Conservatism

Huh.

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Huh.

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Frankists masquerading as Jews? I'd hate to hear her views on Anne Frank.

I wonder if @RealCandaceO is an AI algorithm masquerading as a far right Tweepxer account. "GriftBot 2.1".
 
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I'd hate to hear her views on Anne Frank.

I wonder if @RealCandaceO is an AI algorithm masquerading as a far right Tweepxer account. "GriftBot 2.1".

Well she doesn't believe Mengele didn't do horrific experiments so I think we can take an educated guess on what she thinks of Anne Frank.

 
UK view - I grew up in quite an affluent part of the country with parents who I think always lean right when there's an election on the way. I've heard them being scathing about Labour and their "big pot of money from the sky" and moaning about how 'woke' everything is these days. They're not bad people, far from it - they're just, despite being fundamentally intelligent people, not clued up politically and believe what they read in the (right wing) Daily Mail. Probably, in my younger days, I might have too. Because I didn't know better.

For that reason, although I very much consider myself firmly on the left as an adult, I don't really have any ill will towards people who vote Tory. Why would I? Not everybody is genuinely interested in politics, I wasn't until my twenties. And if you don't have your finger on the pulse on current affairs why wouldn't you believe the right wing media? Nowadays it's all presented as being about culture wars, the fight against woke, all of that, and the reason why you're struggling to make ends meet is because of immigrants coming in and stealing the money that you should be getting, rather than years of austerity, or the utter failure of brexit. I know that's bollocks, not everyone does.

I got interested in politics in my early 20s because 1. I met my wife, who's very strongly involved and staunchly left, with relatives who were badly affected by Thatcher's closing the mines in the North East, and 2. I began working as an A-Level teacher and began to cover it. And that gave me a level of interest I just didn't have previously and kinda changed my views on most things. So if those two things hadn't happened, I'd probably still, growing up in rural Berkshire/Gloucestershire and with Daily Mail reading parents who dislike Labour out of principle, hold those beliefs myself.

Where I struggle, specifically with my parents but also with people who still stand by Brexit etc, is that people maybe should know better. My parents might have been Southerners who considered themselves well educated etc, but we certainly didn't grow up with loads of money. We lived on a council estate in Hungerford and drove round in a rusty Nissan Micra. My brother is profoundly deaf and has a learning disability and has lived in supported accommodation all his life, and the deterioration in his care over the last 14 years has been really notable and concerning, yet still....

Bottom line, I try not to judge people on how they vote because there's so much mainstream influence pushing people towards the right. But I'm glad I know my own mind these days.
 
Sorry to switch topic slightly, but I had a thought (brain fart)

Just a dinosaur question:

Isn't conservatism just a delayed progressive program....?!

Because conservatism back in the 1900s isnt the same thing as conservatism in the 2020s.

Similarly "liberals" or progressives have continuously pushed the boundaries, conservatism movement are just people at the very end of the train wagon, following behind but way way much later, just because they never want to change right away, but they will eventually?

I guess conservatives are more "pragmatic" to put it nicely.
 
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Sorry to switch topic slightly, but I had a thought (brain fart)

Just a dinosaur question:

Isn't conservatism just a delayed progressive program....?!

Because conservatism back in the 1900s isnt the same thing as conservatism in the 2020s.

Similarly "liberals" or progressive in the has continuously push the boundaries, conservatism movement are just people at the very end of the train wagon?

It's accurate in some respects, but I think it paints a slightly inaccurate picture. For one, it's not the same people on the train. For two, it's not the same train. The picture that's being painted is of a train with two people on it, always headed to the same destination. One person who wants to get to the destination, and the other is becoming more and more ok with the path as time goes on, but never ok with the destination. So one of the passengers has this principled consistently validated worldview, and the other has this reactionary consistently invalidated worldview. But that's not quite right.

Conservatives from today are not the same people, and don't agree with, conservatives from 100 years ago. It's not inconsistent, they likely never fully agreed. Similarly for progressives. The train metaphor is misplaced because it's not always headed in the same direction. Progressives back then and progressives now don't always agree.

What's really happening is that some people think they can improve society, and some people think they can't. It's a principled disagreement between whether forward movement is possible, or if some mistake has been made and change is problematic. From that perspective, the train analogy and the hypocrisy presented fall apart.

It's more like a dichotomy between people who are satisfied, or were satisfied, and people who are/were not.

Edit: Incidentally, this is why the "ignorance is a virtue" concept takes hold within conservatism. Because at the core of conservatism is a skepticism that human beings are smart enough to make structural improvements in society. This position, of course, flies in the face of all evidence.
 
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Thoughtful of them to put a mooning window in the bathroom like that. Teenage me would've gotten a kick out of that.
 
Some interesting though unfortunately relevant perspectives on fascism:

"When the majority of the working class has followed the line of incremental reform...there comes a stage when Fascism grows and conquers. The character of this stage...[is] the breakdown of finance capital...at a point where the working class should seize the power of the state, it is instead held back by reformist leadership. Owing to this failure to address the grievance of working people, and failure of decisive leadership on their behalf...the discredited regime...the financiers, bankers and other institutions of finance capital...are able, with the parody of revolutionary language and slogans and specious argument to capture the wavering forces of the middle-ing classes and 'backward' workers. On the very basis of the crises and discontent which should have given allies to revolution, it instead builds a reactionary movement. Its these reactionaries that form the foundation of Fascism. The continued hesitation and retreat of the reformist working class leadership at every point (policy of the "lesser evil") encourages the growth of Fascism. On this basis Fascism is able finally to step in and seize the reins, not through its own strength, but through the failure of working class leadership. The collapse of bourgeois democracy, technocrats and meritocracy, is succeeded not by the advancement of a progressive democracy for the people, but by regression into Fascism, the terrorist dictatorship of finance capital, and corporate seizure of government"

- Vice President Henry Wallace 1944, op-ed for the New York Times.

"The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money and more power. If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful…They are patriotic in time of war because it is in their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. American fascism will not be really dangerous, until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists and the deliberate poisoners of public information. Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after the present unpleasantness comes to an end...some in big business are willing to jeopardize the structure of American liberty to gain some temporary advantage. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself...The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination. The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact, Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people. ... Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people employed…. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels... out of this modern civilization, economic royalists [have] carved new dynasties.... It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction.... And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute men...These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power!"

-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1936
 
UK view - I grew up in quite an affluent part of the country with parents who I think always lean right when there's an election on the way. I've heard them being scathing about Labour and their "big pot of money from the sky" and moaning about how 'woke' everything is these days. They're not bad people, far from it - they're just, despite being fundamentally intelligent people, not clued up politically and believe what they read in the (right wing) Daily Mail. Probably, in my younger days, I might have too. Because I didn't know better.

For that reason, although I very much consider myself firmly on the left as an adult, I don't really have any ill will towards people who vote Tory. Why would I? Not everybody is genuinely interested in politics, I wasn't until my twenties. And if you don't have your finger on the pulse on current affairs why wouldn't you believe the right wing media? Nowadays it's all presented as being about culture wars, the fight against woke, all of that, and the reason why you're struggling to make ends meet is because of immigrants coming in and stealing the money that you should be getting, rather than years of austerity, or the utter failure of brexit. I know that's bollocks, not everyone does.

I got interested in politics in my early 20s because 1. I met my wife, who's very strongly involved and staunchly left, with relatives who were badly affected by Thatcher's closing the mines in the North East, and 2. I began working as an A-Level teacher and began to cover it. And that gave me a level of interest I just didn't have previously and kinda changed my views on most things. So if those two things hadn't happened, I'd probably still, growing up in rural Berkshire/Gloucestershire and with Daily Mail reading parents who dislike Labour out of principle, hold those beliefs myself.

Where I struggle, specifically with my parents but also with people who still stand by Brexit etc, is that people maybe should know better. My parents might have been Southerners who considered themselves well educated etc, but we certainly didn't grow up with loads of money. We lived on a council estate in Hungerford and drove round in a rusty Nissan Micra. My brother is profoundly deaf and has a learning disability and has lived in supported accommodation all his life, and the deterioration in his care over the last 14 years has been really notable and concerning, yet still....

Bottom line, I try not to judge people on how they vote because there's so much mainstream influence pushing people towards the right. But I'm glad I know my own mind these days.
I feel you, very well written. I consider myself a democratic socialist and although my parents and most of my close friends are too, there are exceptions indeed, and some people I agree with politically are complete ***holes. In other words, you are not what you vote.
 
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Ya, Josh Schiver is from redneck central in Michigan. You know the Oxford school shooter and his POS parents? They live in the district he represents, and that's what a good chunk of the population is like. Lots of cousin-loving, meth, and sadness going on. Kid Rock grew up just east of his district too.

Also, the only reason he's against gay marriage is because he's a closeted gay man who hates the way god made him:
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Dude is 100% gay and only married a woman because his dad and/or pastor would've probably killed him or something. Unrelated, but there's also a 50/50 chance he's also a pedofile and into incest. Those eyes just scream "don't look at my hard drive."
 
Ya, Josh Schiver is from redneck central in Michigan. You know the Oxford school shooter and his POS parents? They live in the district he represents, and that's what a good chunk of the population is like. Lots of cousin-loving, meth, and sadness going on. Kid Rock grew up just east of his district too.

Also, the only reason he's against gay marriage is because he's a closeted gay man who hates the way god made him:
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Dude is 100% gay and only married a woman because his dad and/or pastor would've probably killed him or something. Unrelated, but there's also a 50/50 chance he's also a pedofile and into incest. Those eyes just scream "don't look at my hard drive."
I thought Oxford/Oakland County was mostly upper middle class and fairly progressive, compared to a place like Genesee or Macomb?
 
I thought Oxford/Oakland County was mostly upper middle class and fairly progressive, compared to a place like Genesee or Macomb?
The middle and southern part of the county is, the northern part is extremely rednecky. Lake Orion/Clarkson is kind of the cut-off line, and anything north of that gets really trashy really quick. I grew up in Lake Orion, and the school was about half middle-class kids and half trashy kids who wore confederate flags, were openly racist, and are almost now all MAGA idiots.

Oakland County is huge too and is super diverse:
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Above the red line is rednecky, the green box is inner city, the blue box is really wealthy, and the rest is a just a mix.
 
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