Political Memes

There's a certain level of childish contrarianism going on. "I was going to do this, but now I have learned you want me to do it and so I'm going to refuse"

My brother and I tried to convince our father to install solar panels when he was considering replacing our parents' entire roof due to age. The house was perfect for it: it wasn't shaded by trees, the roof was a 35 degree angle facing mostly to the south, the whole roof needed to be replaced, and there where still some really good tax advantages at the time.

We ran all the numbers for him, showed how it would pay for itself in something like 5 years and actually generate money for him after that, how the tax breaks would save so much money, how a large home battery could be used to power the home when the electricity is out due to Indiana's frequent tornadoes and storms...

Nope. Saving tens of thousands of dollars wasn't enough to overcome the dangers of Critical Race Theory powered panels generating a woke communist DEI field that is going to transgender the tan suit wearing raccoons of the Southern Indiana AntiFa Brigade.

I'm glad he died before COVID hit. He would absolutely have been the sort to say that wearing a mask is something only blue haired lesbian socialists do and gotten our mother killed.

• Sometimes there are too many regulations. When corporations get big and powerful, sometimes they push for regulations that will make it harder for their competitors.
• Immigration isn't always well managed. Often corporations will try to bring in immigrants so that they can avoid paying non-immigrants a higher wage. Illegal immigrants should be deported (but the companies that employ them should be heavily fined too).
• Drugs are bad, m'kay? Mexico's issues with narcos terrorizing them, destabilizing their government, etc. is driven by the demand for drugs from the US. It's true that when Americans are buying illegal drugs, they're often funding these narcos.
• Freedom of speech. This is normally something that is more of a conservative value. The left is typically more willing to say certain points of view shouldn't be heard.
• There is waste, fraud and abuse in the government. An occasional house cleaning is a good idea. But, it was Al Gore who did it the right way. DOGE was a clusterfuck.
• Think of the Children! Sometimes the world moves too quickly, and it has a bad effect on kids. Take, for example, kids getting addicted to their cell phones and social media, or kids using ChatGPT to cheat. Raising kids in a more traditional way while we figure out the effect of these new-fangled technologies might be smart.
• Chyna. The west really should have been harsher with China. China didn't respect IP rules with respect to US patents and trade secrets. China's government continues to promote and back certain companies. The "de minimis" rule was awful and really needed to be fixed.

What makes this hard to answer is that conservatives and liberals have flipped on a number of issues over the past decade or so. In Ye Olde Days, the left wing was protectionist because labour unions were strong. It was the conservatives that were pro free-trade, etc. Then the neo-liberals were pro-free trade, and the conservatives have become protectionist. Protecting nature has shifted back and forth as a conservative or liberal value. The left used to be skeptical about big business, but then it was the right who was trying to regulate the Silicon Valley companies, while the left defended them, and now the bosses in Silicon Valley are going hard right. The right used to be much more pro-immigrant because it was good for business, while the unions on the left opposed it. Now the right is anti-immigrant and the left is pro-immigrant. The right used to be the pro-war party, while the left was anti-war. Now the right is isolationist and against getting involved in military things overseas, and it's the left who wants to continue working with allies and intervening to protect vulnerable countries like Ukraine or vulnerable minorities who are being persecuted. (Both parties are terrible on Israel and Gaza). The right used to have freedom of speech as a core value, and it was the left who thought some people shouldn't have a platform and shouldn't have their views heard. Now it's the right who wants to censor everything and the left defending free speech.

I think the reason it’s hard to find a good answer is that their opinions aren’t based on anything logical, just whatever they’re told to believe at the moment. A person with no truly held convictions cannot be right about anything.

This isn't too far from what has been researched. Take a gander: https://theauthoritarians.org/

Are there any issues where conservatives are correct?

If you look at earlier 19th and early 20th century conservatives, they absolutely make pretty good points.

More than a few social safety systems world wide were instituted by conservatives, under the thinking that people are fucking shit to eachother and thus it falls to institutions to take care of basic needs. A famous example is the German welfare state created by Bismarck.

A lot of natural beauty has been protected by conservatives, because they used to believe in actually conserving things.

Conservatives of the past have done a LOT of good in preventing and reversing government overreach in personal liberties.

I could have absolutely had a great discussion with a conservative from 1925. We would have some major disagreements, but more than a few similarities. And a modern conservative would loathe everything about that same past conservative.

Are there any issues where conservatives are correct?

Flawed premise and why we're in this shit-mire. We keep thinking that we can appeal to the minds to relate with or connect with or change the policies of a third of our population when they're not using their minds to begin with.

They are the segment of the population not concerned with policy and values and principles, It may seem backwards to say they don't have values when they have such violent ideology, but their entire motivation for the things they defend violently is entirely emotional.

If their feelings change, so do their stances. If you can tell a better story that engages them and makes them feel feelings, their brains will latch onto that new narrative and they will either abandon the old one or encorporate it even if it contradicts... because again, concepts like contradiction and inconsistency are products of logic and reason, and we're talking about a side based in emotion and impulses. For example, when a conservative suddenly has a family crisis and needs assistance, they become entirely for public support systems and socialism. When they need an abortion, suddenly they're pro-choice. When one of their kids is harmed by a shooter, they want gun controls. They can hold these changes in belief WHILE also remaining anti-socialism, pro-gun and pro-life. We have a very hard time understanding this if we are people who read and write and think with language.

Trump and his ilk tap this easily by saying short, pithy and powerful statements to help emotional minds validate their own feelings. You sad and overworked? it's the migrants! Worried about your kids education? TRANS PEOPLE IN THE BATHROOM.

It doesn't have to logically make sense, our brains don't work like that by default, they just need a story to explain the feelings.

There are aspects of "Make America Healthy Again" that are actually good ideas but the problem is that they are tied to extremely bad ones. Like getting rid of artificial dyes in food and improving food purity are good ideas on the surface, but they're tied to dumb ass ideas like seed oil panic and anti vax. Furthermore, none of this stuff is actually being supported by law. It's all just rhetoric and the actual law and policy changes are just more pro corporate nonsense and all action taken by corporations so far has been voluntary statements saying they'll do something in the future. I think this is the real problem of the conservative movement at least in its current form. Even when they stumble upon a good idea, the fact that there is no underlying logical framework to that idea other than just further enriching those in charge means that said idea can't be implemented properly and without other nonsense.

Are we talking conservatives in theory here, or conservatives in practice?

In theory, it's not a matter of right or wrong, it's a matter of balance. The government needs brakes, it needs people who look at every issue from the perspective of "should we do this thing, how far should we go with it, and how much should it cost". In practice, conservatives have had way too much power for far too long. They've gone past the point of being brakes, and become full-on regressives that have been co-opted by corporations and religious fanatics that flock to the stability and "traditional values" that the ideology initially had as it's foundation.

I've seen local rural conservitards who are anti-data center. its mostly because they're old and don't understand computers but as a self hosting advocate I'm all for it.

The problem is that if they almost have a good idea, they add "for white people" at the end. Gun rights for white people. Financial freedom for white people. Low taxes for white people.

Both the Right and the Left agree you shouldn't get to freeload off other people's work, they just disagree on who it is that's doing the freeloading...