Congressman, Trump stalwarts, and Florida Man Matt Gaetz mocked “kale and quinoa” eaters who look down upon those that eat “fried foods” in “real America.” “It’s a worldview where you eat nothing but kale and quinoa, where those of us who cling to our Bibles and our guns and our fried foods and real America are looked down upon,” he said.
Now, perhaps we shouldn’t dwell too much on what Gaetz says, since he might literally be the dumbest man in Congress, and that includes the likes of Iowa white-supremacist Steve King and Texas moron Louie Gohmert. But he is representative of the Republican base. Problem is, what they call “real America” is really more like “dying America.”
Non-religious Americans are the fastest-growing religious affiliation in the country, and now equal in numbers to those claiming evangelical and Catholic faiths. And the trends are … stark:
And even those who claim religious affiliation? Church membership is down drastically, to just about half of Americans claiming they belong to a religious institution, and only a third attend service regularly.
Meanwhile, gun ownership itself is on the rapid decline, with only about a third of households now owning guns.
So how much of a “real America” is it when the people Gaetz represents are a shrinking percentage of all of America?
Conservatives are precisely conservative because they cling to a past world in which white people reigned supreme, men ruled the roost, everyone had guns and went to church and everyone was moral, upstanding, patriotic, and shit rainbows. They don’t like that everything has changed to the point that they’re Trump’s last line of defense—a president who has sold his nation out to Russia, pays off pornstars to keep them quiet about extramarital dalliances, uses his office to enrich himself and his offspring (except Baron, who he pretends doesn’t exist), doesn’t even pretend to attend church or understand anything having to do with religion (like “thou shall not lie or steal or be unfaithful etc. etc. etc.”), and god forbid you give him a gun, he’d shoot himself in the foot, if not his face, before he’d ever hit anyone else on Fifth Avenue.
In short, they’re not serious people. And demographically, they're fading away. Thankfully.
Oh, and those kale and quinoa eaters? Their healthy lifestyle is subsidizing that of people eating fried crap. The ten most obese states? All red states. It’s yet another way that healthier, blue America is subsidizing conservatives.
