cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17713638
““If we jail Trump, get rid of Maga, end the electoral college, ban voter ID, censor free speech, we’ll save democracy,” says one meme in a QAnon channel on Telegram that depicts Biden in a Nazi uniform with a Hitler mustache”
Apparently they at least understand their opponent’s view .
You so desperately want to separate the two, you’re literally arguing the opposite. Conservatism has been the Republican Party since the 1950s at minimum and much more likely quite earlier than that.
If conservatives think the Republican Party doesn’t represent them, then why has that party continued to exist?
Short answer: because they’re the same thing. You can’t on one hand declare that “they don’t represent conservativism” and then on the other hand allow the party to continue.
It’s not at all correlation — it is exactly causation. Conservatism == Republicanism. And the reason it does is because it gives conservatives the platform and power that they desperately want in order to enact their backward ideals, whether economic or political, it makes no difference.
If you feel so strongly in your position, then instead of quibbling over semantics, maybe start your own party of such righteous conservative ideology and let’s see whether it serves those ideals or whether it devolves into the same bullshit that the Republican Party has for decades.
I would assert that any party based on conservative ideals will, at some point, become akin to what the Republican Party has become. And the sole reason — critical thinking is not a part of the ideology.
Because money is power. The hard-liners running the show keep it that way while ma and pa everyman in the midwest really don’t have any kind of say in it.
I firmly do actually believe that, yes. Eventually. But even when it devolves, it’s not going to be all of them. It’ll be a minority or people who have the money, which gives them the power, while ma and pa everyman in the midwest (again) has little control over who uses their ideals for what purpose.
Like the original person that replied to me, you’re doing the indefensible of automatically painting every single conservative with the same brush, and that’s just flat out inaccurate.
There’s a difference between believing in some backwards ideals like conservativism, and acting on them. I live surrounded by Conservative thinkers. And yeah, they’ll admit that they don’t believe in gay marraige, lgbtq, immigtation, etc… all of that stuff. Is it backwards? Yes…absolutely. Will they take up arms against a government and think advocate violence? No, that’s stupid. Despite their individual beliefs in their own home, they generally have the opinion of let everyone live their life.
Yeah, there’s people who are insane like that, and want to push that belief onto everyone. And yeah, their unfortunately in charge of the narrative of the GOP and the Republican Party.
But painting every single person on one side of the line as the same is not only wrong, it’s harmful to any sort of debate because if you pretend all conservatives are violent racists than you’ll just alienate the ones who aren’t.
That’s because every single conservative I have met or known, act and think the exact same way — selfish and self-righteous, and they damn everyone else who isn’t themselves or their family members.
And I have met thousands, since I have lived in the bastion of conservatism for 30 years (and yes I’m quite unhappy here and can’t wait to move).
So yeah I’ll paint them all with that same brush because they ALL voted for Trump (the literal dozens that I know and keep tabs on, which is a fair sampling against all I’ve ever met) and took away rights from people I care about by getting 3 lying justices on the Supreme Court.
As the saying goes…if the shoe fits…