In this thread: putting words into other people’s mouths.
I’m curious too, are there any actual conservatives here, you know, the people to whom OP’s request was given?
Why are you asking here? You’re not going to get any conservatives to answer here, just a circlejerk
Im not allowed in conservative spaces.
Make a new account and ask then. This is an echo chamber, all you’re going to get is paragraphs of writing acting as a masturbatory exercise.
They don’t allow it.
Conservatism is the attempt to rationalize greed.
Conservatives don’t have an ideology beyond ‘I am a good person’, not as a value judgement, but as an assertion of objective truth. It is inherently selfish.
- I am a good person so the things that I want are definitionally good and the things I don’t want are definitionally bad.
- If I didn’t want something yesterday but do today it was bad then but it’s not now because I want it.
- If I wanted something yesterday and don’t want it today it was good then because I wanted it and bad now because I don’t.
- I am a good person so the good things that happen to me are deserved and the bad are injustices.
- If you don’t agree with me you are a bad person and the bad things that happen to you are deserved and the good are injustices.
- Winning is all that matters because it puts the good people who want the right things (because I am good and I want them too) in power instead of the bad people who want the wrong things (because I don’t want them.)
Short answer, without trying to use political adversaries to try and provoke an unfounded fear response, no they absolutely can’t. Their entire ideology is that government is out of control, it takes too much, spends too much, and doesn’t give enough. But then the first thing they do when they gain power is entrench government power, control, and overreach, while they simultaneously strip citizens of their rights, and means to acquire enough wealth to make significant changes and contributions from a financial perspective.
If you want the TLDR, conservatives hate our government, and by extension, our country. unless they, and only they can wield it’s power to the full extent, and gain all of its benefits, at the expense of people they disagree with, or view as ‘less’ than them. When they cannot do that, they will claim that the government takes too much, and has no accountability, and exceeds its means. When they are in control however, their only concern is that the ‘bad people’ are trying to constrain their power, and force accountability.
They exist because they create a political environment that’s dysfunctional, blame the other side for the dysfunction, then Everytime they gain power, they entrench bullshit that will further perpetuate political and societal dysfunction.
What they say: Small government
What they do: Spend massively on police, military, and surveillance while pushing laws that dictate personal behavior (abortion bans, anti-trans legislation, drug criminalization).
What they say: Free market
What they do: Hand out subsidies to corporations, give massive tax breaks to the wealthy, and block labor protections.
What they say: Traditional values
What they do: Use “tradition” as a smokescreen to resist civil rights, suppress diversity, and enforce a narrow Christian nationalist vision.
What they say: Personal responsibility
What they do: Blame poor people for their conditions while defending corporate bailouts and generational wealth hoarding.
What they say: Rule of law
What they do: Apply it selectively—crack down on protests they dislike, but excuse insurrectionists and lawbreaking when it suits them.
What they say: Cautious to change
What they do: Rush radical deregulation and culture war laws through state legislatures while blocking any progress toward equity or justice.
Thank you.
Stay in power forever.
Move all of the resources away from those they don’t like to those they do.
Subjugate women into sex objects owned by men who don’t view them as valuable outside of that framework.
Fortify their survival in luxury escape zones while dictating orders to those that made their money for them.
Start micropenis wars.
Maximize the safety of pedophiles.
Kill off the poorest Americans to lower all ships, knowing theirs will sink the least.
You nearly touched on it. The war on women’s rights is because they’re terrified we’ll become like Japan, without children border born to feed the tax machine. It’s a pyramid scheme that collapses without the next generation. People stop having kids when they don’t trust the future, and that’s where we’re at.
It’s not even about lack of trust in the future, it’s about what we picture that future to be. I think it’s more about not wanting to continue this unsustainable pyramid scheme based on the myth of infinite growth. Things that grow infinitely kill their hosts, become plagues, destroy ecosystems, and then eventually die out because they have nothing left to live with.
To me, it’s about deciding whether we are going to spread out into the solar system and maybe eventually the galaxy if we manage to survive that long, chasing that unsustainable goal of endless growth like a plague of locusts, consuming everything in our path and leaving behind only destruction and death and waste, until we can find nothing more to consume or until we starve ourselves to death before we can find enough. The other option depends on whether we can see the potential of thoughtful progress, embrace sustainability and think about controlling our growth and maintaining our population at a comfortable level, allowing us to find a more harmonious and intelligent way forward. The question is not whether we can continue to grow unsustainably – we have the ability to continue growing for the foreseeable future and certainly can pursue that if that’s what we decide we want, the question is whether we should, and the answer I think most people would come up with if they actually think about it is that we shouldn’t.
I don’t think most people necessarily think of it in those terms, I think a lot of people just look at things like the cost of living and at their own general happiness and comfort and value they get out of living, and that subtly but consistently influences whether people decide whether to have 0, 1, or 2 kids and stop there, or whether to have 3, 4, 5, or more, with people who are in poorer overall situations tending to have more, not less. This is why developed countries tend to have lower birth rates, typically below even replacement rate. One benefit of the globalization that has been done and the resulting massive wealth transfer to less developed countries is that it is lowering their birth rates and slowing global population growth. That is clearly visible through data. Demographics are a deceptively complicated thing, and are not always intuitive, but we do have a pretty good handle on it despite what it may seem like, and the world population is currently projected to stop growing around what is probably a reasonably sustainable level (about 10 to 11 billion).
The problem is that our attitudes towards sustainability and equality tend to get thrown out the window every time another major technological change or social upheaval happens, and then all bets are off again as we figure out how to fit that back into the new picture of existence and expectations and growth and progress. Some medical breakthrough causing significant human life extensions or essentially immortality could throw the entire population situation completely off base in mere decades and that will rapidly become a serious maybe catastrophic challenge. If you think the housing crisis is bad now, imagine how bad it would be if every homeowner lived for eternity and babies still keep getting born and growing up and then imagine you try to fix it by telling people they have to stop having babies or that they can’t live as long as they want to.
A lot of the population growth we saw in the last century or two, from mere hundreds of millions into the many billions, came about almost entirely due to human life extensions and reduction of infant mortality. And of course that’s a good thing, and we are right to strive for it, but it strains our economic foundation more than anyone realizes. Even small changes to these data points, resulting in people living a little longer on average, can have massive and continuous impacts on population growth until they reach a new equilibrium, which may be far higher than you expect and adds up to enormous amounts of additional resources needed.
Technology has given us all so much more resources than any generation in history, the problem is there are also a lot more people to share it with, so in some very real ways it is in fact less per person. Some of that is intentional, some of it isn’t. The math of demographics and population growth are absolutely relentless and sometimes pretty unforgiving. We have to be really, really smart about it if we want to get ahead of it. And it’s risky business dealing with very sensitive subjects.
They want to go back to the good old days because from their perspective, it would benefit them. They would be right if they were rich.
Before Nazis, things like racism and oppressing the poor were all normal. In fact, only considering your own tribe’s interests is how humanity lived most its life.
With modern science and education we invented a post tribalistic society, we made tons of strides and started identifying through values and ideals (like the American dream). It’s truly next level from what came before.
Some people just dont like this level and want to go back, they think the grass is greener and it may be for some, but not for almost all of us (working class).
Mm just dont think that’s a clear picture of what is happening here. There might be some truth but its not exactly an ideology.
You cant just say, “I want it to be like it was.” Then when asked, “ok when exactly do you want to go back to?” and they just say, “when it was great!”
The answer is money:
They want the economic power and freedom the middle class had in the post WWII era combined with the shameless selfishness of reganomics.
The reason why they can’t put those into a clear statement is because it’s a feeling, they don’t know why things were better in the past, so they express by rejecting the present and progress.
Remember, Hitler didn’t rally by talking about how great fascism is, he rallied by talking on an emotional level about greatness of the past. He spoke to people who were burned by rapid inflation but didn’t really talk about monetary policy but he sold them a vision of prosperity by “removing bad actors” (see DEI drama).
Conservativism is, and always has been, a misdirect. It isn’t an ideology. It’s something you say so that it sounds like you have principles, but there are no inherently conservative principles.
Check your history books, it’s always been this way.
Conservatives establish their priorities by first drawing a circle on the ground around themselves, and the deciding who is with them inside the circle. Everyone inside the circle is a member of their group, the Self. The Self is good because they are inside the circle, and the circle was drawn to define who is good.
And that’s it. Everything else is a flexible derivation of that decision. Policies that are good for the Self are good because the Self is good. Policies that are bad for the Self are bad. You get the picture. Everything a Conservative does or says is in service of defending and advancing the Self’s interests.
Importantly, anyone outside the circle is the Other. The Other can be bad, or they can be irrelevant. The Other cannot be good, because they aren’t the Self. If the Other tries to oppose the Self, the Other is bad. If the Other does not oppose the Self or even assists the Self, they are irrelevant.
If the Self lies or cheats or murders, then those were necessary acts in service of the Self, and therefore good. If the Other acts heroically or honorably or respectfully, it is irrelevant.
The good news is that you can be inside the circle, as long as you agree to go along with the game. Support everything the Self does, oppose anything the Other does to stop you, and refuse to acknowledge the inherent ridiculousness of your lack of fundamental beliefs.
What happens if 100% of humans are inside the circle, and there is no other?
Nobody knows, conservatives have never allowed that to happen.
They redraw a smaller circle
This is amazing. I copied it and sent it to my wife. Well done. 👍
Because your wife needs to hear it? Or because she’d get a kick from hearing it?
Kick. I couldn’t be married to one of them.
But you also have to look like you belong in the circle: look like them, use their shibboleths. A Black trans woman will never be in the circle.
That said, the circle is dumb and the people within it are asocial jerks.
Eh, those things are flexible. If you’re willing to play the game, you can be inside the circle. See: Log Cabin Republicans, Raphael Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Ben Carson, you can be “one of the good ones” as long as you’re willing to toe the line.
It’s not that they are asocial. It’s narcissism, plain and simple.
Pinching pennies from public resources into private pockets, as harmless as that may seem when it starts, inevitably has the endgame of slavery.
Unfortunately for them, nobody wants to have kids in the economy they’ve created, and by the time they realize it, their only options are to either raise the retirement age, or open the borders.
Either way I would not be surprised if we have an upcoming generation of suicide bombers who— because they can’t afford healthcare and don’t want to contribute anymore to the system— take themselves out in a blaze of glory alongside their overlords.
Where do I sign up for my explosive collar so I can live in the bunkers?
The guys at the top, or the common rube? The ones at the top are just there to steal everything that isn’t nailed down, the rest are so full of disinformation and bullshit that they couldn’t tell you the time of day without Fox news telling them first.
Worst part is many of them would rather go down with the ship than admit that they got fucked by a whiny man in orange makeup wearing a diaper.
Well, they use to at least pretend to have prinicples.
I mean they were openly fascist then, too. Its just that you had (more) liberals and centrists running interference for conservatives to defend the fascistic aspects of their own ideology.
“Own the libs”
So, slavery?
Republicans: “Hey, you suggested it, but now that we’re thinking about it…”
When in america…
