What I hate is there’s purely selfish reasons to help too.
People with nothing to lose, tend to act like they have nothing left to lose.
And that’s usually bad for society
This is the messaging that we, as the left, fail to get across. Multiracial, multiethnic, international cooperation is good and has knock on effects for everyone.
But those words can’t overcome primal fear and greed.
Not saying the liberal message doesn’t need fine tuning. It absolutely does.
But let’s not ignore the fact that for many conservatives, suffering is the goal.
Conservatives are fully okay with things like welfare and social programs…so long as it’s only for them.
It’s all those other people who are too lazy to get a job and work for a living. They are the ones that don’t deserve government hand outs.
There is a good Adam Conover podcast episode where he interviews Corey Robin. In the episode Robin states the main premise of his book, which is that the central underlying ideology of the right is the belief that some people are better than others and deserve to be in power. A lot of the rights’ beliefs and ideas evolve over time but they evolve in service of that core idea. It’s the one thing that stays consistent over time going back to the french revolutions.
Multiracial, multiethnic, international cooperation, helping the homeless, helping the poor. No matter how you spin it by trying to convince them of the benefits ect, the right will never be on board. They don’t believe those groups deserve help or should be helped. They fundamentally believe it is morally good to depower certain groups and empower other groups.
That one idea explains so much of the rights blatant hypocrisy. Welfare disproportionality going to red states is good because it’s going to the good people. Rich people getting richer is good because it’s going to the good people. Hurting minorities is good because they are the bad people, helping them is bad. Some people are innately worthy and some people are not. Anything the good people do is good, anything the bad people do is bad. The same action can be good or bad depending on who is doing it.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
Ayy another Conover fan!
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In other words, fear. The cruelty is their best idea for keeping the people they fear under control.
It’s their only idea, because it’s how they were raised and how they live their lives.
The problem is when they pay their taxes they still think that money is “theirs.” If that were the case the government in no way shape of form should be able to completely ignore our calls to scale back the military. Like it or not once that money is in the system the only say you get is one vote.
I read that as international corporation.
We’ve actually arrived at the point in social development where it’s more beneficial for everyone to spread the resources around for everyone else to have as dignified a standard of living as is needed.
The problem is that the right know this and absolutely do not care about it, because to them that net benefit to society is worth less than the ideological goal of an oligarchy of household owners where every man of house is king absolute over his subjects and said subjects have no means to escape the abuse without entering into crushing poverty except to submit to the whims of a new king.
The definition of conservative is preference for old systems, policies, and power structures. There is no other definition. Conservatives are just people who resist and undo change on reflex.
What about the modern right?
They do not care about individual liberties – because that would mean they are liberals and they tell us they are not liberals. They do not care about making a more effective and efficient government – because that would mean they are progressives and they tell us they are not progressives. They do not care about having a fair, just society that promotes the most good for the most people – because that would make them socialists and they tells us they are not socialists.
Normal people think many different things at once about many different subjects. It’s normal to have policy preferences that are a combination of all these things are more – including conservative preferences to avoid change for its own sake. But normal, reasonable people realize there are competing motivations and goals that have to be balanced. The right tell us they are only conservative and nothing else because they are not reasonable people.
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The really bad thing about Lemmy is I can’t turn up the volume on my Fox News to drown you out. :(
the right know
I feel like you might be giving them too much credit here.
The spectrum is quite rellative. I live in a country where our right, would probably be called socialists if not communists in the US.
I mean it’s sort of… in the United States it’s less that our “right-wing” politicians hold particular positions and values, and more that they are committed to destroying the concept of government and undermining everything that constitutes a government. I think at this point even they don’t know why they’re doing it. Republicans represent the party of self-destruction and Democrats represent the party of “government should exist, but beyond that we don’t care much.”
Meanwhile the actual body politic of the American people, if you actually ask them, mostly support things far to the left of Democrats.
This went over my head entirely, can you explain what I assume is a fine meme
the Overton window is a concept that politicians only do what is “acceptable”, if you push further and further in a direction, things that were considered unacceptable in one epoch are now considered acceptable in another.
In the meme the Overton window is drifting extremely right extremely quickly (illustrated by the car) - implying that things that were unacceptably too far right are now considered more acceptable
It’s probably also because I’ve misused the meme format, as the meme implies a choice from your POV. I was saying ‘me and my friends have broadly been having the same political discourse which is balanced (the straight road), while the Overton window appears to have taken a handbrake turn to the right, of late’. Apols if I’ve butchered a meme but I couldn’t think of a better image at the time. :)
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”
Source: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hélder_CâmaraHélder Pessoa Câmara (7 February 1909 – 27 August 1999) was a Brazilian Catholic archbishop. A self-identified socialist, he was the Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, serving from 1964 to 1985, during the military dictatorship in Brazil.
So… that’s a yes then.
