“Respect is earned” is the most boomer take ever.

No.

Respecting others is the default. Respecting others is the bare minimum expected from you.

Start by acknowledging that.

I do not need you to respect my opinions.

I need you to respect our fellow citizens by not making deriding comments for them to leave like you did.

We’d prefer you would leave, since you’re part of the problem with our country.

I’m so sorry. I hate playing therapist at work.

I feel like they just weren’t prepared to answer my question, so they just said whatever came to mind.

This person is not stupid-- rather, always a huge hypocrite.

I had a chat with someone recently who said “I’m right-leaning, but I’m starting to miss Biden…” and I asked:

“Why are you right-leaning?”

And it’s like they short-circuited right in front of me.

Normally, they hit me back with misguided claims that Republicans are good for the economy, or that they are fiscal conservatives, or something about Russia or China-- but we are both tax accountants and we understand very intimately how fucked the US economy really is, while coping with the reality that our retirement savings are pretty much gone and unlikely to recover.

Sometimes, they’ll say something about immigration. However, some of our best team members self-deported due to the threat of forceful deportation on their families, so things are really bad at our public accounting firm and getting worse as people burn out from the increased work loads.

Or on occasion, they’ll spout some platitudes about the US Constitution, Veterans, or All-American values, but obviously Republicans do not give a fuck about any of that.

So finally they splutter:

“… traditions are important to me.”

And I’m like, “What kind of traditions?”

And they say:

“… Easter and Christmas.”

In my opinion, people that consider themselves right-leaning simply like to complain and complain and complain about things they do not bother to educate themselves about, while fully expecting everyone else to look out for them when they are actively sabotaging every effort made to improve our nation.