Once upon a time, the GOP stood for limited government.But now it stands only for Trump and his authoritarian neofascism. It demands total loyalty to him.The...
Robert Reich articulated something that has been bouncing around my head since 2016
What amazed me is that Trump managed to deeply entrench himself in suburban Republicans. I had several family friends growing up that were that sort of “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” folks that supported gay marriage but have since jumped the fucking shark into crazy town.
The surprising thing to me is just how little backbone those asshats have.
Not all of us. That used to describe me. But I realized fiscal conservatism isn’t being responsible with money, it’s using money to pursue a conservative social agenda. Now I’m just a cheap liberal.
In a saner world, I’d probably consider myself a conservative, in the world we actually live in though, I’m not touching anything the conservative parties have anything to do with.
I generally think that things should overall trend towards being more liberal, and conservatism should just kind of be a moderating factor, not really working against a liberal agenda, just kind of slowing it down, making sure everything is fully thought through before we jump into anything, that the plans and funding and contingencies and such are in place, and in some cases just slowing things down because some stubborn assholes (mostly the current “conservatives”) need to be eased into certain changes because their tiny minds will explode if you go to fast
You are describing an actual Conservative, basically someone who acts like a brake. They can slow down or even temporarily stop progress to buy time while things are thought through. For all practical purposes these people no longer exist in the Republican Party. They’ve been replaced by MAGA.
However MAGA aren’t “Conservatives” because they don’t function as brakes. To stick with the vehicle theme MAGA is trying to shift the vehicle into reverse. They aren’t just trying to stop progress they are actively trying to go backwards!. IMO these people should be called “Regressives” because that word most accurately describes their political goals. They want to unwind progress and regress to a previous time and state of existence.
Yup. The MAGA crowd isn’t conservative. The MAGA crowd is regressivist, trying to install feudalism/theocracy. Meanwhile the MAGA leaders plan to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to rob the country. It’s all just a big fat heist with a lot of deceived fools.
No he and you are just describing a liberal. There are not and never have been your mythical “actual conservatives”. Conservatives have always been about enforcing social hierarchies. In America there isn’t hereditary nobility but the Republicans have gone full mask off that they really would like that.
There are not and never have been your mythical “actual conservatives”.
At one time the Republicans were liberals and even advertised themselves as such. If you crack a history book you can see that what’s happening with MAGA right now isn’t the first time that the RP has been through this.
Aside from goings on in the 1870s we can look to the 1950s and the Eisenhower Republicans. You should look those up.
Conservatives have always been about enforcing social hierarchies.
Nah, my lived experience says differently. Dad was a Republican and he never made any racial or social distinctions on anyone. Neither did my mother. The only people my family had a problem with were Russians…and with damn good reason. So that means he was a Republican without being a Conservative. A liberal Republican if you will…and at one time the US was full of them.
Your claims are so overly broad that they’ve slipped into revisionism.
I’m only expressing my thoughts on what conservatism means to me and what I think it should be. I’m not making any claims that it is what conservatism actually is in this country or any other, or about what it has been at any point in time (even if they sometimes like to pretend that it’s what they’re about.) like I said, I don’t align myself with any of the so-called conservative movements that are out there.
Speaking as someone who considers themselves a lefty, this is the kind of conservative I want to have a voice in my government (like, 39 seats in the Senate tops kind of voice, but it’s a worthy perspective and engaging with it makes progressive plans stronger)
“Socially liberal but fiscally conservative,” they say, while voting exclusively for candidates who are socially conservative and fiscally corrupt. It’s always smacked of “I’m not racist, but…” to me.
Back in 2008, it was clear that she was watching Fox News for her primary source of “information” about the world and politics. Even then, it was a constant headache to push back against the one-sided, stilted, non-scientific, ideological slop that channel churns out. Since this was an election year, Facebook just made it even worse. She constantly re-posted all manner of emotionally provocative nonsense without thinking.
After the election, it only got worse. I watched this person go from semi-reasonable and rational, to a slowly devolving, emotionally driven, irrational, and fearful person over the following three years. It was as if reason itself was slowly draining out of her life. To make matters worse: at the start of this, all of her friends were socially liberal and left-leaning to deep left politically. I, along with a lot of others, slowly pulled out of her social sphere. I think she only has political sparring partners left on Facebook.
What makes me sad is that, outside of anything involving politics, this person was generous, kind, a great host, outgoing, and fun-loving. I want my friend back, but I also can’t afford the time to babysit another person’s broken brain forever.
The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools, and a lot (not all but a lot) of “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” people just want to get recognition for being an ally but descend into the kind of thinking and talking that would make Stephen Miller blush the moment they’re actually asked to actually do anything to support marginalized communities, so I’m not surprised at all to see suburban Republicans fall for this
e; technically it wasn’t the white people with the FHA loans who created the suburbs as we know them today so much as it was the ones administering them and in the halls of power voting on the creation of municipalities
The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools,
Hang on, that doesn’t track with history as I know it currently.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is where the whole garbage “separate but equal” logic came from including on school funding where everyone but whites got poor resources for schools.
Suburbs were created as a result of soldiers returning from WWII which would have been starting in 1945 with a the majority in 1946 after VJ day with the Japanese surrendering.
It would be another 8 years before Brown v Board of Education (1954) shot down “separate but equal” for schools allowing integration, and even then it wouldn’t have meant instant emptying of inner cities for suburbs until the early 60s or so.
So suburbs already were a thing and not caused by white people not wanting to fund black schools. Yes, exit to suburbs accelerated because of that, but suburbs weren’t created because of it.
Prior to Brown, many of today’s suburban municipalities were just neighborhoods of the cities they were near, neighborhoods that were almost entirely populated by white people due to racist administration of FHA loans, racist zoning laws, and racist real estate business practices. Post Brown is when a lot of them started to be spun off into independent municipal governments by state legislatures with their own mayors and city councils and school districts.
So, rereading it now, I feel like I should correct my initial comment here - it wasn’t the white people with FHA loans who started this process of creating segregated communities, it was the ones who administered those loans and who were writing the laws incorporating them as independent government entities.
The 'burbs mostly got built by GIs returning from WWII. There wasn’t room enough in the cities for all of them. I strongly doubt that “tax money going to fund black kids schools” was even a thought for most of them, let alone a primary motivator.
I’m not saying redlining didn’t happen. I’m saying that returning GIs didn’t intentionally build neighborhoods and redline them away from blacks to prevent paying taxes to black schools.
Maybe the GIs that physically built or bought their own homes, but the developers and companies that did the building and selling of homes to the GIs sure did.
And for a large portion of them: they would have gone along with the enforced racial segregation of the time, which was the system in place designed to separate more than just tax money.
I live in the PNW and there are developed communities, (mostly waterfront), built right after WW2 and explicitly written in their covenants bamned access to non-whites.
So a GI who bought one of those houses may not have cared too much personally, but the system is what facilitated it. Which is why it has nothing to do with personal conviction.
What amazed me is that Trump managed to deeply entrench himself in suburban Republicans. I had several family friends growing up that were that sort of “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative” folks that supported gay marriage but have since jumped the fucking shark into crazy town.
The surprising thing to me is just how little backbone those asshats have.
Not all of us. That used to describe me. But I realized fiscal conservatism isn’t being responsible with money, it’s using money to pursue a conservative social agenda. Now I’m just a cheap liberal.
In a saner world, I’d probably consider myself a conservative, in the world we actually live in though, I’m not touching anything the conservative parties have anything to do with.
I generally think that things should overall trend towards being more liberal, and conservatism should just kind of be a moderating factor, not really working against a liberal agenda, just kind of slowing it down, making sure everything is fully thought through before we jump into anything, that the plans and funding and contingencies and such are in place, and in some cases just slowing things down because some stubborn assholes (mostly the current “conservatives”) need to be eased into certain changes because their tiny minds will explode if you go to fast
You are describing an actual Conservative, basically someone who acts like a brake. They can slow down or even temporarily stop progress to buy time while things are thought through. For all practical purposes these people no longer exist in the Republican Party. They’ve been replaced by MAGA.
However MAGA aren’t “Conservatives” because they don’t function as brakes. To stick with the vehicle theme MAGA is trying to shift the vehicle into reverse. They aren’t just trying to stop progress they are actively trying to go backwards!. IMO these people should be called “Regressives” because that word most accurately describes their political goals. They want to unwind progress and regress to a previous time and state of existence.
Yup. The MAGA crowd isn’t conservative. The MAGA crowd is regressivist, trying to install feudalism/theocracy. Meanwhile the MAGA leaders plan to take advantage of the ensuing chaos to rob the country. It’s all just a big fat heist with a lot of deceived fools.
No he and you are just describing a liberal. There are not and never have been your mythical “actual conservatives”. Conservatives have always been about enforcing social hierarchies. In America there isn’t hereditary nobility but the Republicans have gone full mask off that they really would like that.
Well…yes. Of course we are.
At one time the Republicans were liberals and even advertised themselves as such. If you crack a history book you can see that what’s happening with MAGA right now isn’t the first time that the RP has been through this.
Aside from goings on in the 1870s we can look to the 1950s and the Eisenhower Republicans. You should look those up.
Nah, my lived experience says differently. Dad was a Republican and he never made any racial or social distinctions on anyone. Neither did my mother. The only people my family had a problem with were Russians…and with damn good reason. So that means he was a Republican without being a Conservative. A liberal Republican if you will…and at one time the US was full of them.
Your claims are so overly broad that they’ve slipped into revisionism.
The user you responded to watched Innuendo Studio on yt and came away with the one talking point (the whole hierarchy thing)
I’m only expressing my thoughts on what conservatism means to me and what I think it should be. I’m not making any claims that it is what conservatism actually is in this country or any other, or about what it has been at any point in time (even if they sometimes like to pretend that it’s what they’re about.) like I said, I don’t align myself with any of the so-called conservative movements that are out there.
Speaking as someone who considers themselves a lefty, this is the kind of conservative I want to have a voice in my government (like, 39 seats in the Senate tops kind of voice, but it’s a worthy perspective and engaging with it makes progressive plans stronger)
deleted by creator
They were never socially liberal.
It just wasn’t socially acceptable to act like an ambulatory dumpster fire at the time.
They were always what they are now. Just afraid.
“Socially liberal but fiscally conservative,” they say, while voting exclusively for candidates who are socially conservative and fiscally corrupt. It’s always smacked of “I’m not racist, but…” to me.
I used to have a friend like this.
Back in 2008, it was clear that she was watching Fox News for her primary source of “information” about the world and politics. Even then, it was a constant headache to push back against the one-sided, stilted, non-scientific, ideological slop that channel churns out. Since this was an election year, Facebook just made it even worse. She constantly re-posted all manner of emotionally provocative nonsense without thinking.
After the election, it only got worse. I watched this person go from semi-reasonable and rational, to a slowly devolving, emotionally driven, irrational, and fearful person over the following three years. It was as if reason itself was slowly draining out of her life. To make matters worse: at the start of this, all of her friends were socially liberal and left-leaning to deep left politically. I, along with a lot of others, slowly pulled out of her social sphere. I think she only has political sparring partners left on Facebook.
What makes me sad is that, outside of anything involving politics, this person was generous, kind, a great host, outgoing, and fun-loving. I want my friend back, but I also can’t afford the time to babysit another person’s broken brain forever.
The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools, and a lot (not all but a lot) of “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” people just want to get recognition for being an ally but descend into the kind of thinking and talking that would make Stephen Miller blush the moment they’re actually asked to actually do anything to support marginalized communities, so I’m not surprised at all to see suburban Republicans fall for this
e; technically it wasn’t the white people with the FHA loans who created the suburbs as we know them today so much as it was the ones administering them and in the halls of power voting on the creation of municipalities
Hang on, that doesn’t track with history as I know it currently.
So suburbs already were a thing and not caused by white people not wanting to fund black schools. Yes, exit to suburbs accelerated because of that, but suburbs weren’t created because of it.
Prior to Brown, many of today’s suburban municipalities were just neighborhoods of the cities they were near, neighborhoods that were almost entirely populated by white people due to racist administration of FHA loans, racist zoning laws, and racist real estate business practices. Post Brown is when a lot of them started to be spun off into independent municipal governments by state legislatures with their own mayors and city councils and school districts.
So, rereading it now, I feel like I should correct my initial comment here - it wasn’t the white people with FHA loans who started this process of creating segregated communities, it was the ones who administered those loans and who were writing the laws incorporating them as independent government entities.
The 'burbs mostly got built by GIs returning from WWII. There wasn’t room enough in the cities for all of them. I strongly doubt that “tax money going to fund black kids schools” was even a thought for most of them, let alone a primary motivator.
Post WW2 was when racial segregation was still legal. Redlining was a long documented thing and definitely included tax money going to schools.
I’m not saying redlining didn’t happen. I’m saying that returning GIs didn’t intentionally build neighborhoods and redline them away from blacks to prevent paying taxes to black schools.
Maybe the GIs that physically built or bought their own homes, but the developers and companies that did the building and selling of homes to the GIs sure did.
And for a large portion of them: they would have gone along with the enforced racial segregation of the time, which was the system in place designed to separate more than just tax money.
I live in the PNW and there are developed communities, (mostly waterfront), built right after WW2 and explicitly written in their covenants bamned access to non-whites.
So a GI who bought one of those houses may not have cared too much personally, but the system is what facilitated it. Which is why it has nothing to do with personal conviction.
The human urge for bootlicking is so much stronger than I thought