When your disappointment rises alongside your age, is it a sign of getting older? Does that mean you aged poorly? Or is it that an adult had set your expectations too high, and your now-elderly eyes have had time to adjust? I am thankful that, as a child, my conservative father never pressured me to think any certain way. Unlike teachers at school or classmates who would make light of what used to be conservative values, there was never any sort of presumption from my old man on what I should or shouldn't be. While many young men I grew up with and I would never have said we were Republicans, there were, however, conservative values – or, well, conservative themes – which we appreciated. 

Off the top of my head, a singular theme that stood out was that liberals were not so logical. I seem to recall that back when my vision wasn’t the same as it is now, to them every gun was an ‘assault gun’, by itself capable of jumping up at any moment and becoming a sudden tragedy. I took debate back in high school and regularly ran into the argument that “guns won't help you in a revolution; the government has tanks. Thus, guns are not needed.” Currently, the national spokesperson for a Liberal Gun Club has stated that liberal membership has surged since Trump won his reelection. Now that certainly doesn't counter their original and usual argument, but it certainly speaks volumes enough against the anti-gun sentiment anyway. 

Then there was more than a decade of liberals pushing ‘hate speech’ and cancel culture. While both ideations have some flavor of nobility mixed in with some college-kids coffee-stained thesis, they are, in the end, just poor replacements for being polite and virtuous. Though the first recorded use of hate speech was made near the late 1960s, it wasn’t so widespread before the decade prior. You know that the words ‘cancel-culture’ and ‘hate-speech’ were cudgels rather than accusations made by those who were noble, because after the conservatives decried them, (whom I had agreed with as a youth on this topic) then turned around and used that which they considered hate-speech around Charlie Kirk to cancel many people (ex, like MSNBC analyst Mathew Doud). Thus, ‘hate speech’ was always a baton. 

And man, it never made sense to me to give money away to foreign nations, or to fight in the Middle East. Then there was the study of history: many of the youth in my AP World History class were conservative, and we could easily hold over liberal students’ heads, say, the study of millions of deaths that Stalin perpetrated on his own people, or even the Ukrainian genocide, when those students began professing the benevolence of Stalin or their love for communism. Thus is the logic: “No one has done it right, man, if I were in charge, I’d do it right! If I had Stalin’s position, I’d do it right." Then, as I grew older and turned my eyes ever outward, watching the news in the world, taking care to note geo-political rivals and their actions and words during America’s trying times. Rivals like Russia and China… 

And how depressing is it, to see conservatives who would have rejoiced at arming Ukraine to the teeth with American steel to ensure the final defeat of the Russian/Soviet government-culture, but have acted otherwise? Or how when conservatives want America to become more insular, to leave room for American children to go to universities and fill job roles – and then for President Trump to publicly support allowing up to 600,000 Chinese Students into the United States, up from the already massive 277,000. 

“Conservatives are for the little guy," I was told as a youth. 

Yet, Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill introduced tax cuts for people who own a tanning bed, while raising taxes on the poorest Americans. There is also the whole Iran Affair, and it is an absolutely stinky one: President Trump proverbially tore up President Obama’s Iran deal and then blew up some boats and struck missile sites. He did declare that Iran would unconditionally surrender to him, and now hundreds of billions of our tax dollars are being given to Iran as a "I am sorry, please open Hormuz again” letter. Conservatives boasted for all of my life about just how many problems they would fix once they got into the White House. 

The biggest stark contrast is how logical conservatives had set themselves up, juxtaposed with emotional, bleeding-heart liberals. This is the true crux of this lamentation: if they are so much more logical than their political opponents, why do they not see that when they get voted out, everything that was done internally, in the United States, will be undone, and those in the Government who have broken the law could very well end up behind bars? What were these last few years for them, then? A victory lap of champagne before they have to return to a shitter workplace tomorrow? 

In two years, conservatives fulfilled one aim in getting the Federal Government to recognize only two genders, lower taxes for wealthy folk, and those who own tanning beds.

I ask again: when your disappointment rises alongside your age, is it a sign of getting older? Does that mean you aged poorly? Or does it mean that an adult had set your expectations too high and your now-elderly eyes have had time to adjust, properly, to the real conditions of the world? Or is it that my father taught me that a man’s word is worth more than gold, and all I see are men who once spoke about their values while not living up to any of them, or any of their promises? What does that make a man who doesn't keep his promise?

Austin Petak is an aspiring novelist and freelance journalist who loves seeking stories and the quiet passions of the soul. If you are interested in reaching out to him to cover a story, you may find him at austinpetak@gmail.com.

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