rolling explaining conservatism

Most problems can be pretty easily explained through racism and false consciousness.

Go for it flopson I'm all ears

it seems to me that the US left should maybe have more humility than this CONSERVATARDS WANT THEIR KID TO DRINK POISON WATER LOL attitude that has dominated the discourse since at least gwb... like, we went from being just shy of permanent consensus social democracy in the early sixties, then fucked it up and have sucked for 4 decades, and now say things like 'demographics will save us' or 'we just needed a better candidate'. maybe there is something about conservative ideology that motivates people that the left lacks and we could be more modest? idk

What about Nobel Prize-winning intellectuals like Friedman or Hayek? xp to Frederik

nothing can be explained by false consciousness because it's a tautology and not an explanation: 'you're wrong because your consciousness is wrong'

consider religious tribalism as something other than privilege that motivates conservatives to vote consistently for candidates that promise to restrict access to abortion limit rights for lgbtq people

The existence of non-white conservatives isn't really an argument against conservativism as, at its core, a preservation of (mostly male & mostly wealthy) white privilege. Even those who aren't among the largest beneficiaries of privilege may have a vested interest in keeping the boat from rocking. Consider the relatively well-off African American conservatives in the post-Reconstruction south who resisted integration. They were still basically second class citizens but they were secure enough within a relatively privileged bubble that they had reason to help maintain white hegemony.

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge" so despite our amazing collective abilities as psychoanalysts maybe that's not a good ways to understand its appeal

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

right. and that "liberty" (as they understand it) is a higher value than "equality" (as they think liberals understand it).

xp - it kinda is though, just look at ilx

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf

a lot of people just think the government is extremely wasteful and inefficient (which isn't wrong!) and get pissed off at seeing a substantial portion of their hard-earned dollars withheld/taxed.

also, some people think abortion is murder. i think it gets overlooked what a huge issue that still is for a lot of people.

Flopson otm obv

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

― barry snappleton (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 8:14 AM (twelve minutes ago)

Yes. When my brother-in-law was still speaking to me, "There have to be winners and losers in life" was one of his mantras.

http://psych.colorado.edu/~vanboven/teaching/p7536_heurbias/p7536_readings/kruger_dunning.pdf

― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:20 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on. can't think of a more perfect abdication of politics to say, 'it's not our fault the other side is just too stupid!' there's no value in being right and losing in politics

I think most conservatives would say, if questioned, that inequality was natural and probably necessary

― barry snappleton (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:14 AM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

privilege is not the same thing as inequality though; not every inequality is a result of a privilege, and not every privilege produces a tangible (or material, at least) inequality. conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

I think conservativism requires a narrow focus for it to hold up at all. Abortion is a perfect example. Abortion is killing babies and it's horrible! But there's no deeper long-term ideology underlying that. Because if you've successfully railed against an unwanted baby being born, you now have to deal with that unwanted baby and the parent(s) who may not be able to care for that baby. When the next step after the successful reification of your platform is 'welp, sucks to be you', I'd argue that your ideology isn't exactly watertight.

flopson, it's not hard to find conservatives explaining why they are conservative from their own perspective. Obvs lefties are gonna be less sympathetic and explain it either in terms of what conservatism actually does, or in terms of what we believe truly motivates it. As opposed to what its adherents think they think.

My conservative inlaws and acquaintances have a worldview that feels coherent to them, indeed, to them it feels inevitable. As ryan notes, liberty/freedom is seen as among the highest ideals. To my eyes, this has a large component of Marlboro Man cosplay: "I am a rugged individual, I don't want the government or the nanny state or PC whiners coming onto my property and telling me what to do. I succeed or fail based on my own resourcefulness, and by the sweat of my own brow."

I think art has a good point, but it's not even religious tribalism half the time. The lifelong tribal Republicans I run into are almost all non-churchgoing, "socially liberal, fiscally conservative" country club types, it's very much a secular "my family have always been..." kind of a thing.

We need more people on this thread bitching about how we don't sympathize enough with hateful white folks though

morality is set of rules and sense of propriety and not an open-ended obligation towards other human beings. (this is how the abortion thing makes sense, a fetus not being an actual person makes it the perfect object of morality for them)

conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

oh please, please back this one up

conservative and liberal opinions on liberty/inequality differ in degree and not kind, anyway

between the majority of conservatives and libs, sure, but other political beliefs are available

privilege is not the same thing as inequality though

agreed, but the conflating of different kinds of inequality is part of the conservative thought process I think - some animals are bigger or faster or smarter than others, therefore some people will "naturally" have more material resources than others purely by dint of birth. conservatism rarely looks at things like inheritance - we could conceive a conservatism that might assert that everybody should start from birth without the benefit of inherited wealth, I think

deems - I have read right-wing boards a lot and their characterizations of lefties are not for the faint of heart. Libs want to control everything because they hate freedom because freedom means manly men doing manly deeds and liberal pantywaists can't stand that. Statists gonna statist; regarding government as a potential solution ignores that government always fucks up (cf. evol's point).

Except D-Day and the moon landing. Those were examples of good government activity, because they were manly deeds done by manly men. I don't wish to minimize the racism but much of the animus is based around traditional gender roles. Recently seen on Carolinian billboard: "Real men provide; Real women appreciate it."

xps Tombot- most conservatives are not absolutist libertarians, most liberals are not communists

xxp to NV, this looks like Rawlsian small-l liberalism to me, not in itself inherently right- or left-wing in and of itself

some revealing comments from conservatives i know:

complaining about people using EBT cards to buy cigarettes and alcohol
if we enacted socialism then "why bother" working or trying at anything (ties into fear of "leveling" or equality--everybody the same)
"i dont want help"
if people dont believe in god then they'll do whatever they want (ie, bad stuff)

xp or at least so Rawls would have had us believe

Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater is next on my reading list. I'll come back to this thread with any insights I glean.

complaining about people using EBT cards to buy cigarettes and alcohol

If I ever personally hear someone say this shit, I'll see if I can find someone who's willing to lend out their EBT card so that the claimant can show me how this works.

On inequality, "the cream rises to the crop in any society" (I've heard it said exactly this way). The argument goes: if you redistributed all the wealth in the world equally tomorrow, not only would you have millionaires and billionaires again within a year or so, it would probably be the _same_ millionaires and billionaires.

Also: Traditional cultural values - god, guns, guts, family - have worked fine for centuries; why mess with them by accommodating race agitators and tranny freaks in the name of 'diversity'?"

All this said, stereotypically, from the POV of a white male Christian Republican NRA Life Member. He lives on an acre in an outer burb that is a half-hour's drive from Wal-Mart and an hour's drive from an ethnic restaurant. All of his neighbors are also straight white Christian Republican NRA Life Members.

(And yet he characterizes the life of someone in Manhattan, DC, or Hollywood as "living in a bubble." Grr. But let us set that aside for a moment.)

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge"

Any kind of conservatism is rooted in the idea that traditional hierarchies, structures, and values (what liberals would call "privilege") are worth preserving, surely, though?

And, for that reason, I'm not sure that this could be conceived:

we could conceive a conservatism that might assert that everybody should start from birth without the benefit of inherited wealth, I think

I would probably be on board with that but it is socialism, more or less.

more on the liberty/equality thing...

I think for the most part they differ in degree because both liberals (#teamequality, for the purpose of the caricature) and conservatives (#teamliberty) are willing to accept trade-offs between the two: liberals are not up in arms that doctors are paid more than cashiers (and don't demand redistributive taxation to set that right); conservatives accept that they will be taxed to build roads, etc.

obviously the caricature only works to a point because liberals actually care about uh, liberty, some even care about equality to the extent that it furthers liberty. and i think conservatives care quite a bit about things like 'equality of opportunity' and 'a level playing field'. but i think there is a consistent ideology that we all inhabit that takes all of these things into account to varying degrees, rather than some insurmountable cleavage

Perlstein's book on Barry Goldwater is next on my reading list. I'll come back to this thread with any insights I glean.

― (Got A) Key In My Peehole (From Peeing Through a Keyhole) (Old Lunch), Tuesday, March 7, 2017 9:42 AM (eleven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i read this in January and i'm basically regurgitating Perlstein itt lol

Abortion is killing babies and it's horrible! But there's no deeper long-term ideology underlying that. Because if you've successfully railed against an unwanted baby being born, you now have to deal with that unwanted baby and the parent(s) who may not be able to care for that baby. When the next step after the successful reification of your platform is 'welp, sucks to be you', I'd argue that your ideology isn't exactly watertight.

This seems reasonably consistent to me: individuals and families need to be responsible for the consequences of their own choices.

insurmountable cleavage

I grew up around conservatism and still get doses of it when I visit my parents, with whom I share city space. A few months ago I wrote about Cubans and the GOP and why they're proud conservatives.

Thanks to an addiction to leaden polysyllabic words, William F. Buckley, Jr. normalized the detestation of the poor and disregard for complaints from minorities. As the sun set on Richard Nixon's felonocracy, George Will cracked the code for inserting Edmund Burke, Disraeli, Russell Kirk, Churchill, Hayek, and Oakesshott into columns that supported a contempt for busing, public schools, and healthy diets, and endorsements of abattoirs in Central America (later subjects include Allen Ginsburg, blue jeans, and the coarsening effect of Bill Clinton on civic life). In their children they inculcate their children in the conviction that federal laws against discrimination are the government's means of destroying the aspirations of straight white men.

In other posts I've confessed to never recognizing conservatism as a positive force; it can't be. By nature it must oppose. Since at least January 1981 and probably January 1968, what it opposes it must vaporize. The opposition is illegitimate. Busing doesn't work? Fine. Then leave Jim Crow in public schools intact. Oppose welfare? Good. How do we put these young mothers to work? Gays want to get married? Tough luck – lie about pursuing this lifestyle choice. Repeatedly the last forty years of political life have seen conservatives back away from the complexities of modern life mumbling the mantra What's mine is mine. Your bad luck is your business – and your fault, for obviously you deserved it.

"stand athwart history, yelling STOP"?

standing athwart history yelling "GO FUCK YOURSELVES"

i just don't think you would be able to find a conservative who says "i want to rationalize and perserve privilge"

As noted by Tombot towards the beginning of the thread, the acceptability of speaking aloud the tenets of conservative ideology has varied over time. The longer Trumpism continues, the more you're likely to encounter conservatives who are willing to cut through a couched and coded PC word fog and just speak their mind.

oh come on. can't think of a more perfect abdication of politics to say, 'it's not our fault the other side is just too stupid!' there's no value in being right and losing in politics

50% of the country is of below-average intelligence. fact! i'm not a politician. fact! i think the democrats have grown too stuck up to associate with people whose presence doesn't flatter them, and that Koch/ALEC nation has cultivated a network manipulating the less bright among us in order to keep their own tax rates low. how do you reach the less cognitively sharp, pry them out of the grip of Koch/ALEC nation? who knows?

do you reach the less cognitively sharp, pry them out of the grip of Koch/ALEC nation?

You could force them to appear in long-running sitcoms where they were forced by circumstances to get along with those of other backgrounds. There would be hugging and learning. Maybe bring them to gay dance clubs. Eventually their feet would start to move as the rhythm takes control.

OK flopson I was clearly thinking of a different angle on the degree vs kind question. I'll try to explain with other people's words

YMP: The argument goes: if you redistributed all the wealth in the world equally tomorrow, not only would you have millionaires and billionaires again within a year or so, it would probably be the _same_ millionaires and billionaires.
Alfred: Your bad luck is your business – and your fault, for obviously you deserved it.

These arguments, to me, represent a fundamental break from the underpinnings of a liberal political thought. A lot of conservatism relies on fortune favoring the righteous, and thus "prosperity theology" which btw is completely insane just saying; liberalism is based on an understanding that the world is a cruel joke played on the unsuspecting and the gullible. That's not a difference of degree, to me.

Obviously all this is my opiniong and does not represent the position of my stated affiliation and yes there's a g on opinion that I left there on purpose

I agree with YMP, La Cage aux Folles solves everything

Conservatism is a shuck. I used to be like flopson, reluctant to dismiss a so-called system of belief. But it's my life as a gay man working for a public institution that's at stake.

A lot of conservatism relies on fortune favoring the righteous, and thus "prosperity theology" which btw is completely insane just saying; liberalism is based on an understanding that the world is a cruel joke played on the unsuspecting and the gullible.

I'm not as well read on all this as some of you, but as well as fortune-favors-the-righteous conservativism isn't there also a cautious, pessimistic type of conservatism that emphasises how human knowledge is always imperfect and incomplete, that we are fallible therefore we should be wary of grand schemes to reshape society etc (still the same result of leaving existing hierarchies/privileges in place though?).

but this cautious version of conservatism is one whose appeal I feel I understand a little better (and understand why it would appeal to people who aren't all that privileged in the grand scheme of things, i.e. they are the ones who will likely be at the sharp end if the ambitious plans to reshape society end in failure, so better to preserve what little you already have?)

human knowledge is always imperfect and incomplete, that we are fallible therefore we should be wary of grand schemes to reshape society etc

the irony of this is that modern liberalism fits this bill far more than conservatism.

when used to explain away any suspiscion of the status quo it is reminiscent of bernard ingham's memorable version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor, no conspiracies just cock ups, the boris johnson face of conservatism

Planet yes.

People, though...