If you’ve ever wondered what makes civil conversations with liberals so maddeningly difficult, comedian David Sedaris has an answer. The irony, of course, is that Sedaris himself qualifies as a raging leftist—rabid, even. He once joked that he wished he could go back in time and smother an infant Donald Trump. Let that sink in. When someone like that turns his rhetorical fire on his own side, odds are he’s telling the truth.
Sedaris wrote an essay for The New Yorker that lays bare just how difficult it can be to have a conversation with a liberal. Plenty of people have covered this topic before, often noting that much of the breakdown happens because leftists deliberately pretend not to understand things—even basic aspects of human nature. Or, in today’s world, basic biology.
In the piece, Sedaris recounts an altercation involving a dog and its owners in Portland, Oregon. And yes, there’s your first problem. Portland has turned into a cesspool of far-left extremism, bubbling like a stew of human filth in the summer heat.
“I lost count of the strung-out addicts I passed on my way to the doughnut shop and back, and I had just headed out from my hotel again when I came upon three men and a woman, all in their late thirties,” Sedaris wrote. “The four were gathered around a baby carriage, and as I neared the woman lowered her head into it and took a powerful hit off a pipe. Just as I registered that the carriage was empty, two small dogs, both unleashed, rushed toward me, snarling, and one of them bit me on my left leg, just below the knee.”
Sedaris goes on to explain that the woman denied her dog bit him, after which the group collectively shrugged and returned to smoking fentanyl. Is it really surprising that a bunch of strung-out drug users would show no empathy? These are the same kinds of people who steal twenties from their mother’s purse to feed their next fix.
What really struck a nerve, however, was the reaction—or lack thereof—from average people.
“You have to understand that these addicts, especially those with an opioid-use disorder, lead incredibly difficult lives,” a woman allegedly told Sedaris during a book signing where he discussed the incident.
“How is that an excuse?” he shot back. “Her dog bit me.”
“Well, you’re still better off than she and her friends are,” the woman replied.
What does that have to do with anything? Yes, Sedaris has clearly made better life choices, but that fact has nothing to do with personal responsibility—or the total absence of it. Should society hand out free passes just because someone prefers getting high?
Apparently, leftists think so.
The Daily Caller pointed out, “Intersectional exceptions apply. Maybe the addict is a white man who yelled a nasty, objectifying remark at a female passerby. Maybe he’s said a racial slur before — a Portland jury recently ‘acquitted a man who admitted to stabbing a stranger after video captured the victim using a racial slur in the aftermath of the attack.’”
No one else at the book signing expressed much sympathy for Sedaris or his injury. Another woman even told him, “People like that aren’t in any condition to take care of their animals. That’s the really sad part.”
“Is it?” Sedaris asked, pointing to his injured leg. “Is that the really sad part?”
Sedaris then reflects: “[H]ow hard should it be to get a little sympathy when an unleashed dog bites you? What if I were a baby? I wondered. Would people side with me then? What if I were ninety or blind or Nelson Mandela? Why is everyone so afraid of saying that drug addicts shouldn’t let their dogs bite people?”
He then answers his own question.
“We’re afraid we’ll be mistaken for Republicans, when, really, isn’t this something we should all be able to agree on?” Sedaris wrote. “How did allowing dogs to bite people become a Democratic point of principle? Or is it just certain people’s dogs? If a German shepherd jumped, growling, out of one of those Tesla trucks that look like an origami project and its owner, wearing a MAGA hat, yelled, ‘Trumper, no!!!,’ then would the people in my audience be aghast?”
The story went viral on X, with one screenshot of the essay racking up more than half a million views. It’s a sad commentary on our times that holding people to basic standards of human decency now gets labeled “Republican-coded,” instead of simply being called common sense. Inner-city apathy, on full display.
David Sedaris: “How did allowing dogs to bite people become a Democratic point of principle?”
You can insert so many policies into that question.
“How did letting men into women’s spaces become a Democratic point of principle?”
“How did turning cities into open-air drug… https://t.co/0rNvV20e4n
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) December 15, 2025
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