It will eventually become clear to anyone who reads this site that I am not a fan of conservative philosophy. But I don't hate conservatives, in fact I believe they have have a valuable seat at the table. I simply don't agree with their worldview. I also want to reinforce that Trash Skunk is not exclusively a political site, but there are times when the most inspiring thing to write about is the insanity of our political lives. So with that said, let us wade into this deep and roiling lake of slime called Politics, and order something hot from its coprophagic menu.
It has long been a subject of both amusement and frustration to me that the stereotypical "bleeding heart liberal" is made fun of for thinking only with their heart and not with their head. It is deeply irritating that people who believe Jesus is likely to return in our lifetime also attempt to portray themselves as the brains of our nation. In the minds of this crowd, anyone who gets upset about police brutality or animal cruelty are idiots - brainless buffoons who let their emotions get the best of them. This from people whose browser history no doubt includes searches for things like "are angels real?" and "do polio vaccines cause Marxism?".
To be clear, the "Bleeding Heart Liberal" is an invention of American Conservatives. It is a pejorative caricature used to describe anyone who cares about the welfare of human beings, animals, the environment, or any number of other things that are very much worth caring about. It is true that for such people their hearts are often the center of their politics - they are probably political to begin with precisely because they care about the world. Yet sadly, such people's methods of making things right are sometimes laughable or misguided. This can make them easy fodder for the cynical types who are always waiting on the sidelines to mock anyone who cares about something.
And yet to my understanding, the target of the "bleeding heart liberal" trope isn't people's misguided methodology, it's more like a mean joke about people caring too much to begin with. When you hear the phrase "bleeding heart liberal" deployed, it is usually in the context of some utterance like "Oh god, these people are out here protesting police brutality again. Jesus H. Christ, these bleeding heart lunatics make a fuss out of everything! Why don't they think with their brains for once?".
Indeed. But how the tables can turn, my friend. The "looney libs" aren't the only ones who think with their hearts, as we shall soon see.
What's In Your Heart?
What vexes me to oblivion is that many American conservatives - quite obviously and in flagrante - are guilty of thinking with their own hearts, giving us a view into their id as clear as a well-hydrated piss on a winter morning. When properly riled, they, too, abandon rationality and "brain think" to the more powerful impulses of their emotions. The difference is that in the conservative case, when the heart does the thinking, we're not witnessing a comic overabundance of caring and compassion, but a seemingly endless abyss of anger, misplaced grievance, bitterness, and fear. It can be quite ugly.
Picture two hearts overriding the brains of two different humans. One is a big, ruby-red, nectar-pumping Disney cartoon of a heart. It is easy to laugh at, optimistic and naive as it tries to confront the problems of the world.
The other is a foul, pulsating clump of viscera, squeezing oily black sludge through the shriveled arteries of a malformed demon husk. It looks like H.R. Giger designed a system to deliver rattlesnake poison to the vivisection of a capuchin monkey.
Here's the point: everyone thinks with their heart sometimes. What does yours look like?
Allow me to state the obvious, and then we can move on. People think with their hearts when their passions get the better of them. A "bleeding heart liberal" might chain themselves to a tree in an old growth forest because they are utterly devastated that a logging firm is going to cut down a 2,000-year-old living thing. To some, this devotion to an obscure cause seems insane. To others, it is a righteous form of protest. To me, I agree with the protestor, but I have other things to attend. Like a cocktail in the comfort of my own home.
My intention here isn't a "he said, she said" about conservatives and liberals thinking with their feelings and looking stupid for doing so. Both parties do this with alacrity. My point is the stark difference between what types of outrages bring people to lose control of their rational brain and think with their hearts.
After all, you can learn a lot about a person by examining what upsets them. Which brings us, strangely, to Mr. Potato Head.
Pass The Potatoes
Mr. Potato Head needs no introduction. Neither does his wife, Mrs. Potato Head. Together, these fashion-forward tubers are a power couple that have been dominating the world of children's toys for many decades. What do you do with a Potato Head toy? Not much, if you remember it like I do. You stick lips on it. Or eyebrows. Or a mustache. It's not actually a real potato, but rather a plastic facsimile of one, which means you're probably not going to eat it. Boiled down to its essence (I recognize the pun and I will not retract it), a Potato Head toy is just a thing you stick other things into for comic effect. That pretty much sums up the Potato Head experience.
Now, follow me on this thought experiment, deep into the recesses of the human psyche. Can you imagine ever being mad at Mr. Potato Head? Or his wife, Mrs. Potato Head? What would it take for you to absolutely lose your shit over two imaginary potatoes whose sole claim to fame is removable eyes and ears? Keep in mind, these are potatoes you haven't hung out with since you were four years old. The relationship is still cordial, but distant. It's like running into your childhood nanny at 35. Hello, how are you, and no, we're not hugging.
Admittedly, this is a pretty difficult question. I can't think of anything two imaginary potatoes could do to piss me off so thoroughly that I'm calling my congressperson about them. But do you know what? In March of 2021, millions of Americans lost their goddamned minds over Mr. Potato Head, and all it took was for their parent company Hasbro to announce the "Mr. Potato Head Line" was being renamed to "The Potato Head Line" to be more gender-inclusive. Not only was the demure Mrs. Potato Head finally getting equal billing alongside her imperious, mustachioed husband, but the company also announced plans to release a "gender neutral" Potato Head toy.
Gender neutral. You know, like a potato, which in reality doesn't have a mustache, a personality, a car, a nagging wife, or a penis. This should seem shrug-worthy at best. But oh no. This move by Hasbro was all it took to set a fresh blaze in the white-hot conflagration that is the Great American Conversation. How dare Mr. Potato Head be canceled, some cried. He's an irreplacable cornerstone of Americana, like Kevin Spacey!
In the shouting match that followed, the nuance of why Mr. Potato Head was changing its branding became lost. This fresh scandal had all the hallmarks of what is guaranteed to piss Americans off and get them fighting mad: transgendered rights, children's toys, and nostalgia for the 50s. Any combination of those three issues is bound to spark a fight in this emotionally overwrought country of ours.
Here are the important facts, so that you may better understand this controversy:
1) Mr. Potato Head was never being discontinued. Rather, the brand line was being de-focused from its elderly male patriarch, and re-focused on a more inclusive "All of the Potato Heads, Mr., Mrs., and Otherwise" approach. Hard to be mad there, it only seems fair.
2) Mr. Potato Head, to my memory, has always been at the very least a cross-dresser, if not outright transgendered himself. I have personally been with him while he auditioned his wife's purse, donned big feminine kissy lips, and tried on long beautiful eyelashes. I, of course, encouraged his experimentation, feeling it was valuable that he find the potato he was most comfortable being, society and its stifling rules be damned.
3) Ditto for Mrs. Potato Head. I have been present while she tried on a mustache and bowler hat, and confessed to me sexual encounters from her youth that would occupy Dr. Kinsey for months. At the risk of inviting further scandal to this poor family, I'll just say they are all quite fond of dressing in each other's clothes, and swapping genders is nothing to them.
4) Most importantly, Mr. Potato Head is not real. He's not a person, he's not even a real potato. Anything he says or does must be viewed through this lens. Any victimhood on his part is entirely fictional and therefore unworthy of your emotional investment.
The anger at Mr. Potato Head's "cancelling" is misplaced, to say the least. But it shows you what people are afraid of, which is being canceled themselves. To me, this comical incident is a perfect microcosm of American conservatism: "other people being included ipso facto means that I am being excluded".
This is a fallacy, and an easy one to spot that I'm surprised people have trouble getting around. Mr. Potato Head isn't "fired" or "canceled" just because there are other Potato Heads. He keeps his job. He keeps his role. I'd be shocked if his model doesn't remain the best-selling in the series. The only difference is that other potatoes are being let in the club and given equal billing.
Is it so odd that Hasbro finally asked themselves "why are we telling children this potato has a dick"?
Let's put the idea that someone being included means someone else is being excluded in a more relatable form. When you sign up for AAA, do they contact you a week later to say "we regret to inform you that another person has joined AAA. You know what this means - you've got to go. We're sorry, but AAA has decided to cover Gary McFadden with roadside assistance, and as you know, there's only room for one."
No, of course they don't. This is ridiculous. Yet, for some people, at every turn in which a new member joins the club we call "having civil rights" (or in this case "representation"), we lose our collective minds like the gestapo is going to kick down our door. The outraged citizens of America truly seem to believe that people are going to be arrested for not being transgendered in the future.
For a more colorful description of the anxiety surrounding this topic, please read this excerpt from a recent stage play written by a conservative activist called "Kartoffel Albtraum: 2021"
BOOM - The door crashes in. "Herr Potato Head? It is us, the Secret Police."
Mr. Potato Head looks up from the dinner table, where he is flanked by his terrified wife and children.
"Please, gentlemen, must we do this now? In front of mein family..."
"The law waits for no one, Herr Potato Head. You know why we are here. Please collect your lips and mustache and come quietly."
Mr. Potato Head looks at his wife and children. They know he must go. It is the price they all must pay so that cousin Russet can live as a transgendered cabaret performer across town. Now that Russet has been let into society, Herr Potato Head must forfeit his own right to exist. Such was the way of things in 2021... the year of the Kartoffel Albtraum."
Okay, that's not actually from a real play. I just googled the German words for "Potato Nightmare 2021" and enjoyed myself. But it illustrates the fear that some people feel over this whole scenario. Mr. Potato Head is being cancelled, dragged out of his home by the secret police to be executed and served au gratin. To me, I should hope.
It is ludicrous to view inclusion as a zero-sum game, but this is hardly the first time we have suffered this mass hysteria. Americans have gone absolutely insane over black kids going to school with white kids, Mexicans becoming citizens, gay people being allowed to serve in the military, atheists serving in public office, and much more. Each of these moments has been a shameful episode we should be loathe to repeat.
Yet today we rise from our sour, sweat-drenched beds and draw breath in a country where our latest civil rights battle is being fought around a fictional potato and his brood of genderless offspring. How have we come to this point?
Pretty simple, to my eye. I think it's the "gender neutral" trigger language. No one really cares that Mr. Potato Head is no longer the center of attention. They care because the new center of attention is a genderless potato. Some people view this as an attack on the traditional male/female paradigm, and because it's a kid's toy, they see this as an indoctrination attempt against their own children.
To put it bluntly, I think many parents believe this is a move to suck their child into some sort of transexual cult aimed at making them into miniature versions of Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Picture Show.
"Mom? Dad? I've been talking to a potato, and I've made some decisions..."
This is where the wreckage of this argument has washed ashore, but once again, we know it's not really about Mr. Potato Head. The anger is about the representation and rights of transgendered individuals. The only interesting thing here is that it's playing out - bizarrely - on the battlefield of Mr. Potato Head. Usually this fight is held on the urine-soaked tiles of a public restroom, i.e. "what toilet will a transgendered person use?". Either that, or its infamous cousin, "can men who become women compete in female sports?".
Those questions, I will grant, at least exist in the real world. Although I can tell you as both a man and former little boy, nobody ever cared that I was alone in the bathroom with grown male strangers. And I did suffer abuse to those men, it's true. I confess that I have been forced to smell more excrement, and have overheard more moans, spitting, and strained coughing than I ever care to admit. Truth be told, the abuse continues to this day.
Conclusion
The point is this: what pisses people off says as much about them as what brings them joy. Often more so, because it's easy to pay lip service to liking things. How many of us have been cooked a meal that tastes like a possum water-birthed its litter in it, only to smile at the cook and say "delicious!"?
What sets people off in a blind rage is often more revealing about their inner feelings than what they claim to like. If someone is outraged by extrajudicial police killings, you can tell they care about justice and accountability. If someone is outraged because a toy company is including a gender-neutral version of an object that has no gender in the real world to begin with, you can tell they do not possess the brain of an adult.
The truth is that this whole thing is an intentional distraction intended to anger stupid people and draw their attention away from the utter failure of conservatism in this particular moment. As the Mr. Potato Head discussion is taking center-stage on Fox News and other sanctuaries of conservative thought (if it can even be dignified as that), the "bleeding heart liberals" are passing a $1.9 trillion relief bill to aide the recovery of America, a country harder-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic than any other on Earth. I will not go into the details of this relief bill, because that would take its own article altogether, and we have yet to see its effects. It may succeed, it may fail, but that is not the point of this article.
The point is that the self-invented "culture war" is once again being deftly deployed to remove the attention of simpletons from what matters in life, and replace it with a sort of sick puppet show involving the castration of beloved childhood icons and symbols of white Americana. Which, as we have seen, is not even really taking place. Just imagine living through half a million deaths in the clutches of a sinister viral killer, only to be distracted by a kerfuffle over the gonads of a potato right as humanity turns the corner. It is as staggering as it is depressing.
Even if the relief bill and the tsunami of vaccinations fails to save us, it's worth noting who spent their time raving over Mr. Potato Head, and who spent their time attempting to stem the loss of lives. More importantly, the "culture war" being fought on the right is not some new crusade, as many seem to believe. What would you call legislation preventing gay people from marrying or adopting children, if not a culture war? What would you call lawsuits to toss evolution out of public schools and replace it with Intelligent Design, if not a culture war?
No, the culture war has been here forever. Conservatives are finally noticing because they are beginning to lose. Good. But let us not lose sight of who is fighting for what, and let us not elevate childish tantrums over toys to the level of legitimate struggles for civil rights.
Now excuse me while I go put a dress on a GI Joe and tell my son his new name is Jennifer, like a real American.
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