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right-wing imprints in recent years are almost invariably distinguished by their numbing sameness: a shrill cry of victimhood, a hunt for scapegoats, a tone that alternates between hysteria and heavy sarcasm, and a recipe for salvation
Man this rings true for my experience growing up in a conservative area
As these comments are mostly outrage over the headline, I’d like to hear which republican policies people here are particularly happy about.
You won’t get an honest answer, because an honest answer is about how they want to go back to 1950s American, where straight white men were the only demographic that mattered.
Even better when you talk them through that and watch them realize we will never go back to that post war economy because America can’t compete with a global stage that wasn’t bombed into oblivion by the Nazis.
Most conservatives are woefully ignorant of actual policy or what conservatives do. I have a friend who leans conservative, and asked him what he thought Trump did well. His first point was Trump helped to reduce the deficit, despite Trump massively increasing the deficit
And they can’t be honest about that because they know it’s a bad opinion. At least if they outright said the honest answer, I could understand it a little. If they’re a straight, white male and have zero empathy for anyone else, it would probably benefit them (at the cost of everyone else).
But even if they have zero empathy, they still know that anyone who does have empathy (or isn’t a straight, white male and has the slightest bit of understanding for what’s going on) will never agree with them. So they have to come up with all sorts of bullshit. Hence how we get stuff like comparisons to lobsters, unsupported claims that LGBT whatever is harming kids, and general turning a blind eye to any blatantly harmful stuff that progresses their goals.
And don’t forget that the corporate tax rate was “insane” compared to current times. Something like 80%+.
While I don’t disagree in principle – corporations need to be paying taxes, and in fact, so do wealthy individuals – the effective tax rate on wealth since the 50s has changed very little. Those extreme tax rates you see from the era – 91%, 80%, etc., often only applied to a literal handful of households or businesses.
And, again, because our tax system is progressive, those extreme rates only applied to income above extreme (for the era) thresholds.
The biggest issue is not the tax rate, but that corporations (and rich individuals) have so many different ways to avoid paying any tax at all. To the point that, in 2020, it was literally newsworthy that Amazon had to pay more than $0.
“Insane” for the rich too. The top tax bracket was taxed at 91%. But they don’t want to go back to that 1950s.
Apparently I won’t receive any answer, which further highlights the issue. “Someone curious about beneficial conservative legislation? Gotta be a trap, go around.” The hoop is entirely open and a yet they refuse to dunk, because they lack the ability.
I mean, I think I’ve noticed that there is a much lower presence of right wing ideas on lemmy in general. My conspiracy is that is because a large amount of right wing sentiments are coming from fake to try and make it look like the sentiment is there. There is clear evidence this has happened with Russia in the 2016 election and the Rand Paul sentiment that preceded it.
I think you don’t see that on lemmy because it’s not a popular platform ATM so opinions tend to be a little more genuine.
4chan is probably the counter example to my belief.
My comment was caught in the outage, so forgive me for paraphrasing. 4chan used to be just as progressive as we are here, before they poe’s law’d themselves into a nazi haven. Upside, their fall created a broad online understanding of radicalization methods, which I’ve found several people consistently using here, like disillusionment and appeals to open information sharing. No, telling nazis to leave isn’t censorship, rando 1 through 8. Anyway, that’s all to say that they’re probing for opportunities to do the same thing here, and, like you, I can only wonder if it’s actual bigots or state actors.
Straight white men weren’t even particularly well off as a whole. Yes, The upper middle and upper class were almost exclusively white men but that was a small portion of their entire demographic. What they really want is to be able to go back to a time when they could beat their wives, divorce was not available, black people had to call them ‘sir’ or get strung up, and all the gay people were ‘where they belonged’, i.e. France, dead, or in the closet.
Ah yes, the “anyone I disagree with is racist” schtick. Keep running with that.
Go ahead and answer the question, then.
They’re excited to force women to have babies against their will.
The answer for people here is probably no republican policies, ever.
The onus is on Republicans or so-called conservatives to name one, just one time they have been on the right side of history in the last 100 years.
So I would consider myself at least reasonably inclined to thinking and somewhat conservative. Note, however, that does NOT mean Republican. When I use conservative, it’s in a different context than the modern “conservative movement”. The modern movement seems to be more regressive than conservative. Conservative in my way of thinking is about calm, measured progress. Don’t upend everything in massive sweeping changes… but don’t reject change either, change is necessary and inevitable. The more moderate Biden-y neoliberal wing of the Democrats is probably the closest to that these days - the more progressive Democrats with wanting massive social upheaval type changes and the Republicans favoring the repeal-and-replace burn it down and maybe fix the ashes approach to undoing those changes, neither of which appeals to me.
The chances you are neoliberal isn’t zero.
Given the amount of time I spent over on r/neoliberal, it could fit, although I do tend to fall a bit on the libertarian side of it.
Ooh, libertarian neoliberalism is like catshit wrapped in dogshit
There is a 99% chance you are a huge Destiny fan.
Nope, had to look it up (I think I’m a bit older than Destiny’s original target audience), but just from a summary written about his political discussions I could see his brand of a pragmatic take on traditional liberalism being a good fit and am now curious to watch a couple of his videos.
The title is pretty bad. All the conservatives I know are monarchists. Not republicans.
I know plenty of conservative intellectuals, they are not Republicans though. Look up topics on individual freedom, limited government, or the rule of law to find thousands of examples.
Most would call themselves moderates as conservative is a poisoned title, but they exist.
So ask yourself, what perspective have conservatives been groomed view the United States? Roger Kimball describes it as, “A damsel (America) is locked in a dark castle, which was once a glorious palace in years gone by.” But now “liberal elites, the bureaucracy, academia” have sapped “her vitality,” turning her “weak and infirm” due to a dastardly belief system in “left-wing ideology, political correctness, egalitarianism. Using this metaphorical trope, Kimball continued to describe citizens as having turned into weaklings who secretly long for a return to national greatness. This view of decline and decadence, so core to the conservative intellectual tradition, is prone to eventual faith in a strong, authoritarian leader. And thus, Donald Trump becomes, for Kimball, the only one ready to rescue the country from its demise.
Their perspective is so vastly different due to indoctrination from years of talk radio, right wing news, and sites like facebook, reddit and 4chan where echo chambers reinforced the indoctrination.
The aspect free minds are missing us that, to quote Kimball again, “Trumpism represent[s] conservatism at its essential core, a kind of return to its roots in monarchism”. This “monarchism” is now being nurtured by a populist faith—a combined belief in the supposed goodness of the masses, led by the sort of paternalistic authoritarian leader that conservative intellectuals can get behind.
A free mind can obviously see through the deception has it is full of holes. If you don’t believe Steve Bannon is the next Pluto than you’ve already come to the conclusion that these buffoons are actually fascists attempting to strip American citizens of their rights and to gain power through the courts, through the power of the mob, and to gain power through forced religion, just as the Nazis did in the 1930s. The difference is they have absolute imbeciles in charge who have mucked up the process and exposed what they are doing. The mirror was broken for the vast majority of the American people to see. Thus this movement stalled, but it isn’t dead yet.
… individual freedom, limited government, or the rule of law…
There is nothing inherently conservative about any of those values. Depending on the ruling government at the time, those concepts were often considered decidedly progressive. In fact, it could be both at the same time depending on which freedoms, which limits, and which laws you’re discussing.
Conservatives at every point in history redefine conservativism to encompass the values that most benefit themselves at the time. If conservatives own businesses and do not control the government, they support limited government and deregulation. If conservatives face competition and can capture regulatory bodies, then strict guidelines and requirements are absolute.
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One thing to understand is that our ability to reason comes down to how we weigh our knowledge of the material in question. Someone can be extremely knowledgeable (and through that knowledge, intellectual) about one topic; and dumb as rocks in another. One of the culture shocks for me when I started working in the medical field was not just the existence, but the prevalence of stupid doctors. You’d think that someone who could become a doctor would be an all around curious and open-minded person… and when they’re talking about their area of expertise, it 100% seems that way; but once they deviate into other areas, it starts to show that they’re just as much a joe-dipshit as the rest of us.
So, you could have someone who’s intellectual as fuck in the context of like orthopedic surgery; but even in other parts of the field of medicine, their brain hits a brick wall and suddenly your ortho doc drinking the covid conspiracy theory koolaid; or conned by some talkshow host into paying money for NFTs; or swallowing the lies about dragshows somehow being about grooming children.
There is absolutely such a thing as a conservative intellectual: just means they’re really smart in some unrelated area; and really stupid with politics. There are also plenty of folks who buy into the hatred spewed by the political rightwing. Tricking rednecks into voting against their own interests is one thing - a bigger problem is that for a lot of voters, the cruelty is the point. They don’t give a fuck about children: they just want to hurt trans people. They don’t give a fuck about fetuses: they just want to hurt women. Assuming that conservatives are just politically stupid is actually giving them the benefit of the doubt - cuz the alternative is that they’re just evil… and evil paired with intellect is both real and incredibly dangerous.
I’m changing careers to become an engineer so I have been keeping an ear to the ground in those industries.
When COVID rolled around, there were engineers on reddit complaining about thier peers buying into the vaccine and anti-mask bullshit.
How could someone who needs to be versed in the difficult subject of physics be hoodwinked by con men?
Stupid people are truly everywhere.
DUDE… I don’t even work in the medical field. But I have such a similar experience. I grew up going to private schools and had lots of friends as doctors… so many of them were dumb as rocks outside of their area of expertise… Especially socially. To this day I constantly meet doctors that have no “social” or “street smarts” and are dumb as hell at technology, etc etc etc. I know that becoming a doctor takes a lot of effort, and focus, and specific knowledge… But… There’s a certain intuitiveness that comes with being generally “smart”. And for whatever reason, doctors don’t have that. I don’t think all doctors are “stupid”. But it seems like a profession you send someone who is stupid into, to do well… I really hate saying that but I relate so much to your comment its crazy lol.
The social bit is pretty wild. I’ve seen doctors - in the middle of surgery - lash out yelling at the techs and nurses, throw instruments, stomp their feet… straight up like a toddler, but with 20+ years of education. You’d think part of medschool would include some basic social and leadership training. I mean, in terms of the team dynamic, the doctor is always the leader, and it’s not a great look when your leader is throwing a tantrum like some 4 year old who just got told ‘no’ for the first time in their life and is an hour passed nap time.
The other extreme exists too ofc - some of the absolute best people I’ve ever met are doctors.
The takeaway is there isn’t really a correlation, or at least not near as much of one as you’d expect. Take almost any slice of the population and you’ll find a handful of genuinely outstanding human beings; a few absolute wastes of oxygen; and a horde of folks scattered in between. Take a slice exclusively of doctors, and… same. You’d expect that slice to be heavily weighted on the positive end, but the reality doesn’t pan out that way. I suspect you’d get similar results with a random sample of physicists, or highschool students, or people living in some ghetto - you get the point.
The only times I’d expect it to deviate much from that are population samples that are in a position to abuse power. CEOs, oligarchs… looks at thread title …those guys.
I only disagree on one thing:
- I don’t think they mainly “want to hurt”. I think what they want is to control: force others to follow their own moral beliefs or even to just do what they think will be good for that doing the forcing.
What we think as Evil is not done by charicatural evil people with who enjoy hurting others, rather it’s done by people who see themselves as good people and have massive excuses to hurt and even do harm to others, and sometimes that’s to such a level that they believing they’re actually helping those other people their forcing to comply with their own morals.
So a lot of that stuff is Moralism, practiced by people who actually see themselves as good people, which is why you’ll also find people who believe themselves to be lefties trying to force others to comply with their own beliefs (rather than, you know, trying to convince them). That said, this kind of leveraging social systems to stroke their inner authoritarianism seems to be a lot more common in the rightwing.
PS: By the way, I think it’s because of this paradox of people who see themselves as good people forcing their moral compass on others all they while telling themselves they’re “doing the right thing” that is so difficult to stop this kind of thing. Such righteous autoritarians are extremelly defensive when confronted with what they’re doing because they genuinelly think they’re good people doing what’s-right/needs-to-be-done/some-other-excuse.
Oh for sure – but I’d categorize those as the ‘politically stupid’ variety. They’re the ones convinced that they need to step up in defense of all the damsels in distress from the trans boogeymen just waiting to pounce in womens’ restrooms. They think they’re doing good, it’s just their gullibility has been taken advantage of and steered into unwittingly supporting horrible things. Not evil, just stupid, and thjus a tool for evil.
Then there are the ones who just straight up hate trans people. Evil.
It’s more of a spectrum than a dichotomy, but the modern ‘red team’ falls somewhere between those two points.
A lot of you people haven’t read this, and it shows.
https://pages.gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/agre/conservatism.html
Ps. You can literally just ask yourself what it is conservatives want to conserve…
This is a great essay and an insightful read, thanks.
Paragraph after paragraph of head canon without any sources. Lovely. And conservatives are delusional.
I mean, tell me you didn’t read it without telling me you didn’t read it.
I regretfully did. It was quite painful. And as bad as it is, I try to listen to progressive “intellectuals.”
I’m sorry every time I do. I should really stop.
I guess your reading comprehension is not so great then.
There are tons of references to other works peppered throughout. He then criticizes them. Maybe you’re not familiar with this style of writing? You’re allowed to have original thoughts and even write them down and argue for them without simply regurgitating what others say you know.
“Everybody I disagree with is a dumbass.” Thankfully, the world is more complex than that.
No, just regressives (aka conservatives).
So essentially the half of the country that doesn’t agree with you.
Regressivisim is a disordered way of political thinking that has gone global. There’s plenty of historical evidence of political thinking that is downright terrible and has been shown to be so. Many people supported these systems at the times too. It never made them right.
It’s also much less in the US. ~65% of people don’t support regressive policies. Who turns out to vote, the electoral college, lack of actual proportional allocation of the House of Representatives, and many other things present problems where regressivism can succeed despite the large majority of people not wanting it.
There is not such thing as “there’s no such thing”
The party openly doesn’t publish policy documents any more.
Rabbits
This is the most progressive type article ive read in a while.
There absolutely are conservative intellectuals, they just don’t tend to endorse MAGA.
Here’s a great example: https://scholars-stage.org/ Knocks it out of the park all the time. Then again, he rarely spends his time talking directly about culture war topics.
It regretfully doesn’t matter how intellectual they are if the two-party system forces them to let their anti-intellectual minorities run the party. Once a governing body decides that keeping power away from “the other team” is more important than their principles, they cease to have the merit of those principles. Middle of the road negotiation simply ceases to exist. Either you have an overwhelming majority and don’t need the other party’s consent, or you have a narrow majority and policy making gets held hostage by the most belligerent minority faction within the party. When that belligerent faction is anti-intellectual, the result is the current shitshow.
Since American politics are right-leaning on the Overton window, that makes both parties more susceptible to getting kneecapped by their most right-leaning belligerents when they hold a narrow majority. A narrow Republican majority gets kneecapped by the Freedom Caucus, and a narrow Democrat majority gets kneecapped by the likes of Sinema and Manchin.
You… know it’s possible to be a conservative without being a Republican, right?
If you want to say there are no politically relevant conservative intellectuals, that I would agree with. the Republican party is currently dominated by grifters, so anyone involved is going to be doing a lot of shoddy post-hoc justifications. But to say that being conservative of any stripe bars one from actually thinking deeply and critically is narrow minded.
You… know it’s possible to be a conservative without being a Republican, right?
If you want to say there are no politically relevant conservative intellectuals, that I would agree with.
Agreed on both counts, yes.
hopefully lemmy will not become gab for the left…but it’s a free world!
Gab is actually a Mastodon instance, so you can directly see what people in the Fediverse can/will do to fringe content … defederate
The problem is that outside of tankies, the far left basically wants people taken care of and treated like people and the far right wants certain types of people to not exist (how they want the not exist part to happen is up for some debate amongst the right, but, they still need to be gone and gone quickly)
In a practical sense, you cannot really compare the two.
Yes, there are whackjobs on the left too, but they’re not taken seriously by anyone and not getting prime time TV coverage of their runs for office.
If we get away from practicalities and talk pure theory, then I guess other arguments can be made, but if we’re restricting ourselves to the things as they are now with labels as they’re typically used, the far right is barren as far as intellectualism goes.
i’ve seen other forums starting out as pretty open-minded and becoming that… so it’s definitely possible… i think gab is not that far right. i would not mention the names.
I’m a leftie, but I’ve found my beliefs challenged, altered and enriched by debating right wing intellectuals.
It’s possible for two ideas to be equally right and incompatible
I don’t know if I agree that they can be equally right and incompatible. I think there can be shreds of truth scattered throughout different ideas and that you can pick them out and use that to construct an actual truth, though, so I guess I agree with your overall sentiment. I also agree with the fact that open conversation and an exchange of ideas is for the best, but I haven’t found many conservative ideas to hold water under scrutiny even if the conversation is ultimately helpful.
I think there are times when your values dictate your opinion rather than the facts.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
We’re emotional creatures.
A strong opposition should help reign in excesses of either side, and we should crave it.
There are ideas that originate on the right and are embraced in the left - universal basic income comes to mind.
There’s a reason logic isn’t what sells cars, skin care and fashion.
Two things:
- Yes it does. It sells a lot of cars, skin care, and fashion. Just look at the sales numbers for off-brand, never-advertised cosmetics (e.g. Walmart’s Equate), generic clothes (which outsell brands by enormous amounts every year), and why it’s incredibly difficult to actually buy a new electric car right now (they’re sold out everywhere; enormous waiting lists).
- Those things aren’t government! Running a government based on feelings is likely the worst possible way for a democracy to govern itself. It’s also the worst possible way to select a candidate! Look at they’re policies and their history and especially the outcomes of their policies. Both the likely outcomes (researched by fact-based organizations that study such things) and the historic outcomes. Then select a candidate.
Aside: To this day it still baffles me that conservatives are still pushing abstinence-only education when study after study has shown conclusively that such programs increase teen pregnancy rates, STD transmission rates, and are overall very bad for society at large. Like, I get that you think your daughter will be fine without comprehensive sex ed but do you think the same of the kids down the street?
If you’re trying to say that liberals are trying to sell government based on science and reason while conservatives are trying to sell government based on feelings and faith, I’d agree with you.
Maybe I’m too cynical from working in marketing?
- Yes, logic sells somethings, but it’s not the majority, or really a remarkable percentage in most categories.
I’d argue that generics are really a substitute purchase for a brand category that has been developed and promoted by brands. If logic was the basis of purchasing then brands probably wouldn’t exist - esp for commodities like flour and sugar. But they do. Like it or not the brands create demand by emotionally manipulating consumers into feeling incomplete, then offering their brand as a way to fill that hole.
Electric cars do have logical benefits, as do a lot of other products, but I’d argue that they’re also a status symbol. It means something to be a person that drives an electric car - it says something about who you are, and your values. There’s a reason Tesla launched as a luxury brand first.
- Agree with you that reason should drive government. However politics is the art of persuasion, as is marketing, and as such there are three key factors: logos, pathos and ethos.
Like it or not your favourite candidate needs to be likeable, believable, and share your convictions to succeed. Or just slightly more so than the alternative.
I’ve always wished that instead of selecting a person or party, that when it came to vote the key campaign policies were what people voted for or against, and the candidate/party who’s positions gained the most support took government with a clear mandate on those policies.
Feel like this would go some way towards infusing more logic-based campaigning, and avoid the cut and thrust of, in the US context, having things like “swift boats” “47% of people” etc become the thing that crashed campaigns, and instead be substantive debates on ideas.
I’ve had multiple conversations with very smart traditional conservatives who argue for personal freedom and often libertarian economic foundations (although I think they are very wrong). However none of the ones I respect identify with the right wing movements in the US and UK (and other countries) over the recent years.
So while I agree with you, I think this post is trying to say “the current popular right wing movement”.
“People that don’t agree with me are dummyheads! Wah!!!”
“People that want others to exist peacefully and be able to love who they love are dummyheads! Wah!!!”
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What a horrendous take
Reality is definitely something the conserved brain cannot handle. Cracking open that tin can is sure to relieve some of that debilitating pressure bearing down on the logic of basically any situation. In my exerience not one conservative has a good argument about their viewpoints, as their viewpoints are grandfathered in and pasted over their ability for compassion, logic and critical thinking. If the world weren’t in the hands of people using dumb conservatives to rob and maintain wealth, it would be classified as a mental illness akin to schizophrenia.
Well not every intellectual was born in the past century. Virtually all of these would be conservative based on our modern values. Virtually no one 100 or 200 years ago would have been in favor of gay marriage. There were plenty intellectuals 100 and 200years ago.
So, no.
