cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17713638
““If we jail Trump, get rid of Maga, end the electoral college, ban voter ID, censor free speech, we’ll save democracy,” says one meme in a QAnon channel on Telegram that depicts Biden in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache”
Apparently they at least understand their opponent’s view .
“The right” doesn’t believe any such thing. "The right’ doesn’t exist. MAGA believes it. Probably the GOP believes it. But those two groups don’t hold the patent on “conservative thinking”.
Never confuse the loudest for the most numerous. They are a minority of fundamentalists who have taken over the microphones of the GOP, but the vast majority of “everyday folk” are just trying to live their lives just like you or I.
The very proof of that is Trump’s guilty verdict. Do you think there weren’t at least a few “conservatives” on that jury? Of course their were. But a person can be conservative and still do their duty. I’m willing to be a number of service men and women in the military are also conservative, but I have no belief that they’ll suddenly “rebel” because at the end of the day, they aren’t insane. I’m sure some of the capitol police on J6 lean conservative as well. But guess what, they all just did their job.
Maga is not “conservatives”. In fact MAGA is not a political ideology at all; it’s a very loud excuse to use hate as a weapon, nothing more. While I may not be “conservative” in any sense of the word, and believe it’s a relic of history, it’s not MAGA. It’s a very real and tangible political thing that sadly never gets debated or talked about anymore because MAGA shouts over top of it.
I have no idea the point of this argument. You have to be living in a fantasy world where a rational Republican party exists. Many people will argue that this was a time in the past, but honestly, there has never been an era of a rational Republicanism.
In America “The Right” = “Conservatives” = “Republicans” = “Trump/MAGA”
in 2016 63 Million people voted for Trump. In 2020 74 Million people voted for him.
Roughly half of American voters are backing the Republican Party and Trump in 2024. The Republican party is dominated by MAGA-style culture wars.
I get that it is comforting to believe that Fascism isn’t mainstream Conservatism, but it absolutely is, and ignoring that fact does nothing to protect us against the threat that it poses to this nation and its people.
I agree with you, but I want to point out that this conflation is a direct result of our election system because it mechanically cannot support more than two parties.
Any other political interests need to merge together into one big entity that is nearly impossible to disentangle from the rest, so now maga = conservatism and we lose a lot of nuance in or political decision making and ability to be represented.
I’m pushing for Election Reform this election to move past First Past the Post voting.
The thing is conservatism IS MAGA. It is the seed that bears horrible fruit.
Conservatives have never ever been the good guys in the history of the United States.
Period.
Imagine pretending the arm isn’t attached to the armpit cuz it stinks less…
Hard disagree here.
I agree with you that Conservatism is an outdated concept that it’s done far more harm than good in the world. It’s a relic that needs to be relegated to the dust-bin of history, yes.
But Conservatism is nothing more than a series of economic and political ideals. Nothing more. There are a thousand different reasons for people to identify with one side or the other. Neither Conservatism nor the left equivalent are monolithic static things. They’re protean and change depending on the motivations of the people who currently hold their reins in the public sphere.
Does Conservatism (ie. The Right) generally attract more people with intolerant beliefs and hateful dogmatic behaviours? You’ll get no argument from me there. But the number of them that are willing to pick up arms and commit treason because of it. The number of the right that is wiling to use their intolerance as an excuse for violence, is still the minority no matter how many ways you slice it.
Conservatism might be old and outdated. It might be a haven for the uneducated and the intolerant. But here’s the thing…
It always has been.
And if it always has been, than why were the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, all violence free? Why was there heated debate between the two sides, but not violence? What’s changed now?
And you know the answer to that.
This is the most straight white comment ever. Most of those decades still had lynchings. And why are you ignoring the '60s while looking back at our history? Seems like you don’t want to look at that decade specifically. The reality is that conservatives have been murdering liberals for as long as this country has been around. Even people as conservative as West Virginia coal diggers were massacred by conservatives using police and the pinkertons for being just liberal enough to believe in getting paid fairly.
It takes some extreme cognitive dissonance to look at the 80’s and 90’s and declare them “violence free”.
We’re at a 50-year low for violent crime right now. Politically-motivated violence is surging though. And what side of the aisle is committing the most politically-motivated violence? It’s the right. Every time, without exception, the right is the side pushing violence.
But a CVS burned down!!
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-politics-violence/
Uh huh, and what do those policies look like?
So yeah, “Nothing more” than some perfectly normal “political ideals”. Nothing to see here. /s
I’m going to concede defeat here because obviously I’m not doing a good enough job in explaining my position. But everything you just listed is exactly my point. When did all of those things start occuring? Was it before or after MAGA took over the Republican Party?
Essentially all I’m saying is that Correlation does not equal causation. All of those things you’ve just listed aren’t because they’re conservatives, it’s because they’re assholes. They just happened to find a party (Republicans) that told them that it’s okay to let your asshole flag fly. Conservatism and Republicanism are two different things. Always have been. Conservatism is economic theory (low taxes, high privatization, lower goverment oversight, etc…) Republicanism is political theory (immigration, law and order, militarization, etc…)
MAGA took over Republicanism, convinced everyone that it was Conservatism in order to appeal to the “common folk” in order to take over the GOP.
You’re list isn’t a list of Conservative ideals, it’s a list of Republican ideals. Those aren’t the same thing.
I guess what I’m saying is, again, Correlation is not causation. All republicans are are conservatives, yes. But not all Conservatives are Republicans (or at least they wouldn’t be if the country wasn’t in the grip of some two-party system bullshit. They’re two very different things.
But again, I’m not doing a good job of explaining that, obviously, so I’m going to back out with grace and take the “L”.
Have a good day.
It was before. MAGA made it worse, but everything I listed has been a Republican party position for the past several decades.
You only started noticing after Trump took office, which is a lot of people’s experience if they were politically apathetic before Trump.
It’s because your position is indefensible given recent history and the trajectory of the political landscape.
Fair enough. You’re more than welcome to your opinion. But to my mind, what’s indefensible (and ridiculous, frankly) is painting absolutely everyone on one side with the same brush, no matter how much you may hate that side’s ideals (or lack thereof).
Uh, one side is unrelenting about suppressing everyone else’s rights, and has demonstrated that they’re willing to take control by force and violence if they don’t get ‘their ideals’. If you’re on that side, you’re an asshole, and being ‘painted’ as an asshole is the least that you deserve.
Please stop for a moment, step outside your yourself, and ask… “Am I the baddie?”
You so desperately want to separate the two, you’re literally arguing the opposite. Conservatism has been the Republican Party since the 1950s at minimum and much more likely quite earlier than that.
If conservatives think the Republican Party doesn’t represent them, then why has that party continued to exist?
Short answer: because they’re the same thing. You can’t on one hand declare that “they don’t represent conservativism” and then on the other hand allow the party to continue.
It’s not at all correlation — it is exactly causation. Conservatism == Republicanism. And the reason it does is because it gives conservatives the platform and power that they desperately want in order to enact their backward ideals, whether economic or political, it makes no difference.
If you feel so strongly in your position, then instead of quibbling over semantics, maybe start your own party of such righteous conservative ideology and let’s see whether it serves those ideals or whether it devolves into the same bullshit that the Republican Party has for decades.
I would assert that any party based on conservative ideals will, at some point, become akin to what the Republican Party has become. And the sole reason — critical thinking is not a part of the ideology.
Because money is power. The hard-liners running the show keep it that way while ma and pa everyman in the midwest really don’t have any kind of say in it.
I firmly do actually believe that, yes. Eventually. But even when it devolves, it’s not going to be all of them. It’ll be a minority or people who have the money, which gives them the power, while ma and pa everyman in the midwest (again) has little control over who uses their ideals for what purpose.
Like the original person that replied to me, you’re doing the indefensible of automatically painting every single conservative with the same brush, and that’s just flat out inaccurate.
There’s a difference between believing in some backwards ideals like conservativism, and acting on them. I live surrounded by Conservative thinkers. And yeah, they’ll admit that they don’t believe in gay marraige, lgbtq, immigtation, etc… all of that stuff. Is it backwards? Yes…absolutely. Will they take up arms against a government and think advocate violence? No, that’s stupid. Despite their individual beliefs in their own home, they generally have the opinion of let everyone live their life.
Yeah, there’s people who are insane like that, and want to push that belief onto everyone. And yeah, their unfortunately in charge of the narrative of the GOP and the Republican Party.
But painting every single person on one side of the line as the same is not only wrong, it’s harmful to any sort of debate because if you pretend all conservatives are violent racists than you’ll just alienate the ones who aren’t.
That’s because every single conservative I have met or known, act and think the exact same way — selfish and self-righteous, and they damn everyone else who isn’t themselves or their family members.
And I have met thousands, since I have lived in the bastion of conservatism for 30 years (and yes I’m quite unhappy here and can’t wait to move).
So yeah I’ll paint them all with that same brush because they ALL voted for Trump (the literal dozens that I know and keep tabs on, which is a fair sampling against all I’ve ever met) and took away rights from people I care about by getting 3 lying justices on the Supreme Court.
As the saying goes…if the shoe fits…
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