Welcome to [email protected], where you can share and converse about the different things happening all over/about the United States.
If you’re interested in participating, please subscribe.
Rules
Be respectful and civil. No racism/bigotry/hateful speech.
Post anything related to the United States.
Republicans have long done things that are contrary to their stated goals. They want nuclear families with a stay at home mom, but they don't want to pay people enough to do that.
They don't want abortions but they don't want to have education and contraception.
Conservatives are stupid or lying
They are neither stupid nor lying. It's so much worse than that.
Conservativism isn't a set of political or moral ideologies. There are zero consistently conservative positions, because conservativism is an irrational function of the human mind. Conservativism is the manifestation of malignant narcissism. Conservatives define their values around their personal identity, and use the party membership to justify their selfishness.
The things they say, they say because it benefits them at the time to say it. The things they want benefit themselves when they want it. When someone else wanting the same thing or saying the same thing is bad for them, it's no longer a good thing.
Reasonable people are often surprised by sudden shifts in priorities, and there are a bunch of memes going back since the dawn of conservativism. To a reasonable person, it resembles hypocrisy or short-sighted stupidity, but it's neither. It is the only common, core principle that unites all conservatives everywhere across time: Is this good for me right now? Of course, when the answer is "no," it's followed by the Bob Rumsen Corollary: "Who is to blame for this?" Spoiler, this set of questions never results in introspection or growth as a person. That is not the conservative way.
I would argue that this behavior you are describing is a kind of stupid. It is self destructive in the long term, and certainly not intellectually rigorous.
I don't think you're necessarily wrong, because for sure there are stupid conservatives. But that's like saying religious people are stupid, because many followers are stupid. Any group sufficiently large will include stupid people, and it's easy to understand why stupid people are drawn to conservativism.
But I would argue that narcissism is intellectually rigorous, because the thought process is exactly the same every time. Who is the in-group, or Self? Who is the out-group, or Other? What benefits the Self right now? How will the Other try to hurt the Self? Each decision is defined by the temporal context, not any consistent principle beyond the immediate concern.
Demonizing abortion is good for the self, because it makes voters angry and angry people vote. When those same voters require healthcare, they will whine that the stupid government didn't carve out specific exceptions for their specific, morally acceptable abortion. It's not their fault they voted for it, because blaming themselves is bad for the Self. It's not mental gynastics as much as it is simply stumbling forward through any obstacle.
Pick any "conservative" talking point, and you can trace it backwards to a time when conservatives held the opposite opinion because that was what was best for them at the time. Taxes, regulation, state vs federal power, spending, foreign relations, immigration, research, entitlements, welfare, healthcare, education, military operations and spending, government waste and accountability, morality, oversight, judicial power, executive power, legislative power, police power, energy independence, climate change, industry and the economy, and world trade. To a fixed observer, conservatives bounce back and forth across the aisle on all of those issues, but from the perspective of the Conservative, it is the world shifting around the fixed Self.
The things that change are the identity of the Self, and the circumstances of how things affect the Self. But the internal logic is always the same. I am good, so what I want is good. What I do is good. What I say is good. If I must lie or cheat or murder, it is necessary and in service of good because I am good and I need to do it to win. If anyone stands in opposition, they are bad. Anything they do is bad. Anything they say is bad. If I say something, and then the next day they say the same thing, it was good when I said it and bad when they said it, because I am good and they are bad.
You say it's short-sighted, because they might support a policy or leader today that hurts them tomorrow, but to a conservative this is not a concern. They supported it today when it was good, and they will oppose it tomorrow when it is bad. It was good because they supported it, and it will be bad because they oppose it. And it will always be the fault of the Other, whoever that may be at the time.
That's a good post. No disagreements, really.
I want a succinct word to encapsulate this behavior. It's like a child that eats a whole tub of ice cream against your advice, and then gets mad at you that they feel sick. "Stupid" is a word that would come to mind, but I think better can be done. Something with "Solipsism" maybe?
It's also frustrating when you catch them red-handed adopting a position they recently held the opposite stance on. I'm just like, why don't you care about the hypocrisy?
Porque no los dos?
that's really not fair. they could be both.
Could be an inclusive 'or'
When they say family values they mean breeding a desperate working class unprotected by parental leisure.
Desperation makes the money line happy.
Even after Trump’s partial reversal, parents could have to contend with myriad price increases for smaller items, from onesies to blueberries. The Budget Lab, which analyzes the impact of federal policy proposals, has estimated the tariffs announced as of April 2 could cost an average household $3,800 per year, or $73 per week, a cost that could hit families especially hard during the early years of parenthood, already a time of enormous financial upheaval.