second husband, at least not until it was a real possibility. I tried to leave so many times. I tried going back so many times.

Two years of that, and it had to end. He broke it and I threw it away, and now I'm just getting on my feet again. I looked for a new job, and I found one that's amazing, and that's where I am now. I looked for a new relationship, and I found one that's amazing, and that's where I am now.

So – laziness, and envy. Two of the most dangerous traits you can have, to your fellow man. I didn't know they were both so prevalent, in my own generation or the ones previous. I was raised to understand that some have a lot and some have little, and while we should be generous and help those in need, we also should respect people's property. If someone is feeling generous and gives us something we didn't earn, we should be grateful – not take that for granted and start to think we deserved it somehow.

So I'll add another statement in here and we'll start getting more controversial, if I may; You are not entitled to anyone else's property. No matter how rich they are. No matter how well they're doing. No matter how in need you are.

You can't just take things from people when you want them. That makes for a divisive society. You can ask people for things you want from them, or you can offer something in return if they give it to you. That's how freedom works. You're free to ask for things, and your peers are free to say no.

When kids are being raised and we teach them to be generous, we also teach the other child that it's wrong to demand things – that we ask nicely. I think when I have children I will encourage them to share because it will help them to make friends and the other children will be more likely to also share with them, but I definitely don't plan on teaching my children that it's their responsibility to give things that belong to them away to other people. We should be teaching kindness and generosity, but not that is forced.

I'll probably talk a bit about one of my heroes and his take on parenting later. But that's one of the areas I feel we as a race fell short on. I see a lot of people my age and older who seem to think that others owe them something. I don't know how I escaped that feeling, and I might feel differently if my life were harder. But at the end of the day, I've gone through places in my life where we had nothing, and I never resented the people who had more than I did.

I just asked them for help. And I got some.

I just don't think it's okay to ask the government to point guns at people when you want their money.

I don't think it's okay to point a gun at anyone just because you want something they have. At all. And before you say, “But the government doesn't point guns at people to collect taxes,” what do you think would happen to me if I decided to keep all the money I earn? The money that's rightfully mine, not anyone else's? If I refused to pay income tax?

We can't keep using our government to threaten other people who have more than we do. And I say “we” because in the grand scheme of things I don't have much either.

I thought I'd stop for a bit and talk about rights, and which ones we have, which ones we should have, where they come from, why I think they're important, etc.

As a conservative, I believe that rights don't come from the government. They come from being human. It's the same thing that makes us believe that human life is sacred in any stage. In some ways, I believe it may even be a survival instinct, a think of the whole feeling.

Anyway, I do not believe that the government gives us rights or takes them away. I believe that we have them, and that the government is there to protect and defend them. The same way our founding fathers believed that rights are “God-given.”

So what are rights? What do we have the right to do and not do? Why do we have the right to do some things but not others. How does everyone have the same rights? Don't they overlap? Should they?

Well, no. And yes. The explanation is in the difference between positive and negative rights.

Negative rights are what our country was basically founded on, and which Conservatives in general believe are the best way forward. They require nothing but for others to not interfere with your actions. You have a right to sail on your own boat without interference from others. You have a right to spend your money how you like without interference. You have the right to not be hindered.

Positive rights are the opposite. They require others to provide you with something, a product, or a service. The welfare state is built on positive rights – it requires some humans to give things to other humans.

We talked a little about keeping the government small so that when it falls into the wrong hands there isn't much damage it can do, remember? So, if you believe that that is the best way to go, you'll also probably agree that it should never be able to force one person to give anything to another person.

That's what I believe. I believe in generosity and looking out for thy neighbor, and I believe that the government should get the fuck out of thy way while thou art doing so.

The reason that Conservatives aren't typically in favor of universal healthcare, universal this, welfare that, etc., is because it requires the creation of positive rights. The government points a gun and says to a doctor, you must treat this patient and you can only have this amount of money for it.

It's slavery. We don't want that in our country. We want doctors to be able to charge what they like for treatments. That doctor worked their ass off for years to become a doctor. We just think the government should get off her case and let her do her thing.

When the government stepped in and ordered everyone to purchase health insurance, we pushed back because that's tyrannical, and now they've set a precedent that the government can point a gun at you if you don't give them your resources for a certain product.

But people are okay with it. Free stuff.

Why politics?

I get it – a lot of people, including my old self, believe that politics is a waste of time, and for some good reasons. I used to think that ethics and politics were too different, too estranged, and that I couldn't hope to use my knowledge of one to speak in the other. I think that's why a lot of people are hesitant to even break the ice in that department, because they think it's just too big of an issue.

And that's fine to think. Truly, it is an enormous topic, and not one that just anyone should tread on.

On the flipside, you have people like the millennial generation as a whole, who are too confident that they have politics figured out and pay no heed to their own mortality and lack of experience. People who try to use “old” as an insult.

But when I started to listen to conservatives speaking, that changed for me. Suddenly it wasn't all ethics and emotions and crying – it was logical, reasonable, understandable, and truths that were hard to swallow, but that we need to hear. And I started to understand.

Once, back when I was married, my dad came over to visit me while my husband was at work. This was before I had started paying attention, and I liked a lot of very liberal TV-shows. I was recently out of high school, and I watched a lot of John Oliver (who is, admittedly, a very funny guy – or at least has very clever writers).

Stuff he had said on his show made a lot of sense in my head and he was funny, and so to impress my dad I thought I'd pull up a political commentator. I was really sad when he started arguing with the things Oliver said. I pushed back with whatever I could think of.

One of the episodes was about Standardized Tests in high schools, and how the people who were hired to grade them were asked to start seeing more of them as certain grades. “You need to start to learn to see more essays as a four, as a three.” That outraged Oliver and he started talking about how unfair that was to school systems where most students do well. Why would a child in one school district earn an A for the same work another would earn a C for?

But my dad explained it to me, and thank God because I was about to go through the rest of my life not understanding that basic concept.

We compete for jobs. We compete for housing and resources with other human beings. At the end of the day, even if fifty people apply for one job, the best candidate will get it. Even if everyone has an ability to perform a job, only the one who is most experienced will earn the opportunity.

Grades aren't intended to indicate the quality of work – they're intended to rank the students from best to worst. That's why when our teachers in school would “grade on a curve” it could be a really good thing or a really bad thing; if everyone did poorly, at least there will be some people who got an A. If everyone did well, our teachers wouldn't grade on a curve because that would set the lowest scores up for failure.

My high school used to rank students by their GPA. Test scores are simply meant to reflect that ranking, and prepare us for competing with each other in the real world, where even if everyone knows what they're doing, only one of us gets the job.

That's when I realized my dad is seriously smart, and maybe everything isn't always an outrage. That's when I realized that these people on the television were playing with things they didn't always understand, and that I could understand them even though I was small. And the day I realized John Oliver was a comedian. Not a politician.

Why politics?

I get it – a lot of people, including my old self, believe that politics is a waste of time, and for some good reasons. I used to think that ethics and politics were too different, too estranged, and that I couldn't hope to use my knowledge of one to speak in the other. I think that's why a lot of people are hesitant to even break the ice in that department, because they think it's just too big of an issue.

And that's fine to think. Truly, it is an enormous topic, and not one that just anyone should tread on.

On the flipside, you have people like the millennial generation as a whole, who are too confident that they have politics figured out and pay no heed to their own mortality and lack of experience. People who try to use “old” as an insult.

But when I started to listen to conservatives speaking, that changed for me. Suddenly it wasn't all ethics and emotions and crying – it was logical, reasonable, understandable, and truths that were hard to swallow, but that we need to hear. And I started to understand.

Once, back when I was married, my dad came over to visit me while my husband was at work. This was before I had started paying attention, and I liked a lot of very liberal TV-shows. I was recently out of high school, and I watched a lot of John Oliver (who is, admittedly, a very funny guy – or at least has very clever writers).

Stuff he had said on his show made a lot of sense in my head and he was funny, and so to impress my dad I thought I'd pull up a political commentator. I was really sad when he started arguing with the things Oliver said. I pushed back with whatever I could think of.

One of the episodes was about Standardized Tests in high schools, and how the people who were hired to grade them were asked to start seeing more of them as certain grades. “You need to start to learn to see more essays as a four, as a three.” That outraged Oliver and he started talking about how unfair that was to school systems where most students do well. Why would a child in one school district earn an A for the same work another would earn a C for?

But my dad explained it to me, and thank God because I was about to go through the rest of my life not understanding that basic concept.

We compete for jobs. We compete for housing and resources with other human beings. At the end of the day, even if fifty people apply for one job, the best candidate will get it. Even if everyone has an ability to perform a job, only the one who is most experienced will earn the opportunity.

Grades aren't intended to indicate the quality of work – they're intended to rank the students from best to worst. That's why when our teachers in school would “grade on a curve” it could be a really good thing or a really bad thing; if everyone did poorly, at least there will be some people who got an A. If everyone did well, our teachers wouldn't grade on a curve because that would set the lowest scores up for failure.

My high school used to rank students by their GPA. Test scores are simply meant to reflect that ranking, and prepare us for competing with each other in the real world, where even if everyone knows what they're doing, only one of us gets the job.

That's when I realized my dad is seriously smart, and maybe everything isn't always an outrage. That's when I realized that these people on the television were playing with things they didn't always understand, and that I could understand them even though I was small. And the day I realized John Oliver was a comedian. Not a politician.