26 May 2025, @mariannewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2748: not really a conservative

Image by Manuela from Pixabay

In his head, while being confronted by a soon-to-be-former friend, what Capt. R.E. Ludlow was seeing and hearing in his head was his eight-year-old granddaughter Edwina Ludlow carrying a protest placard spangled with purple glitter, and her chanting what was written on it:

“Purple up! Stupidity down! Purple up! Stupidity down!”

The captain was having a dissociative episode … but he was aware of it … too close to laughing to be angry, too close to anger to be laughing, and so, perfectly composed in the face of this grown person who was the epitome of why Capt. Ludlow had “purpled up.”

“You can't just change party registration this close to the election – do you know what is at stake here? Anybody who is leaving President Trump and the Republicans is not really a conservative!”

“You're right – I'm not really a conservative. Today, I'm just really embarrassed. We have not had any significant Democrat leadership in here since the Dixiecrats went on and became Republicans under Nixon and his Southern Strategy, so … have you seen the news in the past few days? Did you notice that whole neighborhood scattered over 20 miles into Big Loft because of local Republican leadership over the last thirty years? That 20 miles starts a half-mile from my house with my wife and my grandkids, and I'm supposed to protect my family, so I'm sure what you are talking about – are you really a conservative, or are you a Trump-supporting Republican? He's not here to do this cleanup, by the way, and is probably embarrassed and will disavow any knowledge of this county now – he doesn't need the election black eye from our local Republicans.”

“But we can't have these liberals running this county into the ground?”

Capt. Ludlow closed his eyes for a moment … Edwina was still marching and yelling in his head:

“Purple up! Stupidity down! Purple up! Stupidity down!”

“You mean, running what is left of the county after bankruptcy and death by humiliation into the ground?” he said aloud.

“Well, but, but, but, well –.”

“I am now 58 years old, and what I have learned is, the people who took 30 years creating a problem probably don't have the ideas to fix it, and I don't have 30 more years to get this fixed because my grandchildren need to live in a safe world now. There were three water main breaks before this, so I need new people looking over the infrastructure that is going to be where I live. My county supervisor is missing – and of course, thoughts and prayers – but I don't need his protege replacing him. I need someone different. I am not becoming a Democrat – never. But I am going to be voting based not on rhetoric, but the policy my grandchildren need to actually live in the world.”

“But these liberals are going to institute communism everywhere and you won't even have property or rights to say anything about things!”

“Have you even read the Communist Manifesto? When you do, you will know that no liberal can be socialist or communist – they are just to the left of us, but they love money and property rights as much as we do.”

“But they don't want it in the right hands!”

“Oh, you mean the hands that have a neighborhood scattered 20 miles from next to the Veteran's Lodge all the way into Old Big Loft? There was not a single woman or person of color on the the board of supervisors when that decision was made, and there is not now, when Col. H.F. Lee tried his best to get the local politicians to save the day and they would not.”

The former friend hung up after cussing the captain out, and the captain hung up the phone and blocked the number, and went to find his wife.

“Thank you for your patience with this old Virginian, Thalia,” he said. “It took me a long time to want to admit that neither party is any good, but I'm with you now. Purple up! Stupidity on all sides down!”

Mrs. Ludlow chuckled.

“Edwina is on to something,” she said.

“I had better drive down to Big Loft and do this in person because I have a feeling that the local Republican Party is not going to sit still and let us do this remotely – the election in 2000 is instructive, and even as a Republican I thought that was suspect. So let's just make this into a road trip and we can show all these kids how to register to vote and change registration – purple up, mask up, and get it done.”

It just so happened that one of the local heads of the Independent Party was talking with the local heads of the Green Party and Libertarian Party about what to do in light of the destruction of the Bayard Heights neighborhood, and she was fast enough with her phone to catch on video the Ludlows all in purple as they came out of the state house, chanting joyfully as they headed for home:

“Purple up! Stupidity down! Purple up! Stupidity down!”

“That's it,” the Green Party representative said. “If we can get people to understand we have to come together to get the incumbents out of office – a purple coalition – we have a chance, even this close to the election.”

“I can't stand you but I love it,” the representative from the Libertarian Party said.

“Well, let's do it,” the head of the Independent Party said.

And thus one man's stand, with his granddaughter backing him up with her love of everything purple, did count.

21-year-old Melvin Trent would eventually get into the action, making a campaign beat for the coalition, beginning with one child's voice, and then a growing number – Edwina was first, and then her relatives came in, and then the Trents, and then the Stepforths, and then multiplied to a bigger crowd through studio magic.

“Purple up! Stupidity down! Purple up! Stupidity down!”