Dealing with it

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

How do you do it?

I'm a sophomore art major at a state university, and the ways of public education are well ingrained in my head. The problem with being a non-liberal in art school, however, is that you are totally and completely ostracized for the most part. And despite the fact that I am quite a loudmouth and thick-skinned, I always have to jam my mouth shut when politics get involved because I know saying one thing will totally get me demonized.

That's why I adored this post and its contained article, and I think the best adage for how I feel was said in the article: As a college student, I feel like I have to be closeted for my views. But thanks to that post telling me of that article, I have the "published article" I need for TWO projects! And you cannot understand how excited that makes me.

But, well, you know how it is. Bringing politics into anything is a deadly risk that I'm almost afraid to take. Thing is, I won't have been the one to cast the first stone. It'll be a challenge to defend what I did, though, and for that, I am...worried. :\

Comments

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

I was there too. It will toughen you up for life beyond academia.

I'm a teacher and teacher schools are notorious for being populated with liberals. Once in a class where we were discussing whether there should be licenses for parenthood, I suggested that there ought to be a marriage license in place first! Oh the hoots and howls!

[mprice.livejournal.com]

My father always used to joke that couples should have to renew their marriage license the way you have to renew your driver's license. My mother's response was always, "What makes you think I'd want to renew it?"

They lasted 50 years--even without having to renew.

[mprice.livejournal.com]

The fact that it's in the New York Times makes it doubly delicious. Just let the Libs try to discredit the source as being an evil right-wing outlet. ;-D

[rightsaidred.livejournal.com]

Didn't you know? The media is all right-biased because it's owned by rich people!

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

Isn't it sad? Artists are supposed to be subversive, and yet there's all this marching in lockstep! And most of them don't even SEE it. Truly a mad world.

I wish I had some great advice for you, but all I can say is -- hang on to your courage, your purpose, and your sense of humor!

[x-1013-x.livejournal.com]

I didn't feel this in college as much as I've felt it in recent years. When the Obama wave came, everything changed. It is very hard to be a conservative artist, believe me. But you don't have to hide, not completely. Pick your battles. There are times, and you'll know what they are when you feel it, when you have to say something. It's very important at those times to speak up. That tingle in your conservative 'Spidey sense' tells you someone there really needs to hear what you have to say. Stay informed, stay calm, and never let your emotions get the best of you.

Know this too, just because you're a conservative, it doesn't mean you're not a good artist. I've had people make me feel that way because so many 'popular' artists are huge liberals. It seems, in this world today, to be considered a good artist, you only have to be loud and stupid. That couldn't be further from the truth. Be exceptional and be principled. When the praise fades, we're all left alone with ourselves. Like who you are so you won't be in bad company.

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

The Obama wave definitely changed everything, and it's really funny form my sarcastic point of view: We (my age group) are always told "You guys were the game changers! You guys rocked the vote!" Two years later, sitting in class, talking about the government: "We don't care." Wow, way to rock politics, guys!

I'm slowly coming out of my shell as a conservative(ish) artist. Fighting the "Sarah Palin = lolz" battle isn't going to get me anywhere, but I can do better elsewhere.

[x-1013-x.livejournal.com]

Nope, that battle is almost impossible. Oh well, soldier on! You can certainly do better elsewhere. I wish you the best of luck. :D

[rivetspoon.livejournal.com]

OMG I haet the Sarah Palin = lolz battles. I just want to stand up and shout, "AND WHO WAS IT THAT SAID HE'D BEEN TO ALL 57 STATES? HUH? WHO!" but I know exactly where that will go: "EVERYONE SAYS SOMETHING DUMB ONCE IN A WHILE BUT SARAH DOES IT ALL THE TIME LOLZ"

Good luck. :| You can always come here and scream about it later. <3

[oronoda.livejournal.com]

I know I'm terrified to express my opinion on Facebook because of how my friends can be hostile towards conservatives.

[x-1013-x.livejournal.com]

I lock certain people from seeing a post to prevent hostility, but largely, I'm not friends with anyone who will be rude to me for my beliefs. Life is too short to mess with that crap.

[oronoda.livejournal.com]

Well, it's like, I just met this guy who goes to my alma mater. He's 20ish and I'm 30ish but we're both from the same department so we bonded over that. And he is also my successor to the clubs I was president and VP of. So it was nice. But on his facebook, he consistently bashes conservatives and says very typical 20 year old stuff... like "I know all about the world!" type of attitude that I had when I was 20. I since grew out of it. I keep on wanting to engage him in debate because some of the things he says is very one sided and he bashes the military a lot. I keep on saying, "Dude, he's 20. He'll grow out of it. These are things he needs to learn on his own." Etc.

[x-1013-x.livejournal.com]

I understand. I have a young friend who is similar. They aren't as tough on the military, thank God, but I understand.

[oronoda.livejournal.com]

Haha, actually, I posted the link in question on my facebook and he liked the link and thanked me for it. He did seem like a thoughtful person when I met him which surprised me when I saw his facebook updates. Oii...

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

This totally. My friends just have to suck it up that I'm a conservative. If it really bothers them they can just not be my friend. My bf is a liberal. We just don't talk politics. (We snark each other on FB only.)

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Those type of questions, I just answer honestly and kind of dare the professor to mark it wrong. So far, I haven't been tested.

[salveevery1.livejournal.com]

read; Why we Whisper by Jim DeMint, that might be helpful.
you can tell them to be "tolerant" lol :)

[salveevery1.livejournal.com]

I once had some girl I used to know give me a death threat for being conservative 0_o she apologized saying she is "over dramatic"

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's one term for it . . .

[tulleskirt.livejournal.com]

I've come to terms with the fact that I'm never going to be able to engage in real debate on campus, so I really just revel now in freaking people out. No one would never expect me to be conservative for a lot of reasons--I go to a school with no grades, I have pink streaks in my hair, I "seem so intelligent" (yeah, I love hearing that one)--which makes it really fun to pull the big reveal on people when they bring up politics. Ninja right-winger!

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

I wear goggles (non-steampunk) and scored a scholarship for my ACT score. I know wha'cha mean.

[nerca-beyul.livejournal.com]

I'm a woman with really short hair, which seems to make people think I'm a lesbian, and I'm a journalism major. Yeah, I'm a freaky ninja right-winger too, and it's epic. >:D

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

AND I have short hair! We can all be buddies. :D

[oronoda.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm the same. My friends call me affectionately the Hippie Republican.

[bookwrm17.livejournal.com]

I go to school in Manhattan, so I spend a lot of time surrounded by liberals. I've gotten rather good at responding to nonchalant statements of liberal ideology with "Well, some people would argue that..." Maybe it's a bit cowardly, but I find that if you present a counter-argument without necessarily claiming to believe it, it goes over better. That way you won't instantly be branded a conservative, and if you get a hostile response, you can just claim to be playing devil's advocate.

The hardest part for me was accepting that sometimes you do just have to let it go, because you can't turn every conversation into a political debate.

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Was fairly easy for me, for two reasons:

1) Virginia Tech is fairly conservative... for a college.
2) I'm rather confrontational as it is.

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

It's why we all love you Izuko!

[izuko.livejournal.com]

*cool pose*

Don't fall for me; I'll only break your heart.

*/cool pose*

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

No worries. I have a bf. I meant love in the general/conservative sense!

(You're rather too young for me anyway!;p)

[izuko.livejournal.com]

Damn. Rejected before I even axe.

Nah, it's the standard "cool guy" line in many anime.

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

Not much I could say, as I only had to deal with boneheads, thankfully apolitical.

Everyone else said everything, but I'd say take refuge in your online friends or your hobbies. I keep re-exploring my past interests, as, well, modern leftism is corroding the present ones. The left says, "you're always stuck in the past."

Retort that, "the past doesn't suck in comparison, and you can learn from it, too."

And, hey, there is always MST3K, which thankfully didn't do a lot of politics. I thank God for that, every day.

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

. . . AND Mike Nelson is conservative! :-)

(I'm glad they didn't do a lot of politics, too. I've heard that they were all over the political spectrum, and it could have got nasty. But I just think it's pretty cool that Mike is conservative!)

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

I love MST3K and Mike Nelson very much. (I made your icon!) <3 So there is hope in this world.

[litlover12.livejournal.com]

So you did! Thank you! :-) Isn't he just the best?

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

I didn't know if Nelson was outspoken about it, but I know his humor doesn't tilt Left. So, I suppose, that does mean conservative in our modern age.

I said about the politics, as Mary Jo Pehl and Frank Conniff admit their Obama boosterism whenever they got on Cinematic Titanic. Pehl's case..., well, it got kinda creepy for me. Heh.

That said, I'm also glad it was produced in the Midwest, where the sensibilities were more in sync with America. I mean, imagine if the show was done on either coast? Yeesh.

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

It came out he was a conservative after MST3K, I believe, and from what I've heard, it caused a huge shitstorm on forums and the like. It gets brought up from time to time and while some people make a fuss over it, a lot more just go "Yeah, and, so? He's still funny."

WHICH IS HOW I WISH THE REACTION WAS ALL THE TIME but we can't have nice things.

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

Truthfully, I never bothered with the major fandom after I learned of the Joel/Mike flamewars of '93. Granted, the fans I've come across like them both, and we have better things to do with our time. But, yeah, combine that with political lulz, sorry.

Although, I didn't think about it, at the time, but Hugh Hewitt has said he's friends with Nelson. Guess that should have been the tipoff?

[dark-weezing.livejournal.com]

"WHICH IS HOW I WISH THE REACTION WAS ALL THE TIME but we can't have nice things."

Given that CC has become a leftist hack comedian network, yeah. If MST3K was created, today, you know it wouldn't pass CC's high "standards."

[shaolin.livejournal.com]

Good luck! You're a far braver soul than I am.

When I was younger, I went to a liberal arts college and was a little more open with my political beliefs, if only because I was bolstered by the awesomeness that was our College Republicans group. I always wondered if I burned any bridges professionally, but what can ya do?

Now that I'm going to an art school in NYC, it's just...not going to happen. There are so many horrible comments about Palin, Tea Partiers, capitalists, etc. I can't afford to make any enemies, so I don't make my political beliefs known, as much as that hurts.

[nerca-beyul.livejournal.com]

I have it even worse. I'm a journalism major/student journalist. So I get it in classes and work harder than most majors. (In addition, I'm also an English [double] major, so I get the liberal arts end of the stick too.)

For the most part I just keep my mouth shut and FUME like there's no tomorrow, but I've started making more openly conservative political posts on my Facebook in the hopes that my classmates/newspaper co-workers (sometimes they're both) get the picture. So far it hasn't worked out great, but it's so-so.

And then I choose to chime in at the snarkiest possible moments at work. For example, this really obnoxious sarcastic guy at the newspaper was ranting about Rick Scott (Florida Republican now-governor) back in November, and he was sarcastically like, "But you have to remember that even if he's a crook Rick Scott will protect our Second Amendment rights!!! Because I know that you carry a gun on you all the time, Caitlin." I just quirked an eyebrow at him and said, "I'm a member of the NRA." He's left me mostly alone since then. LOL.

[oronoda.livejournal.com]

Okay, so I posted the article you mentioned on my facebook and my Poli Sci professor responded. I told him it reminded me of how much he encouraged conservatives to speak in his class and did reel in the hostile liberals. And he is a staunch Democrat. He said something in response that gives me hope for the Universities. I wish more professors thought like him:

"I've always tried hard to make sure in my classes that people across the political spectrum feel free to speak and that people treat people whose views differ from their own respectfully. Empathy is a value we need more of in the political system, and nowhere is hearing from a range of views more important than at a college."

Just thought I'd share!

[kataoi.livejournal.com]

That's a very nice and awesome professor there. While I do think there are those who honestly do want students to speak their minds, such as yours, I also think people say that and mean it nothing beyond face value. It's about the environment created, and while I feel safe in some classes, I don't in others, especially my art classes, which, well, are my major classes.

tl;dr It's not so much the actual professor as it is my fellow students.

[so-sporktastic.livejournal.com]

Ugh.

I'm a pretty conservative (social and especially fiscal) individual who was a Sociology/pre-law major at a really liberal large school. I went through something similar, but something that helped me was something that I noticed said about Marco Rubio.

People like to say that Republicans hate Hispanics. However, Rubio's a Hispanic Republican and IIRC supports enforcing immigration laws. (It's late, my brain is fried.)

I would pick my battles. In my Sex, Marriage, and Family class, I'd say what I thought when I had the personal experience (kind of like Rubio being a Hispanic) to back it up. One of my classmates said that smart teenagers had abortions. I stood up and said something like, "I'm a teen mom and I've got the highest GPA in the major department. Try again." (Which I did - got an award for it and everything.) And rather than me talking out of my backside, I had the experience to back it up, and I had the last word.

If you can input politics into a situation where you can effectively shut down the debate? Go for it. Otherwise, it's like talking to a bag of wet cement.

♥