The Meretricious Conservative Values

Why I have such an inherent problem with conservative values:

Something great I’ve recently heard was something like “Unless you can describe the other political ‘side’ to that side's satisfaction, you are biased”. Nearly all that is said of the ‘opposition’ is merely a caricature, painted in the most negative, exaggerated way. How would you describe the ‘other side’?

I’m not democrat or republican, but I do lean liberal, and I CAN describe the conservative party to their satisfaction (standing on the shoulders of giants, anyway, though I'm sure some asshole will deny satisfaction out of spite). I might still be biased, but I've found traits that conservatives have been show to, and admitted to, holding dear. They value tradition and loyalty as a rule while liberals value empathy and fairness. I figured that once I found a good, unbiased, accurate answer for what liberals value and what conservatives value, I would see merit to both sides. While I, of course, agree with empathy and fairness, I actually found that I really am opposed to the ideals of conservatives.

They sound, at first mention, like good qualities. Tradition is linked to culture and culture should be celebrated, after all. Loyalty is always a welcome trait in those you surround yourself with. Right? In my view, these values are simply meretricious.

To begin, loyalty is the root of their fervent nationalism. Also, something which sounds good at first mention, but is it really? What is nationalism? It is not merely ‘celebrating’ your nation and culture, in practice, anyway. It is thinking your nation better than others. It is looking out only for your nation. Prioritizing American lives over those who live elsewhere, for instance, being far more angered by the death of one American soldier than you are for the 'accidental' bombing of an Iraqi school, killing dozens of innocent foreign children. Nationalism is a simple bias - nothing more. It is arrogant to its core. I’m not saying you shouldn’t praise your nations victories or cheer for your nation at the Olympics - only that it’s a bias not to be taken seriously. Nations and borders and nationalism and patriotism are all arbitrary.

Something I believe that would confound conservatives with bemusement: American lives are NOT worth more than any other life. Or, rather, other lives are worth just as much. An Iraqi Muslim, Hindu Indian, communist Russian, Chinese Buddhist - I posit that the majority of conservatives believe they themselves are ‘worth’ more simply being (usually) Christian and being American. Further, I believe the majority of those specific individuals to be suffering from heightened levels of clinical psychopathy. It is the epitome of such, with reduced levels of empathy and remorse, anti-social behaviors, and increased egotistical traits. It’s also another example of my hypothesis that it is generally the nature of humanity to seek out any excuse they can find to think themselves ‘better’ than another group, value being in the self-esteem and catharsis of doing so.

I am lucky to have been born in America - it’s not a bad place. However, these dilettantes of reason claim that any who are not of the opinion that America is literally the ‘best’, relative and unquantifiable as that assertion is, are somehow unpatriotic and thus susceptible to as much ad hominem as their detractors can conjure. They constantly spout cliches about America being ‘free’ and this somehow being a prime reason why it’s the best. Besides the fact that ‘freedom’ is not binary, but rather a gradient, there are almost 200 other nations in the world and (as of today) 86 are classified in the same category of ‘freedom’ as the U.S. A further 59 are ranked ‘partially free’, and only 50 are ‘not free’. What are they talking about when they shout down logical concerns of the spread of violent nationalism with cries of “FREEDOM!”? All I know for certain is that William Wallace wouldn’t know what the hell they were going on about. But wait, conservatives are also not the party of personal liberty. Why, then, do they even get to use the word ‘freedom’? They want to control individuals more than liberals, yes? Is there anyone who would even argue that? Sure, they’re against regulations and taxes, yet are far more likely to support legislation banning religions (other than Christianity, of course) in various ways, lifestyle choices like gay marriage and other LGBT rights, lifestyle choices like drugs, extremely personal choices like abortion, etc. They offer more personal freedom in only one other category that I can think of: gun control. This statement is absolutely biased, but fucking christ, they’re on the wrong side of all empathy and evidence. The only freedom they truly espouse is their personal freedom - all the rest must submit to their world view. They often wave flags that include the motto "Don't tread on me". I think there would be less abrasive American politics if they changed it slightly to, "Don't treat on us". They lack empathy for others. The main offensive destruction of freedom in their eyes involves their money and their access to guns. Nobody else matters.

What, actually, is the point of nationalism and patriotism? Ask yourself, why should you believe, logically, that your nation is better? It’s a primitive tribe mentality. I am not “for” any nation. I am for humanity. I’ve said this before, but all wars are civil wars in my eyes. All people are of my nation, if you will. Something that would truly get me ostracized in any conservative part of the nation is the treating of our military as normal people; As human beings with no more inherent reverence than anyone else. It’s another unintuitive, meretricious statement that they deserve respect intrinsically. Many are extremely respectable. Many are far better people than I will ever be, but their being a part of the military has nothing to do with their goodness. Many in the military are asshats. Many deservedly have gone to prison for committing atrocities. The myth of ‘protecting our freedom’ is just that - a myth. Perhaps it was true at one time, but not anymore for the majority of our armed forces. Our counter-intelligence agencies working to combat hacking of American assets do more for actually protecting our country than our military has done since WWII. (that’s actually a good thing, when you think of the alternative). The only way our military has actually protected us since then is merely as a deterrent. The point of deterrents, however, is lacking the need to actually use them.

I don’t doubt that this view of mine would be demonized and straw-manned as “Brent hates our veterans!” or some such. I don’t think being in the military is inherently bad or that a majority of those people are ‘bad’ in any way - I simply don’t think they’re inherently ‘good’ in any way either. They must earn respect the same as everyone else. I don’t give them a free pass like conservatives do. It’s propaganda. Chris Kyle was a dehumanizing, unempathetic asshole, for instance, calling the Iraqi people 'savages', saying it was 'fun' to kill them, saying it's 'no big deal' to kill, and it was proven on multiple occasions to be a liar. When the nationalist propaganda movie American Sniper came out, he, ironically, became a poster boy for the conservative party. Apt.

Tradition, while somewhat also encouraging nationalism, has other more pertinent problems to it. Tradition is great in some context, but research has made a strong correlation between ‘tradition’ and authoritarianism (the political science term - not the dictatorship).

Authoritarians have “a worldview that values order and authority and distrusts outsiders and social change.” Other articles have pointed out that those with low IQ gravitate towards hierarchical systems of government and religions. These things provide them with order and are easy to understand. They tell them exactly how to think so they need not exert mental force to understand it. They value black and white. “Immigrants are the enemy and I will simply deport them all.” “I’m gonna bomb the shit outta them.” “Drain the swamp.” “Build the wall.” Simple solutions, even if not viable or rational. Little thought. I’m not asserting the Republican party has low IQ - I am saying low IQ individuals are largely drawn towards that party because it deals almost exclusively in black and white. It is highly appealing to authoritarians whose mental capacity can’t handle any grey. “Arabs are people too? Na. Bomb them all and let God sort them out.” Honestly, I feel bad for them - I know there are very strong and intelligent Republicans with noble efforts. Their messages have been completely drowned out in the past decade by those fools. Another quote from Chris Kyle's book: "I have a strong sense of justice. It's pretty much black and white. I don't see too much grey." Yes, that much is clear.

"Faced with an uncertain world and lack of direction, people will "escape from freedom.", wrote Erich Fromm, a social psychologist and sociologist, in 1941. More recently, a published research paper by Stanley Feldman and Karen Stenner titled “Perceived Threat and Authoritarianism” tried to get to the bottom of this. In a clever move designed to limit bias answers, they asked participants not direct questions of authoritarianism, but rather, their preferences for raising their children.

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“Please tell us which one you think is more important for a child to have/be:”

• Independence, or

• Respect for elders

• Obedience, or

• Self-reliance

• Curiosity, or

• Good manners

• Considerate, or

• Well-behaved

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They found that the correlation was very strong between the people with answers that valued order and authority (respect for elders, obedience, manners, well-behaved) and Trump voters. PHD student Matthew MacWilliams did 2 polls, both finding that authoritarianism was the best predictor of Trump support - more than age, income, education, etc. That is especially surprising to me as I, myself, put together the data from the caucuses and primaries and found that the states with low IQ were far more likely to vote for Trump than those with high IQ and found it to be an excellent predictor itself. Obviously, there would be a correlation with low IQ and authoritarianism, but I would have expected education to be the best predictor, still (also shown is correlation with low IQ and Hillary over Sanders).

IQ is, itself, arbitrary, but I still found the results fascinating.

Authoritarians were also, based on the research, far more likely to fear foreign people and governments, prefer military force over diplomacy, airport checks of middle easterners, requiring national ID cards, bar citizenship of children of illegal immigrants, and we all know from recent experience that Trump supporters even championed legislation banning all people from many arab countries from entering the U.S., reviving the unconstitutional ‘stop and frisk’ policy, torturing and murdering the families of suspected terrorists, bringing back the unconstitutional waterboarding which has been proven to not even be effective, etc. I know this is starting to sound like a stretch to connect this research to ‘tradition’, but I connect it through the transitive property. Tradition = order = authoritarianism. There are authoritarians and low IQ douche bags on both sides, but with the rising fear over the past few decades and the far greater insular nature of the conservative party, they have largely gravitated that direction, inundating the actual respectable conservatives with grotesque tools incapable of empathy as their new companions. Liberals are ignorant in other areas, but they absolutely don’t prefer white vs black. When accused of being ‘bitches’ by conservatives, liberals should actually take it as a compliment. Dogs actually see grey.

#values #conservaties #meretricious #bias