generation gap.

Dear i+i: I'm in my 20s, and am politically pretty progressive. My stepfather is an arch conservative. This would be fine, if he would shut up about it. Every time the family gets together, you can rely on him to swill scotch and get more vehement and in-my-face. It's a giant bummer. What can I do?

ian: Well let's define our terms, here. When you say "pretty progressive," what're we talking about here? Are you occupying anyplace? Or do you post links to Think Progress stories on your the facebook wall? [I don't give a fuck what Justin Timberlake tells me - it'll always be THE facebook to me] Cause if it's the latter, if you're just one of these one-click slacktivists, go fuck yourself. 

Likewise, if you have any kind of beads or other adornment in your beard, go fuck yourself.

And if you piss your time away photoshopping the V For Vendetta Guy Fawkes mask on people in the mistaken belief that you're actually doing anything, go fuck yourself.

And if you are known to wear a Guy Fawkes mask, go fuck yourself. This is a transparent and desperate ploy to attract the attention of Natalie Portman and cannot possibly work.

And if you appear shirtless in any context other than a shower or a sexual encounter, go fuck yourself.

And if you think those greasy ropes of dropout failface Burning Man hair of yours are legitimate dreadlocks, you think again. And look up "cultural imperialism" while you're at it.

But if you're a no-foolin' occupier, and you've had your ass dragged out of a park, and if you've gotten a snout full of pepper spray from a lard-assed cop, you oughtta be able to shout down a hammered stepdad, no?

If you need help, head down to the mall with him and do that live microphone thing the occupiers do:

You: MIC CHECK!
Those assembled in food court: MIC CHECK!
You: I feel disrespected when you dismiss my views.
Those assembled in food court: HE FEELS DISRESPECTED WHEN YOU DISMISS HIS VIEWS.
Stepfather: What in the damn hell?
You: You make me feel marginalized and more than a little oppressed when you call my earnestly held convictions 'the product of too goddamn much college and not enough goddamn experience with how things really are'.
Those assembled in food court: YOU HURT HIS LITTLE FEELINGS WHEN YOU SAY DOUCHEY THINGS!
You: What? Wait. No. That's not what I–
Those assembled in food court: WE'RE PARAPHRASING!
You: I appreciate that, but I feel like you're not fully conveying the intent of what I–
Those assembled in food court:  LOOK, MAN - THE LEFT HAS GOT TO LEARN HOW TO BULLET POINT SHIT, OTHERWISE FOLKS JUST GLAZE OVER.
You: I respectfully disagree. I think a big part of the erosion in tenor of our civic discourse is attributable to precisely this brand of over simpli–
Those assembled in food court: SEE? YOU'RE FUCKING LOSING US, DUDE. AND WE DON'T EVEN DISAGREE WITH YOU, NECESSARILY. I MEAN, FUCK, DUDE: GROW A PAIR.
You: No, but don't you see what you're doing? You're adopting the paradigm of the oppress–
Those assembled in food court: WHITE BOY, YOU ARE NOT ABOUT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR OPPRESSORS.
You: What? No. I was… How come you're talking like Nell Carter all of a sudden?
Those assembled in food court: BECAUSE OF YOUR BARELY SUBMERGED RACISM!
Stepfather: I'll be in the car.
Those assembled in food court: GOOD CALL! WE'RE GONNA GO TRY THOSE MASSAGE CHAIRS OVER AT RELAX THE BACK! THOSE THINGS LOOK PRETTY BADASS. LATER, HIPPIE.

Look. Kid. If you think you're gonna get civil debate out of your Cheney-cock stepfather, you can forget it. The precedent for that went up the "starve-the-beast-lick-Grover-Norquist's-taint-vote-against-your-own-goddamn-interests-as-long's-they-don't-take-your-guns-and-them-gay-fellers-still-can't-get-hitched" chimney 40 years ago. You can't out-yell him. He probably spends half his waking life hollering at the callers on sports talk radio in his LeSabre. Your facts don't matter - facts are mutable to the GOP. Your ideas don't mean dick. Ideas that fall outside the bounds of "cut taxes" and "crush/cock-block/humiliate Obama" fall on deaf fucking ears. The BEST you can hope for is not to change his mind about anything - you won't. EVER; but to compel him to shut that collection of burst blood vessels he calls a face.

Only way to do that? Get good with a gun. Seriously. And get a thousand hours of practice under your belt.

I know that the thought of using a firearm causes you to make a piping hot seitan scramble in your pants. But hear me out. If the next time your florid-faced stepdad goes "Anybody needs me, I'll be at the firing range," you say "Can I tag along?" Then you gotta be like the bastard son of Buffalo Bill Cody and the chick from Resident Evil - you gotta hit everything. Dead center. If he sees you drilling moving targets at 100 yards, he'll think a-fucking-gain before he gets all up in your political grill. Anything short of your plugging headshot after headshot on the targets with a Desert Eagle, and you'll be hearing his shit forever. And if that doesn't win you his respect, shoot him in leg. Discussion over. Bullet is the best fucking punctuation mark there is, Hippie.

irby: i feel like the only way to really get a leg up on this asshole is to soon-yi that scumbag neocon motherfucker. seriously, dollface, you might just have to show this dickface what trickle-down really fucking means. because here's the thing about arguing with most conservatives: they refuse to listen, therefore your debate quickly devolves into a pointless exercise in futility. dogma versus dogma, tenet versus tenet, credo versus credo, YAWN. because you can't be wrong, either, so the two of you will continue to circle around one another spewing propaganda while making zero inroads into the other person's convictions in perpetuity. we liberals can be just as mouthy and pious as our fox news-watching counterparts, and listening to some earnest vegan dude in earth shoes trying to shout down a snooty bureaucrat is just as painful as sitting through 30 seconds of rush limbaugh's radio show.

so reasoning with the other side isn't going to goddamned happen. look, if i'm all "supply side economics" and you're all "the rich need to be taxed at a higher rate" then we are never going to see eye to eye. you want abortions and i want christ nailed to a cross in your third grade classroom, YOU AND I ARE NEVER GOING TO BE FRIENDS. but we could totally have sex with one another.

hate sex is the best, especially when fueled by contradicting political ideologies. because you might not really hate that dude, you just want everyone he's supporting in the primary to GO AWAY AND DIE. now, this is advice i could never take. why, you ask? because it might be morally reprehensible to get the upper hand on one's boorish stepfather by seducing him after one-too-many tumblers of twelve year old glenlivet? WRONG. i don't have any morals, which is why i'm a goddamned liberal in the first fucking place. irby could never take this advice because so resolute am i in my belief in abundant welfare and hot lunch programs and free teenage abortions and evolution that i don't even think i could convince my vagina to open herself up for a grand ol' elephant to insert his trunk.

i have no interest whatsoever in a carville-matalin romantic situation, mostly because HOW COULD YOU EAT BREAKFAST ACROSS FROM A PERSON WHO OBVIOUSLY DESPISES MANKIND? reaganomics fucks poor people, fiscal conservatism fucks poor people, this hierarchical society fucks poor people, and most organized religion is just a big, exclusive tent bitches hide under while fucking poor people. except not in the ass, because that might make them gay. my anti-elite populist ass could never blow a dude who doesn't believe that global warming isn't real. i mean, come on. you'd need the jaws of life to pry my fucking lips apart.

but you, little one, obviously should take one for the goddamned team. i'm sure that dude is kind of sexy, right? in an alec baldwin as jack donaghy way? or, at the very least, he's rich. and fucking a rich dude is probably pretty hot, even if he looks like the reanimated corpse of john wayne. so here's what you do: dress up in your best ann coulter costume (a skeleton and blonde wig should suffice), get hannity on the old television machine, tape a couple tea bags to a hat, then parade around in your panties with a loaded pistol in each hand. once he takes advantage of you, oops i mean "once you consent to sex because rape is only an imaginary thing that happens to women who dress provocatively and can't deal with the consequences that stem from showing a bare ankle in public and only cry rape because they don't want to appear slutty," tell your goddamned mother. and she will kick him the fuck out. because if there's one thing that bitch won't tolerate, it is a stalwart paleoconservative who happens to also be a bolshevik with his dick.
             
if you don't bang him, the terrorists win. remember that shit.