A longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party.

Archive link.

A ridiculous number of the recent posts to this sub are me trying to convince conservatives not to vote for Trump.

Anyway, here are this guy’s reasons:

[The] Republican relationship to truth and knowledge has gone to hell. MAGA is a fever swamp of lies, conspiracy theories, and scorn for expertise. The Blue World, in contrast, is a place more amenable to disagreement, debate, and the energetic pursuit of truth.

I’ve come to appreciate the Democrats’ long-standing tradition of using a pragmatic imagination. I like being around people who know that it’s really hard to design policies that will help others but who have devoted their lives to doing it well […] Over the past four years, I’ve watched the Biden administration use pragmatic imagination to funnel money to parts of America that have long been left behind.

Another set of qualities now drawing me toward the Democrats: patriotism and regular Americanness.

But ultimately what’s pulling me away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats is one final quality of Blue World: its greater ability to self-correct. Democrats, I’ve concluded, are better at scrutinizing, and conquering, their own shortcomings than Republicans are.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.world
    15·
    16 days ago

    But ultimately what’s pulling me away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats is one final quality of Blue World: its greater ability to self-correct. Democrats, I’ve concluded, are better at scrutinizing, and conquering, their own shortcomings than Republicans are.

    🌏👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀

    • mindbleach
      1·
      16 days ago

      He’s so close. He can almost see how conservatism is loyalty, as opposed to criticism. This man - the man everyone quotes about conservatives abandoning democracy before conservatism - wrote a whole-ass Atlantic op-ed about how conservative parties have drifted away from all prior alleged ideals. Repeatedly, and worldwide, these parties reveal they’re mostly looking for a guy to be Their Guy, and act like the king of the ingroup, and really stick it to the outgroup. And he still doesn’t get it.

  • bluGill@fedia.io
    39·
    16 days ago

    Then democrats have a number of policies that I’m fundamentally opposed to. I guess I’ll be voting third party again (something I’ve been doing for several decades)