• MudMan@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m surprised by how little this has sunk in.

    People are constantly baffled by the inconsistencies and the strange, warped narratives that are born by aggregation. How do they convey persecution of conservatives when they have so much power? Why did McCarthy get nuked but Johnson is fine if they did the exact same thing? How can they embrace Trump despite his public adultery?

    Because the ideology is that anything that makes them look good and entrench power is fine and anything that helps the people they dislike is bad.

    There really, really isn’t anything else to it. It’s purely emotional, purely factional and purely of the moment, with zero persistence beyond the memetic. Mouth noises.

    • mindbleach
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      1 year ago

      We keep asking each other ‘what do conservatives really believe?’ and refusing to accept the obvious answer.

      Conservatives do not believe things. Conservatives believe people.

      They do not evaluate claims. In this tribalist worldview, that is not what claims are for. You accept or reject conclusions based on interpersonal trust. That’s how you perform loyalty. And I say “you” because they think that’s all we’re doing. That’s all they think there is.

      Their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. They do not have arguments; they have slogans. Insisting otherwise has never accomplished a damn thing. What is wrong with us if we can’t identify and respond to this demonstrable irrational behavior? God knows it’s not rare or subtle.