Just so you right-wingers know *what* you’re cheering on redux
Another article that says things better than I could: https://eand.co/this-is-why-america-is-becoming-a-poor-country-41a8d6003e90.
I know that lately it’s been hip and happening if you’re on the right to ignore reality. After all, we’ve seen the Laffer curve not work out time and time again, and yet you all keep voting like you’re Charlie Brown running to kick a football that by now you should be able to figure out that Lucy is going to yank away from you. You all remain deeply committed to the idea that the invisible hand of the market will fix everything – and let’s not even talk about the obvious economic sense of solar and wind, and your attempts to lie to the american people – some of which are apparently dumb enough to not understand that the grid has required some energy storage in order to remain stable for the last 50+ years.
But let’s talk about what voting for the right in a modern context means.
It means “People who have bad luck should starve and die.”
It means “If you happen to live in a watershed where fracking is occuring, you deserve the cancer that’s going to kill you. You also deserve the bankruptcy that our horrible, corrupt, broken healthcare system will push you into for treatments before you die.”
It means “I believe in freedom only when it’s a freedom I want to have”. In particular, you shouldn’t have the freedom to mess with your blood chemistry – unless it’s with alcohol – but you should have the freedom to carry a tool for killing other people. You shouldn’t have the freedom to do *anything* if you’re black.
It means “The police should kill any non-white people they want to, for any reason, and I will cheer them on. Murder of innocents by police and by our army is perfectly acceptable.”
It means “The rich deserve to be able to enslave the rest of us.”
It means “We should choose the dumbest possible way to generate and use energy if it makes the people who are currently rich richer.”
It means “Corporations should be more important than people.”
It means “You should be educated with a series of lies that matches how we’d like you to see the world so we can go on raping, murdering, and looting”
It means “If you are not a white male, you deserve to be a third-class citizen”
It means “Capitalism is more important than people. If capitalism isn’t compatible with mass automation, continue with mass automation and just let the excess workers starve to death. They are worth nothing anyway.”
It means “Life is cheap.”. In fact, we underline that fact with the USA’s COVID death record.
It means “Justice is for sale to the highest bidder.”
And, lately, it means “The majority’s votes only count if the majority voted Republican.”, along with the corollaries of “If you can’t win, cheat” and “lying about voter fraud in order to cheat your way to a victory is totally valid.. if you’re a republican.”
It means “Every child left behind”. It means standardized tests and money/funding are more important than teaching. After all, gotta make those profits at the standardized testing companies. It also means the rich should have a good education and the poor should have a bad one so we can make sure they remain poor. And of course, it means we should lie to our children – we should pretend there is any reason at all to think the Bible is anything other than a bunch of stories written by a bunch of people 2000 years ago, for example.
I’m not even going to touch the subject of religion, since there’s a whole category on this blog specifically for that.
I could go on for a while..
January 5th, 2021 at 11:56 pm
And my, how you do go on. This was almost bitter and angry enough to be one of my own rants against the kyriarchy. *hugs* I say all of that with the utmost respect and approval, of course. I do so appreciate your social conscience.
January 8th, 2021 at 7:03 am
I, uh, sort of have a hard time believing that that rather damning, if not horrific list of assertions is the core catechism of everybody who fancies themselves a conservative. But I’m just a rock and roll singer.
January 8th, 2021 at 10:54 pm
I doubt it’s the core catechism. But it’s the brush you all are tainted with, because it’s what your elected officials *do*. And you keep electing them, and defending them.
Originally, conservatism was supposed to be about believing he who governs least governs best, and/or let’s keep doing it how we have always been doing it. But unfortunately the conservative mindset lends itself to being led astray in certain ways, and, well, here we are.
I should mention that America has been moving steadily to the right for a long time, partially because we were brainwashed to believe any kind of collectivism was anathama – but also that I am sure if we went to the extremes of the left over and over, moving them further and further, I’d have to write a different, but equally disturbing, list of were *that* led.
January 9th, 2021 at 1:49 am
“it’s the brush you all are tainted with”.
And therein lies a huge problem. The two “sides” and their broad brushes swung mightily from within an envelope of self-assured, unimpeachable moral rectitude, unlike those “other guys”, and as long as we keep buying into “OUR guys, no matter what”, the little gray men in their little gray cars in their little gray suits are going to keep wheeling the safe out of the back door while assuring all and sundry that “there’s nothing to see here.” What a fascinating end to a nation founded upon throwing off an oppressive and uncaring king.
January 10th, 2021 at 11:02 am
The brush isn’t coming from our side. (In so much as there are two sides, that is. I don’t imagine the Clintons and I have much at all in common, in terms of beliefs and values.) It’s coming from inside the house — it’s the consequences of behavior. If your guys (again, the whole two-sides thing is ridiculously simplistic, but whatever) lock immigrant children in cages and hire guards who abuse them, with no oversight, well then you’re the guys who lock up and abuse children for the crime of following their parents to a new life. And now, hey hey, you’re the guys who commit insurrection and sedition by attempting violent coups. It’s not our brush panting things here. It’s reality.
January 11th, 2021 at 5:49 am
Thank you for outlining the “your guys bad / our guys good” thing better than I could have.
January 13th, 2021 at 6:25 pm
Well, “my guys” haven’t committed armed insurrection/revolution since 1783. I notice that you just skimmed over everything I said about things being more complicated than two sides. I say “skimmed over”, but chances are you just ignored it. Just like you’re ignoring the stark reality of the situation to talk about things like it’s two football teams facing off or something. That’s a nice tone of disapproval you have going on there, pretending to be above “our guys good” when that’s all you assert. That *is* your argument. “Well, you just say that because you think your guys are good.” I don’t, exactly. What I think is that they are *better*. And that’ll have to be good enough for now.
It isn’t two sides, by the way, unless you’re on the train that says “everyone not with me is against me”. That isn’t something I believe, by the way. It *is* something Donald Trump believes. Which is why we’re divided into camps now. And it’s something you seem to have signed on with. Simplistic. But don’t accuse everyone *else* of being the same way because we dislike a particular person/mindset/mob. Try some nuance. It is possible to dislike bankers, industrialists, *and* a particular politician. It’s even possible to dislike people on both “sides” while being clear that one side is clearly worse.
I don’t know why I’m bothering. I’m usually past having to vocalize SIWOTI. But seriously, you’re implying that the host of this here blog doesn’t think about things from multiple perspectives? He does that more than anyone else I know. I’d like to think I do it too, but often I don’t. We’re all susceptible to the whole “our crowd” thing. But some people are more susceptible than others. I guarantee you that he’s spent more time thinking about your perspective than you have his. Because you don’t even seem to know what it is.
January 14th, 2021 at 5:08 am
Ever notice how it all just pulls into the station at “orange man bad” with an acerbic and accusatory assurance of “our guys!” unimpeachable moral rectitude? That was sort of my point. I can assure you that I live and breathe the nuanced, but there has to be some nuance there first.