Today I debate the toughest nut to crack: someone who doesn’t give a shit. I absolutely think the hardest person to argue with is someone who doesn’t want to be in the argument, and yet, more Americans don’t vote than consider themselves Republican or Democrat, so this is the pond we must fish in.
Brody: Hi, thanks for coming on.
Ben: Whatever [laughter]
Brody: I see you’re getting into character pretty well.
Ben: Yeah, you should milk it because this is one debate you can’t lose…or win for that matter.
Brody: That’s true, how do you beat someone who believes in nothing?
Ben: You should’ve thought of that before now [laughter]
Brody: Well I’ll give it a shot. So the last debate we did was a black female conservative—
Ben: What?
Brody: I know, and then before that was a Hooters waitress with wildly optimistic feelings about how much money she would be worth one day. So clearly there’s an identity crisis for a lot of conservatives, and maybe you could say that about you. You don’t support ending abortion or banning gay marriage or really any Republican social issues but yet you don’t vote Democrat, at least not regularly.
Ben: Right, but again, I don’t really care about these things enough to vote. I really and truly don’t give a fuck. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Brody: There’s got to be something though. You didn’t like the Iraq War—
Ben: No one did.
Brody: Republicans did. Still do.
Ben: Obama hasn’t ended it.
Brody: I think it’s a rock and a hard place. I think he takes so much shit for people calling him a socialist and a Muslim and an atheist and a foreigner, he can’t afford to look soft on the Middle East. He’s drawing down troops but if he ends the Iraq War too quickly, well…okay just think about how much the Birther movement hates him now and multiply it by Sarah Palin’s brain cells, actually, bad example.
Ben: [Laughter] But if you have a President that can’t be effective because everything he does will be vilified by the right wing, what good is he? At the end of the day, no matter the reasons, if the result is going to be the same, why should I vote?
Brody: That sounds like a great point. It really does, except it isn’t true. There are subtle differences taking place every day. Obama repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, he’s pushed through Wall Street reform the other party hates him for, there’s “Obamacare” which is the reason I have health insurance. There’s been progress for certain. If you look at the way he restructured student loan debt and the healthcare bill that allows 24 year olds to get back on their parent’s insurance, you’ve got a winner in my eyes.
Ben: I don’t hate him. In fact, he could be worse. He could be better, a lot better, but he could be a lot worse.
Brody: But you told me you probably won’t vote for him. [Laughter] That’s the thing about him. The people that really like him probably won’t vote at all and the people that don’t like him, I mean they really hate his guts. Bill Maher once said “He’s lost the independents, Democrats are unenthused, Republicans hate him, but he’s got the unlikely voters in his pocket.”
Ben: That’s probably true. The general feeling by people I talk to is that he’s been given a bad rap, but…I don’t know if feeling bad for a guy is really a good enough reason to vote for him. I really don’t.
Brody: Just looking at the other party though, you know things would be worse.
Ben: Would they?
Brody: Absolutely. Right now they’re trying to cut teacher pay, benefits, get rid of veteran teachers that cost a little more to make room for new kids that don’t cost as much, basically turning public schools into Wal-Mart. [Ben laughs at this] And there’s cutting social security, Medicaid, Medicare, refusing to cut defense or raise taxes on a tax bracket neither of us is in. I mean…if I really had 15 pages I could go all day.
Ben: Oh I know you could. I think you got all of the interest in this stuff I was supposed to. You’re caring enough for two people.
Brody: Some days it feels like two hundred.
Ben: Yeah…so what the fuck were we talking about? [laughter]
Brody: You mentioning how bad you wanted to vote Democrat because the stuff going on right now is burning you up.
Ben: You know something. I probably won’t vote and I definitely won’t make any promises, but you should hit me up in 2012 and try again. I’ll probably change my number so you can’t between now and then, but go ahead and try.