Red State Vs. Blue State: The Two Beer Debate

After approximately thirty seconds of soul searching (and not a moment longer) on why last week’s debate might have went south—Alabama pun, get it—I decided it must have been because I knew the person I was debating, so I set out to debate a complete stranger this week. At first, I was unsure of where to find a staunch conservative ready to argue with a liberal and then I remembered I just needed to throw a rock.

I cruised around a few shithole looking bars for anyone with a confederate flag in the back of their truck. The second one I stopped at had a beauty: a camouflage painted truck with huge tires, a gun rack, a confederate flag, AND an Obama is a socialist bumper sticker (Obama’s name has a sickle and a hammer over the O).

Once inside I asked whose truck it was and offered to buy the guy who had it a beer if he would debate me.

Guy: This ain’t no fag stuff is it?

Brody: No, we’re just going to have a debate about politics and I’m going to record it.

A few minutes (and promises that I’m straight) later we were on our way.

Brody: State your name, for the record.

Guy: Woah, what the fuck is this a courtroom?

Brody: No [laughter] I just want to know what to call you in my blog [He rolls his eyes]

Guy: Alright, I’m Paul Goddamn [Johnson, last name changed due to the outcome of the debate].

Brody: What’s your favorite kind of beer?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: If I’m at a bar I like Michelob, but Natural Light if I’m just at home.

Brody: Why do you believe in slavery?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: Huh?

Brody: You hate Obama, you have a rebel flag in the back of your truck, and the fifteen minutes I’ve spent listening to you talk you’ve said the n-word more than a Jay Z video.

Paul Goddamn Johnson: I don’t hate coons—

Brody: That sentence could take the gold prize in the Irony Olympics.

Paul Goddamn Johnson, unfazed: I just hate Obama.

Brody: Why do you hate him?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: He hates [burps] guns, freedom, trucks.

Brody: Well shit I was okay if he just hated freedom but he hates guns and trucks too?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: He’s always bitching about trucks using too much oil and people need to be driving these fucking…goofy mobiles.

Brody: Why do you hate Hybrid cars?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: They ain’t got no horsepower. My truck [goes off into an elaborate description of his truck’s motor and RPMs that might make Mike Rowe cream his pants but bored me to tears]

Brody: Why do you need all that horsepower, what the hell are you doing, tearing up stumps?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: I could do anything with a lot of horsepower but you can’t do shit with these little rinky dink electric cars.

Brody: And Obama says you can’t drive a truck?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: Maybe not that but he’s always bitching about this global warming, even though it’s pretty damn freezing outside. It’s one of the coldest winters we’ve ever had.

Brody: And when did you get your PHD in climate science?

Paul Goddamn Johnson: Temperatures move in a cycle, it gets like this every hundred years.

Brody: Carbon emissions aren’t cyclical. They’ve gone nowhere but up in the last couple decades. They’ve never been higher and it eats holes in the ozone that cause climate change, not just warm weather but the reason the weather is so unusual for the South—

Paul Goddamn Johnson: How are you gonna say global warming when it’s thirty damn degrees outside!

Brody: Because it isn’t just warm weather, it’s irregular weather patterns in general. Don’t get caught up in calling it global warming because a lot of people call it climate crisis now.

Paul Goddamn Johnson: Fuck Obama though. He’s trying to do socialism on healthcare, and take all the handguns away like a dictator.

Brody: The Brady Group, a gun control group that rates politicians, gave Barack Obama an F on gun control. How could he be any better for guns or make it clearer he’s not taking them away?

From this point the debate really deteriorated and got out of hand, so I cut it off and left, leaving me with little idea of where to go for next week. Too bad the circus isn’t in town or I could debate some carnies.