If you place obscenities where kids can see them, you are not a conservative

Recently I visited a North Florida flea market, one where I've had good luck finding everything from religious icons to American-made (and hence vintage) kitchen utensils. Several vendors sell political bric-a-brac.

In political generations past, Jimmy Carter and even Bill Clinton were popular among rural North Floridians. But you won't find any "Democrat Party"  merchandise here today. I'm not sure what would happen if someone displayed, say, a signed photo of John Kerry on a star-spangled background. It would probably just become the object of crude jokes, although it might be appreciated as kitsch.

I stopped at one stand. Bumper stickers and T-shirts carried dozens of slogans, ranging from the merely hopeful ("Trump 2024") to garden-variety cruelty, to indecencies pulled from the slimiest depths of human inventiveness. Unfortunately, the last made up the largest group.

There was "**** Joe Biden," as well as its famed euphemism, "Let's go Brandon." I must admit to being impressed that the latter's apostrophe was always used correctly. "Biden *****, Kamala *****" and similar filth composed the plentiful dregs.

I was amazed. I'd seen many of them individually, but encountering them together in such numbers, rank on rank and stacked high, was like a skirmisher suddenly running into a whole army. I'm no fan of the current administration, but to call the vice president a *****, or any of the illiterate variations thereof, indicates creative as well as moral bankruptcy.

Children shouldn't even know asterisks like that. If you place obscenities where kids can see them, you are not a conservative. You may vote Republican, you may yak about faith and family and country, but your values are at odds with any conservatism from the Pyramid Age onward.

Can you imagine Hoover, Eisenhower or Reagan feeling anything but disgust for this sort of crudity? Horrified disbelief would be more likely. Of course, they'd have trouble getting nominated today. Radicalization has been a cyclical effect and cause of the incivility we practice in our everyday political discourse.

The second thing that struck me was: Is this the best you can do? This is the English language we're using, for crying out loud, the mother tongue of puns, double entendres and general cleverness for the last thousand years, and all you can come up with is this jumble of cuss words?

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After all, you can catch more votes with funny than with vinegar. During the Great Depression, the slogan emerged, "In Hoover we trusted, and now we are busted." It was unkind and unfair, but it had a certain endearingly cynical wit, and parents didn't need to shield the kiddies' eyes.

Better yet, why not eschew insults entirely, and concentrate on the merits of the candidates you want elected? I didn't see much of that. The closest thing to a positive message was the assertion, "Trump is my President," which left none too tactfully unsaid that Biden is not.

Now, for liberals who are having a smug time reading this, don't forget the woke crowds of 2020 that clambered over time-honored monuments like they were adult jungle gyms, reaching high to spray-paint Stonewall Jackson's beard. Churchill looked like he'd been caught up in a pre-D-Day paintball exercise.

Note this difference: The far left leaves its marks on other folks' property, adding vandalism to vulgarity. At least most rude rightists keep their sentiments on their own board fences, painting anti-Biden obscenities over a background of red, white and blue planks.

That doesn't excuse the right's blue language. Republicans are supposed to be the party of order, and that culture of restraint includes what conservatives say and write just as much as how they protest in person.

We're not called the right because we do the right thing, but it is reassuring when they coincide. Remember the innocent, who can grow up in a world of coarseness or of dignity. We can't rage our way to victory. Dirty words for a cause just soil the cause.

Michael Stephens lives in Gainesville.

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This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Michael Stephens: Conservatives shouldn't use obscenities about Biden