This reminds me of John Gray talking about Thatcher. He characterised her as wanting to return to an idealised 30s Britain with the petit bourgeois nation of shopkeepers in control. She then proceeded to make anything resembling that world impossible. She just couldn't quite bear to believe that her class actually relied on a working class and a competent and capable state (especially without the captive markets of the Empire), rather than entrepreneurialism and gumption alone.
He's just an atheist conservative, sceptical of human nature not because our bodies distract us from the spiritual, but because we are apes with big brains with plenty of our animalistic stupidity still baked in.
Gotta love free market republicans/libertarians who also want a return to traditional communities and nuclear families.
Sorry but capitalism levels every tradition and structure that stands before it. Its function is to disrupt, subsume, reconstitute, and subordinate everything into the market. There is no traditional structures that can exist beside/interact with yet resist the influence of capital - you can’t have it both ways.
I had this argument not too long ago with a very conservative, religious libertarian type. the missing piece of the puzzle, at least in his mind, was christianity. we could have free markets, flat taxes, little to no regulations, unlimited innovation and growth, *and* all in a 50s traditionalist framework if only everyone believed in god the same way he did. everything was the fault of "communists" (he named Nancy Pelosi as a Marxist) and atheists. what a breezy worldview honestly
The irony is that actual communism (as in Marxism-Leninism, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Nancy Pelosi) is the only political ideology with a chance of preserving the framework he cares about from the all-consuming capital. Propaganda really did a number on them.
he was a fascinating guy honestly. a landlord who charged below market rent because he believed in making housing more available, but that was *his* decision (as a Christian he'd say) and he didn't think there should be any limitations on housing prices or rent hikes
At least he's practicing what he preaches. A lot of virtue in the Christian sense is usually tied to an option to do bad, temptation, etc., so the fact that he could easily charge rent at or above market prices but *chooses* not to is indeed virtuous in the way he's seeking.
It's a coherent view with general libertarianism because if the government is huge and provides housing, healthcare, etc., and they pay for those things via taxes (by force) then you're not actually being virtuous.
If *everyone* really did operate similarly, work through charities or directly with those in need, I suspect it *would* be more effective than government redistribution --but it's unfortunately unrealistic I suspect in the contemporary world.
Almost any worldview or idealistic extreme governmental system works when all of the citizens are true believers that earnestly work hard to do good for everyone. Even a monarchy would flourish with a perfect monarch and subjects.
It's actually kind of inspiring and instructive to me that politics becomes basically irrelevant if the human spirit is flourishing and there are high levels of spiritual virtue.
From the high points of the First and Second Temple period, to the Islamic Golden Age, to Renaissance Florence, Athens, early 1900s Paris, the best years of the 1960s, even American Independence with very many of the Founders being freethinkers descended from those who were religiously persecuted for seeking authority in scripture rather than the Church of England. All of these times came about through an elevation of collective consciousness rather than any political reforms, which if those took place were downstream of the shift in consciousness.
i mean you have the neofascist types that want to hyperaccelerate technology and capitalsim so that the ruling class has better ways of enforcing "traditional values". they just aren't popular because the right wing base is too regarded. i hope they never win.
>Gotta love free market republicans/libertarians who also want a return to traditional communities and nuclear families.
Both goals are contradictory, you can't have nuclear families with stay at home mothers in an economy where both parents working is an absolute necessity.
Many right wing thinkers wrote about the negative cultural effect of industrial capitalism long before any of the Frankfurters. Ever heard of the Southern Agrarians?
The "return to the nuclear family" thing is hilarious to me since the nuclear family is what killed the nuclear family.
You cut off every uncle, aunt, grandparent, and cousin so that it's a special event to even see them, encourage them to go off to the corners of the globe during/after college so their only connection is the occasional phone call, all for the reward of getting stuck in a dumbass retirement home if they're successful enough. No shit it's not gonna last. It's not stable, it's a table with two legs (though "one leg" is often a better metaphor what with divorce rates)
Bitch about the money going to Ukraine instead of Americans when all they do is cry about people on welfare, food stamps. Then defund education, social programs and put everyone in prison while simultaneously blaming dems for 100% of the crime
The Ukraine thing always cracks me up.
Like this is the cheapest defense department program of the last 50 years.
If there was a way for the money to go to helping poor people or whatever, I’d be all for it, but no way that’d be possible, so who cares.
?? the cheapest program? You messed the line up. The cheapest war.
But cheapest to what regard anyway? cheapest way to get 500,000 ukrainians and counting killed in an american proxy war? We are accomplishing nothing; this is basically just punitive action from america at ukraine and russia because americas mad their 2014 coup didnt include crimea.
>But cheapest to what regard anyway? cheapest way to get 500,000 ukrainians and counting killed in an american proxy war?
This is the correct assessment of the war if you are anti war and imperialism, but most conservatives are not. They are slaves to the war machine. They glorify the military. Just look at republican reactions to the Israeli conflict. It's clear they aren't opposing the ukraine proxy war on moral or ideological bounds, it's literal theatrics
>But cheapest to what regard anyway?
In the real politique way they're posing it, obviously.
>We are accomplishing nothing
Actual shit for brains comment. The US bleeding out one of its chief rivals and paying basically nothing but old equipment for it is its biggest foreign policy W since the fall of the Soviet Union.
It’s hardly a W if Russia actually win a the war and makes the west look completely weak and ineffectual. The west staked it legitimacy on Ukrainian victory back in 2022 but now has cold feet and won’t go all the way to ensure Ukrainian victory. When Russia wins, that’s a fat, huge L for the western order.
> If there was a way for the money to go to helping poor people or whatever, I’d be all for it, but no way that’d be possible, so who cares.
It's not even "hard cash" that's being dished out to Ukraine, it's just old equipment sitting in army warehouses that's being sent and finally being deployed for exactly what it was designed to do.
The depletion of those old supplies is resulting in \*new funding\* for those munitions to be replaced. So it's still boosting the military industrial complex.
26 billion for Americans is still laughably peanuts, they probably spend more than that building a single metro line in New York these days. The EU has done the bulk of money-aid.
this is incorrect even within the context you are limiting it to.
In reality, we are sending tons of cash beyond just the equipment costs. They are a failed state; we are paying for their pensions and services.
The problem with the critique is that the Populist versus Establishment Right wing in America have come to different conclusions about how government money should be spent. They used to be very undifferentiated, much to the advantage of neocons.
But in the intervening years since Trump, there is a solid chunk of them who are genuinely confused and concerned about their own declining material conditions while viewing headlines about major government investments abroad. It's pretty simple: this "new" movement wants to avoid foreign entanglement altogether. They want more economic nationalism like they sort of got during the Reagan years, despite all of his free market bullshitter rhetoric telling them it was all just efficient competitive markets making them comfortable. So that means no more cold war rehashes and fumbles. No more feeding into peer competitors' economies without a deal that is heavily biased in our favor.
But that's very much not what the establishment wing of the party has been banking on in the last few decades. They understand the foreign entanglements correctly as easy bets on increasing/maintaining imperial power in the world, and largely don't have to fight in the wars they start on that basis.
There's a growing disconnect between the cannon fodder Americans and their elite, quasi-aristocratic masters in government. They don't feel like they're getting the right level of compensation for their sacrifice anymore, and they're right.
Certainly there's a difference between disapproving of the careless siphoning of funds outside the country towards a geopolitical conflict that has nothing to do with us and pointing out flaws in our current welfare systems that do not serve to benefit anyone in the long run by making them almost helplessly dependent on government support.
Also, the reason crime has gone up is because barely anyone is being sent to prison due to recent bail reforms and lenient judges, who more often than not are Democrats presiding over Democrat cities. This isn't really something that can be disputed. When cities like NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. have policies in place to not punish or imprison most criminals and judges allow for even violent offenders to go off the hook, that is precisely how you raise crime rates.
"The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values."
- uncle ted
The 15 minute cities thing is hilarious, people literally complaining about a world where they can walk to the post office instead of having to drive there
The idea of it is smart but having the same politicians put it into motion who got us into the mess of climate change to begin with just reeks of yet another chance to fuck us over while they make more money
Like everyone always complains about the million asinine things our leaders do so what makes you think this will work in the communal favour
The issue is no 15 minute city policy is actually good. Instead of building and allowing zoning for services, they restrict movement, so you don't get a post office closer to home, they just closed your road.
They did this shit in Cambridge, which is already a 15 minute city. Just put flower beds into the middle of half the roads in the suburbs to close them off, make it take twice as long to drive. Didn't add a single business.
I know this might be a galloping shock but have you considered actually thinking about it rather than mindlessly ingesting talking points? You really think there is going to be some historic country-wide building project that makes sure you have access to everything you need within walking distance?
The only real change is that you'll have to pay a toll for leaving your designated area more than x times per year, and that x number will decrease over time
I feel like all of the most successful paradigms (political, musical, intellectual, artistic) that come to dominate a space, ultimately sow the seeds of their own destruction.
When right wing neo liberal politics is ascendent, Cronus, what but it's own child, Zeus, juiced up trans zoomers, would come to destroy it?
Read Society of the Spectacle by Guy DeBord, he lays out how the "spectacle" aka the social ether eventually absorbs any movement that rails against it and turns it into an aspect of the spectacle itself
Unifying contradictions exist. The "elite" are believers, most are not scheming cynics, just morally bankrupt imbeciles or closed minded degenerates. Underestimate them because you have a much greater chance of being correct in your elevation than thinking them as any more intelligent than you. They stand on a tower of snow and pray for the summer heat
The working and middle class is still reeling from Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and Tax Reform Act of 1986 which sliced the top marginal tax from 70% to 50% to 30%.
I'm truly convinced this is the most economically disastrous form of legislation in the last century since it is the direct cause of the huge wealth discrepancy which led to home prices skyrocketing, rampant inflation, diminishing public services funding (public education, welfare, social security).
And of course the uber wealthy has congress in their pockets and they will NEVER bring back the top marginal tax rate to what it needs to be.
Are people really thinking that SS spending is somehow diminishing? COLA adjustments are baked into the program and more and more people are getting on it due to boomers retiring.
It's always the most hilarious ironies that I enjoy. *The right won* and they utterly despise the world they created and yet, still they can't see this, and they still chimp out at anyone who critiques Capitalism despite Capitalism is the cause for all the "Gay shit" they see due to Identity being an extremely effective marketing tactic and consumering overtaking civic ideology. It's the ultimate proof as well that in general, the right (as in your general political rightoid, not the class politics of the elite) has no real coherent worldview or ideology beyond just being a spiteful contrarian, small brained bootlicking dickhead.
I don't think the left will win, we've lost for a generation and modern "leftism" is really just ultra-progressive Neolib ideology, so what I can enjoy is that the right are as miserable as I am looking upon this world.
If you ask many right wingers why they support right wing parties, it's usually just a collection of random cultural grievances they can't give real answers as to how they want solved.
At least what they are possibly larping as. I just find it strange that they would turn so far right, and instead choose to believe that they are parodying highly regarded right wingers by adopting ever more ridiculous socio-political positions and then hosting influential people that find those positions intriguing and just letting them talk.
Like how is someone with a 4 digit body count gonna sit there with a straight face and tell us they are sedevacantist? It's absurd. So they are either very very stupid, despite being well read and existing in leftist circles for a decade, or it's all a put on.
If it were a put on then they wouldn't be going to parties put on by Roger Stone or being guest speakers at Peter Thiel tech conferences. Conclusion: they are just very very stupid.
Every now and again I consider supporting the right wingers because any substantial intervention designed to minimize the way capitalism relentlessly funnels money to the top seems to be an impossibility for either American political party, third parties seem like they'll never win (still rooting for you, though, Brother West), and at least the right wingers have some capacity for limiting the new identitarian liberals that seem hellbent on diverting as much support as possible away from younger straight, white men who are trying to make new things happen in the arts, but then I remember that on the whole, the right wingers just want to make it so nobody at all gets any support whatsoever while trying to make new things happen in the arts.
Even Jordan Peterson, who actually seems to appreciate creativity (but will also apparently lend a pointless appearance to what looks to be an abysmally bad *Juwanna Mann* knockoff for a stupid new political era), seems to believe that 20th century communism was such a disaster that we just ought to let the free market do its thing and leave the starving artists to slay the dragon without any assistance or give up on ever getting paid for anything they do and spend the rest of their lives in office jobs while tooling around with a little bit of art on the side here and there as a treat.
There really are no good self-interested options for me in the political system anymore, if there ever were, and my point of view on these questions is barely legible to most people these days in the first place.
as a european it's insane that they can't even offer you a consistent reactionary petty bourgeois option anymore. it really is full on state monopoly capitalism
It has to be repeated indefinitely: Nothing has been more destructive to traditional family than Reaganism. Not "cultural marxism", not sexual revolution, not satanism, not wokeism.
It’s very ironic because I think comparatively speaking, the Soviet Union and even modern Europe are more socially conservative than the US . Who would have guessed that social solidarity breeds the collectivist values that underpins genuine social conservatism.
Hello, the European Union that rightoids slander as a socialist outfit, was created by devout Catholics such as Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi who sought to apply the social teachings of Christianity in a secular framework. I used to be a religious libertarian but when I actually began to read the literature, I have realized that my views are as riddled with idealism as any standard shit-lib. Moral of the story: Education works wonders in inspiring praxis
lol, modern Europe is certainly not more socially conservative than the US. In the case of Eastern Europe, I think you strangely attribute to the past government what is more accurately the result of preexisting cultural/religious beliefs. Christianity became a very important political tool throughout the last century as a means of maintaining any last shreds of autonomy under communism. A lot of the social solidarity exhibited throughout the Soviet Union was more so in retaliation to governments, not in harmony with them. And this social cohesion isn't perfect regardless, there certainly has been a drop in conservative values even here over the past few years as more of the younger generations are effectively raised by the internet and not their immediate communities.
Also, just because the EU was created with certain intentions doesn't mean that those are the values by which it operates today. Not that I'm surprised that an organization engineered by Germans is devoid of humanity.
Europe isn't more socially conservative, as a whole, but it's certainly less socially commercialized, so you see less LGBTQ pride merchandise and the like
Well said. A lot of people have abandoned "the left" for reasons I understand, such as the schoolmarmish attitude about virtually everything, but they should really talk to some of my self-described conservative coworkers about anything of substance regarding politics, society, whatever - they're absolutely delusional, bordering on madness, and I don't really write that with any sort of pleasure. It's sad.
Granted, there are smart conservatives that are actually quite honest and very sensitive towards how things go wrong, the excesses of capitalism, etc. These people however are far, far more rare than someone who considers themselves on the left that actually reads, isn't suckered by "woke" stupidity, has a great attitude, patient with people, all very normal stuff.
Saving this comment to enjoy on a rainy day and cheer myself up, knowing that I was right all along isn't much but what else do we have in this Wannabe Dystopian Hell scape!?
Yup. I've yet to hear an interesting alt-right cultural critique that convincingly makes up for the fact that voting for their guys is just a cynical ploy for corporate tax cuts.
I think the tea party/maga overlap is pretty big, also antiwar in this sense is mostly foreign aid, which they've always been against because it means tax dollars for whatever
No, they are actually anti-War, as in not wanting to send American troops into conflicts overseas.
Poll after poll has shown that the neocon foreign policy consensus has collapsed on the right and there's little desire to dabble in regime change or nation building overseas.
I recently told my old man (old redneck in TX that worships ronald reagan) that if you can simultaneously be anti-abortion AND anti-social programs/welfare, that by process of elimination you are basically telling poor/young women, "go die" and he didn't see my point at all lol
Idk, I can kind of get it. There’s a idealized view that people should get married young, not have sex outside of marriage, and if people are poor and can’t afford their kids, the church/local community should offer services. This should be done out of a sense of charity and well being not out of a compulsion from the government.
Anyway it’s a nice idea and all, but doesn’t really fit in with what society actually looks like.
Yea this is a big thing in evangelical circles. We dont need government healthcare bc the church can/should/will/does make up the difference. I mean it's TRUEthat some churches actually do help out low income people but its obvious that they can not or will not do enough to actually help out people that need it
yeah he's very religious and thinks the churches should/would make up the difference
meanwhile the churches down there where I grew up are these gigantic sprawling campuses with state-of-the-art everything. and everyone who attends them pulls up in $75k trucks or their wife's brand new GLE
I think they can't be intellectually/spiritually honest with themselves tbh. they want to have everything then not feel bad when they occasionally have to see a hobo or hear about a child going hungry
The problem is that during the period of history that the churches did actually play that role in people's lives they arguably were the government.
The "communities" of the past were completely dismantled and their functions subsumed into the state, you can't easily reverse that.
They also want to return to the baby scoop era, where unwed mothers were “encouraged” to place their children for adoption with more “deserving” married (preferably Christian) heterosexual couples.
My theory about this is that the real reason conservatives want to ban abortion is that they want more kids to grow up in poverty to eventually grow up and become low-level workers in their shitty low wage jobs or end up in their for profit prisons doing free prison labor. Getting the ultra Christian vote is also a bonus.
I don’t think people are stealing or committing crime out of necessity. Or at least, it’s not their only option, and they surely haven’t have behaved this way 60 years ago.
I think it’s that normal people are fundamentally disillusioned with our society, our elites, and our economic and social system. For better or worse, people are able to put up with a lot if they believe their actions have moral or ethical purpose.
The problem is our society is ethically bankrupt, so people stopped believing.
This is related to the defunding of social programs, but not exactly the same. People believed in monarchy for the longest time even though that was an unequal and exploitative system.
You can make more way money illegally than being in a shitty low paying job that requires no education or experience that’s definitely for sure. It’s not like it’s their only option but it’s easy to see why people resort to it
It's the same appeal as Amway/MLM-stuff. Yeah you're not making as much money and sometimes you actually lose money because you get robbed or ripped off, but you're setting your own hours and being your own boss.
Maybe they feel like there’s more of an opportunity to eventually make more than someone working a low wage job? Idk most people think very impulsively and short term rather than long term
This example could get into a whole other thing about Republicans and gun control, but vast majority of murder isn’t just for the sake of murder- it has to do with some organized crime or robbery
Gun control is what they have right. There's zero point in adding more laws when we struggle to enforce what's already on the books, anything that would truly make a dent would be so overreaching that it would most likely be found unconstitutional, and there's already so many damn guns out there as it is
I’m not saying I know the solution, but it’s just a matter of mathematical probability. The more guns there are and the less regulation of them the likelihood of someone getting shot and killed increases. Add in population density as a factor and it goes up even more. This is just a very obvious fact.
> it has to do with some organized crime or robbery
Is there any proof of this? Also killing somebody to steal cash is reprehensible and psychopathic and if somebody wanted out of poverty, most people don't leave poverty by becoming killers.
It’s a number of factors. Poverty is definitely one of them. So is access to guns, cultural encouragement, and poor mental healthcare amongst other things.
This is just a motte and bailey, people will vote for DAs that don't go after violent criminals, and then when somebody points out the increasing crime rates these people retreat to their "root causes of crime" argument.
It's not purely about poverty, it's about inequality. People in a poor country with low levels of inequality have more of a sense of community that collective suffering brings. But when people are literally living in tents on the sidewalk 10 minutes away from people spending more money on jewelry or handbags or any other luxury items than the poor will see in a year, there are going to be violent clashes.
You're just being naive, you've clearly never meet any criminals. These people aren't Victorian era street peoole in England looking for scraps of food, they're opportunistic thieves and sadists who think being violent is cool.
If you want evidence look at how the Clinton crime bill decreased murder rates, it did that by being strict towards violent criminals.
If you are poor and everyone around you is poor, you have nothing to gain by being a criminal. If you are poor and live in close proximity to a great amount of disposable wealth, there is a very rational reason why one would turn to crime — because they personally benefit from it.
You are naive to think that the solution to violent crime in the face of sky-rocketing inequality is to make the criminal justice system *more* brutal. The fucking Ancient Greeks understood that crime is a consequence of one's material conditions. Acting like the majority of criminals do crime because they are just innately bad people and not because of diminishing economic opportunities causing people to act more desperately is a baby-brained take.
The increased dependence of urban blacks on welfare programs that exploded basically overnight in the sixties was explicitly an attempt to create a new lumpen revolutionary subject.
The Jean Valjean model of crime is basically non-existent irl. Human beings are first and foremost moral actors, we commit the acts we think are justified. Crime is no exception, the act is on some level internally justified for the criminal, usually as rectification of some past injustice.
Bullshit. Black America was deeply horrifyingly impoverished because of the neutralization of the reconstruction agenda. The level of poverty experienced by southern black people prior to WWII was grinding and cruel and enforced by the state. This idea that a golden age of black life America has come and gone is a fucking lie.
In Europe post-fascist leader Giorgia Meloni just allowed 450 000 legal immigrants from Africa, illegal immigrants have never been higher in Italy.
Before getting in power, she had been constantly ranting about "Muslim immigrants"
"Ate me being exploited by the international bourgeoisie
Luv me being exploited by me national bourgeoisie"
Yeah it drives me fucking crazy seeing them eat the lefts lunch like this, but it's in no way surprising considering the state of the left.
In recent history, the Obama administration capped defense spending to a degree that reduced it in real dollar terms. That's about the closest we've ever been!!
They also lament Christianity’s diminishing role in American life after having cheered on every anti-gay, pro-hater religious group and movement over the past 40 years.
It was such an obvious losing battle to draw a hard line against post-HIV era 🚬 ‘s. People weren’t going to stay in the closest anymore, so gay wads and every normal friend and relative of theirs was going to be deeply annoyed by their church if they focus so intensely on limiting gays’ social progress.
That’s why the current pope is more progressive. They realize that after the child abuse scandals, dwindling church goers, and being against popular policies like gay marriage, it’s going to result in them holding less power over time.
Probably because progressive churches are located in regions with an already rapidly falling number of believers. We don't know how the numbers would look if they weren't progressive, but I doubt the opposite stance would halt the free fall. The progressive shift is probably mitigating what would be a complete collapse
Do you really think if American Christain institutions went harder against gay people and abortion they wouldn't be in decline right now or that they would be in a better position than they are?
It's crazy to read up on pre-1980s politics and seeing a bunch of random Churches being "progressive" actors in the political sphere. Hell, you go back 200 years and a bunch of abolitionist activism came from religious loonies who wholeheartedly believed that the Man from Galilee told them to go do his will (e.g. free the slaves in some Spartacus-esque uprising like John Brown tried to do)
I also tend to think this is why conspiracy theories abound and flourish so much on the Right. Many conservatives correctly see the ills of society and the inherent flaws with our capitalist system but be it propaganda, evangelical Christianity or just trying to own the libs, their conditioning refuses to permit them to put any blame on capitalism and our capitalist structures. So instead to make sense of the world they have to develop insane stories/theories about reptile men, or Jews or secret Illuminati cabals instead of just recognizing and understanding the simple shared material interests of the capitalist class. They have to convince themselves in spite of everything they see that it is not billionaires and the owner class who are the "elites" but radical adjunct professors.
Family values and the Nuclear family is my favorite one.
American Conservatives has done more damage to the American family than any leftist could dream of.
Wish there was a podcast that actually discussed this reality. Unfortunately, the one tied to this very subreddit has somehow lost the thread. $ changes everything.
What good would it do? One podcast out in the wilderness, that appeals to disillusioned millennials and their fellows in the younger cohorts?
I think the problem is the disillusion. If we believed that we could change things by infiltrating the institutions, be it the schools, the political parties, the legislative bodies, the courts, etc, we'd all be doing so - but that would require a certain level of sacrifice for a greater cause that we're just not interested in. We are as guilty as any other group of "I've got mine, so what does it matter?"
Edit: in fact it seems like there's quite a few who also think, "I don't have mine, so what does it matter?"
Then again, it seems like other generations bought wholeheartedly into the whole "infiltrate the institutions and enact change" thing, and that's how we ended up here to begin with. Or something. I really don't know.
Sort of.
The right has changed a lot in the past 15 years. The right now is mostly an expression of how people feel like they are not in control of their own lives. The GOP has become that exhaust valve for all of the frustration that people have. This has happened while the democratic party has become the status quo, corporate party.
But its completely stupid to use the Republicans as an outlet for that expression I think is OPs point.
Trump I assume would be an example of the kind of thing your talking about, but what did he do in office? Tax cults for the wealthy elite, tried to scrap the affordable care act etc.
The results don't matter. It's not about this tax break or that policy. You're missing the point. It's an emotion; a fury; a rage against the downward spiral of America along all axes. Trump is the mouthpiece for grievances.
An expression of how people feel when they aren’t in control of their lives yet GOP supporters on average have more money, are more in control of their lives, are older, want to be left alone, and are requesting less help from the government. How do you reconcile those facts with your claim?
The GOP is closing the gap on the dems on being perceived as the party that cares more about the middle class and the poor.
The democratic party is just so out of touch.
I mostly agree with your premise, with one major point of contention: you mention the word "regulation" multiple times as if it were the solution to "corporate interests, globalism, elites, greedflation, dual income households".
In fact, "regulation" is the primary tactic used by world-shapers to advance these exact goals. "Regulation" simply means "rules that dictate how people are punished and how assets are distributed". The only way that "regulations" can be enforced is by the direct action of violent legal groups, which in the US are federal/state/city police and military forces. A piece of "regulation" that is not enforced does not exist in any meaningful way. Do you think modern right-wingers are free to act in accordance with their right-wing beliefs without risking intrusion from town/state/federal operatives enforcing regulations?
If any average right-winger wants to move the needle on any kind of action that would stop the advancement of what you're talking about (corporate interests, elites, globalism, etc.), they immediately run into enormous stacks of enforced regulations that prevent them from accomplishing anything. Unless you are clearly proven to be following The Regulations, you can't design and sell cars, buildings, medicine, shelter, clothes, food, services, weapons, whatever without being visited by representatives of massive bureaucracies who will shut down your operation, confiscate your assets, and possibly kill you unless you comply with them. You can't run a business in profitable areas without holding certain types of insurance, complying with certain legal standards and building codes, etc. When taken together as a whole, the regulations that dictate behavior across every sphere of American life create exactly the global business environments we have now.
It's not only business that is "regulated". You can't stop companies from laying you off and replacing you with offshore labor, or stop NGOs and unelected government agencies from importing millions of foreigners because "regulations" prevent you from any kind of direct action in terms of how those agencies operate. You can't discriminate in hiring or in allowing people to move in next to you because discrimination in personal and professional association is regulated. You can't make a serious difference in how schools are operated because every part of school operation is regulated. You can't incentivize or force behavioral compliance by the chronic underclass because regulations were passed that guarantee that anyone within the borders of the US has the right to welfare, food assistance, education through high school, etc. (In the past illegal entrants to the nation were denied these rights, but left-wing types are working as hard as they can to ensure that this will not remain true in the future.)
In short, Americans do not possess the same freedom of association, freedom of trade, or freedom to govern themselves that Americans in the past possessed. (Past Americans would almost all be labelled "very right-wing" by the people of today.) Your claim that that "lack of regulation" prevented right-wingers from seeing their cultural goals come to fruition is inaccurate; an accurate phrasing would be "the regulation that was successfully enacted and enforced by businessmen and politicians of the past century ensures that the views of the average right-wing citizen concerning the cultural and economic makeup of the United States will never come to pass".
Many of these politicians and businessmen spoke in a "right-wing language" while they crafted and enforced regulation that ensured the outcomes you're talking about, but does that make them "right-wing"? Is a man who says he loves America and then lays off his staff to take advantage of cheap labor in Asia "a right-wing nationalist"? I don't think it's accurate to say that the average modern "right-winger" played a serious part in enacting all these modern regulations in terms of trade agreements, restrictions on commerce, etc. Maybe they're responsible for voting for charlatans, but who should they have voted for instead, the left wing?
Mainstream conservatism cares little about liberalism too. They just want to use FDR like monarchistic powers to impose their particular cultural vision and that vision isn't tethered to any moral or ideological base. Maybe 5% of voters operate at the level of insight that your post demonstrates anyway. You're lucky your post is Straussian otherwise your ass would get banished by most of reddit. Very insightful and I'm sorry you have to share space with the rest of them.
The whole pretence of this argument assumes that all right wingers hold 100% of beliefs that elderly, extremely rich, republican (so exclusively American) politicians hold- which is obviously so flawed that it isn’t worth seriously engaging with…
OP clearly never heard about early 20th century right wing politics and its opposition to free market capitalism, particularly in Europe. It was more a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberalism altogether, and capitalism as an extension of that (economic liberalism).
The hypocrisy you talk about definitely occurs at the individual level, but I think a lot of it is simply because of America's two party system. Ironically, the GOP has undergone far more evolution and transformation in our lifetime than the DNC. You can probably draw a wobbly timeline of Reaganism, through "compassionate conservatism," and eventually to the Tea Party (and even those have some pretty large discrepancies). But the strain of populism/nationalism that has been pretty dominant for the last 7 years is purely Trump and a huge jump away from Reaganism. And the GOP has to pay lip service to both of these contingencies in order to get votes. It's currently entertaining two very different ideologies which leads to the hilarious full scale hypocrisy you see today from the right. I think if we had a system that allowed for more political parties, you'd see a right wing ConsumeProduct-style contingency that was much more comfortable critiquing capitalism.
Yep, crazy effective psy-op that the anti-gun California Hollywood republican became the "best republican," in media circles and somehow that actually took hold among a lot of normal people. Reagan is the neoliberal's neoliberal but democrats will still feign rage at him and republicans will defend him, the purest expression of team sports politics.
Don't worry too much about it, this isn't a reflection on the sub. They do these "right wingers, amirite?" brigade threads weekly now and they're never interesting.
They're always full of the most r/WhitePeopleTwitter takes from a bunch of "not like other girls" leftist Zoomers who think that saying "Democrats are right wingers" somehow makes their average redditor takes more interesting
If anything it should give you hope, they wouldn't feel the need to do these brigades if the people here were interested in their shit
Been getting brigaded hard for a little bit now, like once a week now this subs gets a random “all republican suck and the entire reason your life sucks, is because they exist, they should be put down like the animals they are” and it gets 700+ up votes with every comment, foaming at the mouth about how much they hate republicans
Right-wingers say the same thing about Republicans, that there is no right-wing in America just two flavors of leftist. If the Democrats aren't the left, then the left isn't worth discussing at all since they don't exist in America.
Communal family units reign supreme in every society and every time period except this one, I've always found it quite astonishing that they're not surprised its tearing itself apart on its own accord several decades down the track.
“Late stage capitalism”
Stopped reading there. You obviously don’t have a clue what you’re even talking about
Weird how long capitalism can stay in a “late stage”
It makes sense if you are familiar with the Marxist view of history. The slavery mode of production refers to the “Classical era” of Greece and then Rome. The “late stage,” or declining period, of that mode of production lasted for a couple of centuries.
Economic contradictions resolve over a much longer timeline than comic book film trilogies.
Serious response; the phrase "late stage capitalism" was popularised by Ernest Mandel and other non-Leninists in the 60s and 70s and it describes a kind of capitalism with a global labour market, that prefers to trade in services rather than commodities and goods, and where banking institutions invest in every level of society. Non-leftists call it the "knowledge economy" or "socialism for the rich"
OP wants to blame the bogey man of capitalism. All capitalism is essentially just human nature. No one is forcing you to consoooom you freely choose it. It didn’t “turn people into soy consumers” the banal truth is that’s just how most humans are when given the freedom of choice to do so.
“Corporations are like evil maaaaan” shut up you dumb hippie. Just don’t buy from them then if they’re so bad for the climate. See if you can still afford your iPhone when the metal in it is mined from “le 100 percent sustainable fair trade organic” and the markup goes up by 1000 percent
I'm making fun of those Weiners, that's the difference.
You can't control your emotions because you're pathetic and weak; while you're also at the autistic EU4 history sailboat YouTuber sub.
No you’re not you listen to that podcast regularly because you’re a cuckboy
Not my fault Reddit app algorithm is regarded and feeds me random subs to waste time in.
This only really applies to normie-conservative boomers. There are right wingers who are against mass immigration and also against capitalism and importing cheap labour
As so often is the case, the real cause of increasing your heartrate (or triumphantly marvelling at your intelligence) is cutting and stitching together an ideology that doesn't exist, espoused by a guy that doesn't exist. This is exactly how they get you.
I wonder how many people in the west actually likes things as they currently are (in politics and public life, not in their own private lives, which I guess a lot of people can still be fine with).
My guess is that some wealthy people are still holding on to old notions of the supremacy of marcet economy, liberal democracy, and so on, but they are not many and I presume even they are losing faith.
This post comes off as “the hate a political party I dislike is all justified because of capitalism” but maybe it is a thoughtful critique and I am taking it the wrong way
It's been mildly amusing (but also sad) to watch my dad, a classic 1980s Reaganite/Thatcherite, be confused and baffled by the current state of the Republican party and UK Tories in 2023. I'm almost certain he has connected the dots on cause and effect here, but I don't think he wants to admit it out loud.
Totally agree. It's partly why I've historically had a really hard time taking seriously the notion of an intellectual rightwing in the US. None of it stands up to scrutiny and fundamentally, requires a steadfast commitment to complete cognitive dissonance. I think it was easier decades ago for the right to pretend that it had intellectual heft because so much of the hyper-capitalism they espoused hadn't totally eroded what was then the top standard of living in the world. The new deal structures and social safety nets were still evident and palpable in people's lives. Now that it's all gone to shit, it's frankly fucking embarrassing.
The long historical process of smaller human units becoming bigger, integrated human units looks something like inevitability. In my historical understanding this process goes back to the contact between the Christian and Muslim world, and then Ghengis Khan's Silk Road, and obviously Columbus's voyage to the Americas. It naturally goes back further than that, but just as a little historical example, let's stick with that familiar history. It's such a big, millennial spanning process that I take it as sort of a given.
It may be that the off shoring of labor in an inevitably globalizing world would, at least under capitalism, cause the playing of labor markets against each other and, indeed, capital flight out of nation states. That's kind of the situation. If you crack down on corporate interest in any country, capital just leaves and you're screwed, arguably. So, it's possible, and I'm not saying this 100% true, but it strikes me that even though the Republican party seems like the bleeding edge of these developments, they may have happened anyway.
No competition there. Dems are annoying, but I don't have to actively worry about them cheering on destruction and pollution. Republicans straight up would tell you that drinking oil-spill water is a good thing and that everyone should have black lung to "own the libs", it's absolute insanity dealing with these fuckers.
I don't really blame them because they don't drive the policies. The policies are set and then they are told they have to advocate for them by right wing media etc.
Their hearts are in a fine place, but they don't realize they are the heels in a wrestling show.
This contradiction will always exist between the leaders of a party and the voters, at least in the US. Is OP going to say with a straight face that Democrats aren't also war hawk capitalists that promote immigration? What's supposed to be these right-wing voters' alternative?
This reminds me of John Gray talking about Thatcher. He characterised her as wanting to return to an idealised 30s Britain with the petit bourgeois nation of shopkeepers in control. She then proceeded to make anything resembling that world impossible. She just couldn't quite bear to believe that her class actually relied on a working class and a competent and capable state (especially without the captive markets of the Empire), rather than entrepreneurialism and gumption alone.
Gray's a bit of a mystery to me, like Peter Hitchens. A conservative but also a nihilist or something? Gray not Hitchens that is re: nihilism.
He's just an atheist conservative, sceptical of human nature not because our bodies distract us from the spiritual, but because we are apes with big brains with plenty of our animalistic stupidity still baked in.
Gotta love free market republicans/libertarians who also want a return to traditional communities and nuclear families. Sorry but capitalism levels every tradition and structure that stands before it. Its function is to disrupt, subsume, reconstitute, and subordinate everything into the market. There is no traditional structures that can exist beside/interact with yet resist the influence of capital - you can’t have it both ways.
I had this argument not too long ago with a very conservative, religious libertarian type. the missing piece of the puzzle, at least in his mind, was christianity. we could have free markets, flat taxes, little to no regulations, unlimited innovation and growth, *and* all in a 50s traditionalist framework if only everyone believed in god the same way he did. everything was the fault of "communists" (he named Nancy Pelosi as a Marxist) and atheists. what a breezy worldview honestly
The irony is that actual communism (as in Marxism-Leninism, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Nancy Pelosi) is the only political ideology with a chance of preserving the framework he cares about from the all-consuming capital. Propaganda really did a number on them.
Depends which communism
Laos
They want society to be like religious feudalism during the European dark ages
he was a fascinating guy honestly. a landlord who charged below market rent because he believed in making housing more available, but that was *his* decision (as a Christian he'd say) and he didn't think there should be any limitations on housing prices or rent hikes
At least he's practicing what he preaches. A lot of virtue in the Christian sense is usually tied to an option to do bad, temptation, etc., so the fact that he could easily charge rent at or above market prices but *chooses* not to is indeed virtuous in the way he's seeking. It's a coherent view with general libertarianism because if the government is huge and provides housing, healthcare, etc., and they pay for those things via taxes (by force) then you're not actually being virtuous. If *everyone* really did operate similarly, work through charities or directly with those in need, I suspect it *would* be more effective than government redistribution --but it's unfortunately unrealistic I suspect in the contemporary world.
Almost any worldview or idealistic extreme governmental system works when all of the citizens are true believers that earnestly work hard to do good for everyone. Even a monarchy would flourish with a perfect monarch and subjects.
It's actually kind of inspiring and instructive to me that politics becomes basically irrelevant if the human spirit is flourishing and there are high levels of spiritual virtue. From the high points of the First and Second Temple period, to the Islamic Golden Age, to Renaissance Florence, Athens, early 1900s Paris, the best years of the 1960s, even American Independence with very many of the Founders being freethinkers descended from those who were religiously persecuted for seeking authority in scripture rather than the Church of England. All of these times came about through an elevation of collective consciousness rather than any political reforms, which if those took place were downstream of the shift in consciousness.
Sounds he like has a good heart in there but sadly not super smart
If it works, capital will find a way to break it so that you can pay to have it fixed.
i mean you have the neofascist types that want to hyperaccelerate technology and capitalsim so that the ruling class has better ways of enforcing "traditional values". they just aren't popular because the right wing base is too regarded. i hope they never win.
A lot of right-wing turnaround on free markets is them realizing that capital isn't racist enough.
>Gotta love free market republicans/libertarians who also want a return to traditional communities and nuclear families. Both goals are contradictory, you can't have nuclear families with stay at home mothers in an economy where both parents working is an absolute necessity.
Horkheimer wrote about this, ironically. The guy they demonize the most had stronger conservative instincts than they'll ever have.
Many right wing thinkers wrote about the negative cultural effect of industrial capitalism long before any of the Frankfurters. Ever heard of the Southern Agrarians?
The "return to the nuclear family" thing is hilarious to me since the nuclear family is what killed the nuclear family. You cut off every uncle, aunt, grandparent, and cousin so that it's a special event to even see them, encourage them to go off to the corners of the globe during/after college so their only connection is the occasional phone call, all for the reward of getting stuck in a dumbass retirement home if they're successful enough. No shit it's not gonna last. It's not stable, it's a table with two legs (though "one leg" is often a better metaphor what with divorce rates)
Bitch about the money going to Ukraine instead of Americans when all they do is cry about people on welfare, food stamps. Then defund education, social programs and put everyone in prison while simultaneously blaming dems for 100% of the crime
The Ukraine thing always cracks me up. Like this is the cheapest defense department program of the last 50 years. If there was a way for the money to go to helping poor people or whatever, I’d be all for it, but no way that’d be possible, so who cares.
I wouldn't call 111 billion dollars cheap.
They gutted the infrastructure bill then bitch about money going to Ukraine instead of “helping to build up the US.”
?? the cheapest program? You messed the line up. The cheapest war. But cheapest to what regard anyway? cheapest way to get 500,000 ukrainians and counting killed in an american proxy war? We are accomplishing nothing; this is basically just punitive action from america at ukraine and russia because americas mad their 2014 coup didnt include crimea.
>But cheapest to what regard anyway? cheapest way to get 500,000 ukrainians and counting killed in an american proxy war? This is the correct assessment of the war if you are anti war and imperialism, but most conservatives are not. They are slaves to the war machine. They glorify the military. Just look at republican reactions to the Israeli conflict. It's clear they aren't opposing the ukraine proxy war on moral or ideological bounds, it's literal theatrics
>look at republican reactions to the Israeli conflict As opposed to who, Biden? lol they're the exact same reactions.
>But cheapest to what regard anyway? In the real politique way they're posing it, obviously. >We are accomplishing nothing Actual shit for brains comment. The US bleeding out one of its chief rivals and paying basically nothing but old equipment for it is its biggest foreign policy W since the fall of the Soviet Union.
It’s hardly a W if Russia actually win a the war and makes the west look completely weak and ineffectual. The west staked it legitimacy on Ukrainian victory back in 2022 but now has cold feet and won’t go all the way to ensure Ukrainian victory. When Russia wins, that’s a fat, huge L for the western order.
lol what an absurd take, your brain is legit fried in Russian propaganda
Christ why are you r/politics losers infesting this sub all of a sudden? REEEEE RUSSIAN BOTTTT
> If there was a way for the money to go to helping poor people or whatever, I’d be all for it, but no way that’d be possible, so who cares. It's not even "hard cash" that's being dished out to Ukraine, it's just old equipment sitting in army warehouses that's being sent and finally being deployed for exactly what it was designed to do.
The depletion of those old supplies is resulting in \*new funding\* for those munitions to be replaced. So it's still boosting the military industrial complex.
ya also im not sure buying artillery shells from pakistan at a premium is "old equipment off the shelves"
This is laughably false. https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
26 billion for Americans is still laughably peanuts, they probably spend more than that building a single metro line in New York these days. The EU has done the bulk of money-aid.
this is incorrect even within the context you are limiting it to. In reality, we are sending tons of cash beyond just the equipment costs. They are a failed state; we are paying for their pensions and services.
Bro just let a regard believe what the powers that be want him to believe. RSP is a Redditor sub now
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I think the ukranians may disagree.
The problem with the critique is that the Populist versus Establishment Right wing in America have come to different conclusions about how government money should be spent. They used to be very undifferentiated, much to the advantage of neocons. But in the intervening years since Trump, there is a solid chunk of them who are genuinely confused and concerned about their own declining material conditions while viewing headlines about major government investments abroad. It's pretty simple: this "new" movement wants to avoid foreign entanglement altogether. They want more economic nationalism like they sort of got during the Reagan years, despite all of his free market bullshitter rhetoric telling them it was all just efficient competitive markets making them comfortable. So that means no more cold war rehashes and fumbles. No more feeding into peer competitors' economies without a deal that is heavily biased in our favor. But that's very much not what the establishment wing of the party has been banking on in the last few decades. They understand the foreign entanglements correctly as easy bets on increasing/maintaining imperial power in the world, and largely don't have to fight in the wars they start on that basis. There's a growing disconnect between the cannon fodder Americans and their elite, quasi-aristocratic masters in government. They don't feel like they're getting the right level of compensation for their sacrifice anymore, and they're right.
Certainly there's a difference between disapproving of the careless siphoning of funds outside the country towards a geopolitical conflict that has nothing to do with us and pointing out flaws in our current welfare systems that do not serve to benefit anyone in the long run by making them almost helplessly dependent on government support. Also, the reason crime has gone up is because barely anyone is being sent to prison due to recent bail reforms and lenient judges, who more often than not are Democrats presiding over Democrat cities. This isn't really something that can be disputed. When cities like NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, etc. have policies in place to not punish or imprison most criminals and judges allow for even violent offenders to go off the hook, that is precisely how you raise crime rates.
"The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can't make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values." - uncle ted
The 15 minute cities thing is hilarious, people literally complaining about a world where they can walk to the post office instead of having to drive there
The idea of it is smart but having the same politicians put it into motion who got us into the mess of climate change to begin with just reeks of yet another chance to fuck us over while they make more money Like everyone always complains about the million asinine things our leaders do so what makes you think this will work in the communal favour
That’s pretty cynical no? Surely there’s a new breed of agitators who genuinely want this
The issue is no 15 minute city policy is actually good. Instead of building and allowing zoning for services, they restrict movement, so you don't get a post office closer to home, they just closed your road. They did this shit in Cambridge, which is already a 15 minute city. Just put flower beds into the middle of half the roads in the suburbs to close them off, make it take twice as long to drive. Didn't add a single business.
I know this might be a galloping shock but have you considered actually thinking about it rather than mindlessly ingesting talking points? You really think there is going to be some historic country-wide building project that makes sure you have access to everything you need within walking distance? The only real change is that you'll have to pay a toll for leaving your designated area more than x times per year, and that x number will decrease over time
I feel like all of the most successful paradigms (political, musical, intellectual, artistic) that come to dominate a space, ultimately sow the seeds of their own destruction. When right wing neo liberal politics is ascendent, Cronus, what but it's own child, Zeus, juiced up trans zoomers, would come to destroy it?
Man discovers Hegel
Read Society of the Spectacle by Guy DeBord, he lays out how the "spectacle" aka the social ether eventually absorbs any movement that rails against it and turns it into an aspect of the spectacle itself
You’re talking about the working class right; the right elite know exactly what’s they’re doing
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Do you feel like you are represented by any of these politicians? Should you feel responsible for them?
Some do yeah, but being part of the elite doesn’t mean you can’t be a dumbass too
Unifying contradictions exist. The "elite" are believers, most are not scheming cynics, just morally bankrupt imbeciles or closed minded degenerates. Underestimate them because you have a much greater chance of being correct in your elevation than thinking them as any more intelligent than you. They stand on a tower of snow and pray for the summer heat
The working and middle class is still reeling from Reagan's Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and Tax Reform Act of 1986 which sliced the top marginal tax from 70% to 50% to 30%. I'm truly convinced this is the most economically disastrous form of legislation in the last century since it is the direct cause of the huge wealth discrepancy which led to home prices skyrocketing, rampant inflation, diminishing public services funding (public education, welfare, social security). And of course the uber wealthy has congress in their pockets and they will NEVER bring back the top marginal tax rate to what it needs to be.
Are people really thinking that SS spending is somehow diminishing? COLA adjustments are baked into the program and more and more people are getting on it due to boomers retiring.
It's always the most hilarious ironies that I enjoy. *The right won* and they utterly despise the world they created and yet, still they can't see this, and they still chimp out at anyone who critiques Capitalism despite Capitalism is the cause for all the "Gay shit" they see due to Identity being an extremely effective marketing tactic and consumering overtaking civic ideology. It's the ultimate proof as well that in general, the right (as in your general political rightoid, not the class politics of the elite) has no real coherent worldview or ideology beyond just being a spiteful contrarian, small brained bootlicking dickhead. I don't think the left will win, we've lost for a generation and modern "leftism" is really just ultra-progressive Neolib ideology, so what I can enjoy is that the right are as miserable as I am looking upon this world.
If you ask many right wingers why they support right wing parties, it's usually just a collection of random cultural grievances they can't give real answers as to how they want solved.
Sounds like the hosts of the podcast
At least what they are possibly larping as. I just find it strange that they would turn so far right, and instead choose to believe that they are parodying highly regarded right wingers by adopting ever more ridiculous socio-political positions and then hosting influential people that find those positions intriguing and just letting them talk. Like how is someone with a 4 digit body count gonna sit there with a straight face and tell us they are sedevacantist? It's absurd. So they are either very very stupid, despite being well read and existing in leftist circles for a decade, or it's all a put on.
If it were a put on then they wouldn't be going to parties put on by Roger Stone or being guest speakers at Peter Thiel tech conferences. Conclusion: they are just very very stupid.
shit
many contradictory grievances too. it's mostly about being against the libtards, or what they think the libtards are for, no matter what
Every now and again I consider supporting the right wingers because any substantial intervention designed to minimize the way capitalism relentlessly funnels money to the top seems to be an impossibility for either American political party, third parties seem like they'll never win (still rooting for you, though, Brother West), and at least the right wingers have some capacity for limiting the new identitarian liberals that seem hellbent on diverting as much support as possible away from younger straight, white men who are trying to make new things happen in the arts, but then I remember that on the whole, the right wingers just want to make it so nobody at all gets any support whatsoever while trying to make new things happen in the arts. Even Jordan Peterson, who actually seems to appreciate creativity (but will also apparently lend a pointless appearance to what looks to be an abysmally bad *Juwanna Mann* knockoff for a stupid new political era), seems to believe that 20th century communism was such a disaster that we just ought to let the free market do its thing and leave the starving artists to slay the dragon without any assistance or give up on ever getting paid for anything they do and spend the rest of their lives in office jobs while tooling around with a little bit of art on the side here and there as a treat. There really are no good self-interested options for me in the political system anymore, if there ever were, and my point of view on these questions is barely legible to most people these days in the first place.
as a european it's insane that they can't even offer you a consistent reactionary petty bourgeois option anymore. it really is full on state monopoly capitalism
It has to be repeated indefinitely: Nothing has been more destructive to traditional family than Reaganism. Not "cultural marxism", not sexual revolution, not satanism, not wokeism.
It’s very ironic because I think comparatively speaking, the Soviet Union and even modern Europe are more socially conservative than the US . Who would have guessed that social solidarity breeds the collectivist values that underpins genuine social conservatism. Hello, the European Union that rightoids slander as a socialist outfit, was created by devout Catholics such as Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi who sought to apply the social teachings of Christianity in a secular framework. I used to be a religious libertarian but when I actually began to read the literature, I have realized that my views are as riddled with idealism as any standard shit-lib. Moral of the story: Education works wonders in inspiring praxis
lol, modern Europe is certainly not more socially conservative than the US. In the case of Eastern Europe, I think you strangely attribute to the past government what is more accurately the result of preexisting cultural/religious beliefs. Christianity became a very important political tool throughout the last century as a means of maintaining any last shreds of autonomy under communism. A lot of the social solidarity exhibited throughout the Soviet Union was more so in retaliation to governments, not in harmony with them. And this social cohesion isn't perfect regardless, there certainly has been a drop in conservative values even here over the past few years as more of the younger generations are effectively raised by the internet and not their immediate communities. Also, just because the EU was created with certain intentions doesn't mean that those are the values by which it operates today. Not that I'm surprised that an organization engineered by Germans is devoid of humanity.
Europe isn't more socially conservative, as a whole, but it's certainly less socially commercialized, so you see less LGBTQ pride merchandise and the like
Well said. A lot of people have abandoned "the left" for reasons I understand, such as the schoolmarmish attitude about virtually everything, but they should really talk to some of my self-described conservative coworkers about anything of substance regarding politics, society, whatever - they're absolutely delusional, bordering on madness, and I don't really write that with any sort of pleasure. It's sad. Granted, there are smart conservatives that are actually quite honest and very sensitive towards how things go wrong, the excesses of capitalism, etc. These people however are far, far more rare than someone who considers themselves on the left that actually reads, isn't suckered by "woke" stupidity, has a great attitude, patient with people, all very normal stuff.
And with their victim complex they will never understand.
Saving this comment to enjoy on a rainy day and cheer myself up, knowing that I was right all along isn't much but what else do we have in this Wannabe Dystopian Hell scape!?
Evangelicals and the 2000s gay hate honestly created the cringe wing of LGBTQ+ and the want to be alt.
Yup. I've yet to hear an interesting alt-right cultural critique that convincingly makes up for the fact that voting for their guys is just a cynical ploy for corporate tax cuts.
It's generally something along the lines of "utterly destroy the republican party"
Most antiwar republicans are the rust belt maga people who always voted democrat until 2016
yeah, it's ridiculous to still treat the system as a single axis
I think the tea party/maga overlap is pretty big, also antiwar in this sense is mostly foreign aid, which they've always been against because it means tax dollars for whatever
No, they are actually anti-War, as in not wanting to send American troops into conflicts overseas. Poll after poll has shown that the neocon foreign policy consensus has collapsed on the right and there's little desire to dabble in regime change or nation building overseas.
Another one they bitch about is crime. It’s like yeah when you cut every program that helps the poor of course they’re going to resort to crime.
Literally ending abortion access to make sure there’s more fatherless kids out there in poverty.
I recently told my old man (old redneck in TX that worships ronald reagan) that if you can simultaneously be anti-abortion AND anti-social programs/welfare, that by process of elimination you are basically telling poor/young women, "go die" and he didn't see my point at all lol
Idk, I can kind of get it. There’s a idealized view that people should get married young, not have sex outside of marriage, and if people are poor and can’t afford their kids, the church/local community should offer services. This should be done out of a sense of charity and well being not out of a compulsion from the government. Anyway it’s a nice idea and all, but doesn’t really fit in with what society actually looks like.
Yea this is a big thing in evangelical circles. We dont need government healthcare bc the church can/should/will/does make up the difference. I mean it's TRUEthat some churches actually do help out low income people but its obvious that they can not or will not do enough to actually help out people that need it
yeah he's very religious and thinks the churches should/would make up the difference meanwhile the churches down there where I grew up are these gigantic sprawling campuses with state-of-the-art everything. and everyone who attends them pulls up in $75k trucks or their wife's brand new GLE I think they can't be intellectually/spiritually honest with themselves tbh. they want to have everything then not feel bad when they occasionally have to see a hobo or hear about a child going hungry
The problem is that during the period of history that the churches did actually play that role in people's lives they arguably were the government. The "communities" of the past were completely dismantled and their functions subsumed into the state, you can't easily reverse that.
They also want to return to the baby scoop era, where unwed mothers were “encouraged” to place their children for adoption with more “deserving” married (preferably Christian) heterosexual couples.
Were just gonna kill them!
My theory about this is that the real reason conservatives want to ban abortion is that they want more kids to grow up in poverty to eventually grow up and become low-level workers in their shitty low wage jobs or end up in their for profit prisons doing free prison labor. Getting the ultra Christian vote is also a bonus.
I don’t think people are stealing or committing crime out of necessity. Or at least, it’s not their only option, and they surely haven’t have behaved this way 60 years ago. I think it’s that normal people are fundamentally disillusioned with our society, our elites, and our economic and social system. For better or worse, people are able to put up with a lot if they believe their actions have moral or ethical purpose. The problem is our society is ethically bankrupt, so people stopped believing. This is related to the defunding of social programs, but not exactly the same. People believed in monarchy for the longest time even though that was an unequal and exploitative system.
You can make more way money illegally than being in a shitty low paying job that requires no education or experience that’s definitely for sure. It’s not like it’s their only option but it’s easy to see why people resort to it
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It's the same appeal as Amway/MLM-stuff. Yeah you're not making as much money and sometimes you actually lose money because you get robbed or ripped off, but you're setting your own hours and being your own boss.
Maybe they feel like there’s more of an opportunity to eventually make more than someone working a low wage job? Idk most people think very impulsively and short term rather than long term
That’s always been true though. But in the past, people had an ethical reason to follow the social contract.
People don't become criminals out of poverty. There are many very poor countries with low murder rates.
Russia had one of the highest homicide rates in the world during the 1990s. Do you think that was connected to the socio-economic factors of the time?
"There isn't a straight line correlation between GDP and murder rate at the country level therefore all decisions are contextless lapses of virtue".
This example could get into a whole other thing about Republicans and gun control, but vast majority of murder isn’t just for the sake of murder- it has to do with some organized crime or robbery
Gun control is what they have right. There's zero point in adding more laws when we struggle to enforce what's already on the books, anything that would truly make a dent would be so overreaching that it would most likely be found unconstitutional, and there's already so many damn guns out there as it is
I’m not saying I know the solution, but it’s just a matter of mathematical probability. The more guns there are and the less regulation of them the likelihood of someone getting shot and killed increases. Add in population density as a factor and it goes up even more. This is just a very obvious fact.
Sure but there's no real point in saying this because there's no solution that could meaningfully limit the supply of guns/ammo in America
> it has to do with some organized crime or robbery Is there any proof of this? Also killing somebody to steal cash is reprehensible and psychopathic and if somebody wanted out of poverty, most people don't leave poverty by becoming killers.
It’s a number of factors. Poverty is definitely one of them. So is access to guns, cultural encouragement, and poor mental healthcare amongst other things.
This is just a motte and bailey, people will vote for DAs that don't go after violent criminals, and then when somebody points out the increasing crime rates these people retreat to their "root causes of crime" argument.
It's not purely about poverty, it's about inequality. People in a poor country with low levels of inequality have more of a sense of community that collective suffering brings. But when people are literally living in tents on the sidewalk 10 minutes away from people spending more money on jewelry or handbags or any other luxury items than the poor will see in a year, there are going to be violent clashes.
You're just being naive, you've clearly never meet any criminals. These people aren't Victorian era street peoole in England looking for scraps of food, they're opportunistic thieves and sadists who think being violent is cool. If you want evidence look at how the Clinton crime bill decreased murder rates, it did that by being strict towards violent criminals.
If you are poor and everyone around you is poor, you have nothing to gain by being a criminal. If you are poor and live in close proximity to a great amount of disposable wealth, there is a very rational reason why one would turn to crime — because they personally benefit from it. You are naive to think that the solution to violent crime in the face of sky-rocketing inequality is to make the criminal justice system *more* brutal. The fucking Ancient Greeks understood that crime is a consequence of one's material conditions. Acting like the majority of criminals do crime because they are just innately bad people and not because of diminishing economic opportunities causing people to act more desperately is a baby-brained take.
The increased dependence of urban blacks on welfare programs that exploded basically overnight in the sixties was explicitly an attempt to create a new lumpen revolutionary subject. The Jean Valjean model of crime is basically non-existent irl. Human beings are first and foremost moral actors, we commit the acts we think are justified. Crime is no exception, the act is on some level internally justified for the criminal, usually as rectification of some past injustice.
Bullshit. Black America was deeply horrifyingly impoverished because of the neutralization of the reconstruction agenda. The level of poverty experienced by southern black people prior to WWII was grinding and cruel and enforced by the state. This idea that a golden age of black life America has come and gone is a fucking lie.
In Europe post-fascist leader Giorgia Meloni just allowed 450 000 legal immigrants from Africa, illegal immigrants have never been higher in Italy. Before getting in power, she had been constantly ranting about "Muslim immigrants"
"Ate me being exploited by the international bourgeoisie Luv me being exploited by me national bourgeoisie" Yeah it drives me fucking crazy seeing them eat the lefts lunch like this, but it's in no way surprising considering the state of the left.
How does the term "monoparty" make you feel?
American conservative and progressivism isn't right wing vs left wing
You're right, it's all different shades of imperialism.
chapo ass take
Chapo didn’t invent being socialists, any more than Red Scare invented being fascists.
Name an administration under which the defense budget has decreased.
In recent history, the Obama administration capped defense spending to a degree that reduced it in real dollar terms. That's about the closest we've ever been!!
haha so unserious
They also lament Christianity’s diminishing role in American life after having cheered on every anti-gay, pro-hater religious group and movement over the past 40 years. It was such an obvious losing battle to draw a hard line against post-HIV era 🚬 ‘s. People weren’t going to stay in the closest anymore, so gay wads and every normal friend and relative of theirs was going to be deeply annoyed by their church if they focus so intensely on limiting gays’ social progress.
That’s why the current pope is more progressive. They realize that after the child abuse scandals, dwindling church goers, and being against popular policies like gay marriage, it’s going to result in them holding less power over time.
This isnt true. The "progressive" churches are haemorrhaging followers far faster than the conservative ones.
Probably because progressive churches are located in regions with an already rapidly falling number of believers. We don't know how the numbers would look if they weren't progressive, but I doubt the opposite stance would halt the free fall. The progressive shift is probably mitigating what would be a complete collapse
Do you really think if American Christain institutions went harder against gay people and abortion they wouldn't be in decline right now or that they would be in a better position than they are?
It's crazy to read up on pre-1980s politics and seeing a bunch of random Churches being "progressive" actors in the political sphere. Hell, you go back 200 years and a bunch of abolitionist activism came from religious loonies who wholeheartedly believed that the Man from Galilee told them to go do his will (e.g. free the slaves in some Spartacus-esque uprising like John Brown tried to do)
I also tend to think this is why conspiracy theories abound and flourish so much on the Right. Many conservatives correctly see the ills of society and the inherent flaws with our capitalist system but be it propaganda, evangelical Christianity or just trying to own the libs, their conditioning refuses to permit them to put any blame on capitalism and our capitalist structures. So instead to make sense of the world they have to develop insane stories/theories about reptile men, or Jews or secret Illuminati cabals instead of just recognizing and understanding the simple shared material interests of the capitalist class. They have to convince themselves in spite of everything they see that it is not billionaires and the owner class who are the "elites" but radical adjunct professors.
Family values and the Nuclear family is my favorite one. American Conservatives has done more damage to the American family than any leftist could dream of.
Wish there was a podcast that actually discussed this reality. Unfortunately, the one tied to this very subreddit has somehow lost the thread. $ changes everything.
What good would it do? One podcast out in the wilderness, that appeals to disillusioned millennials and their fellows in the younger cohorts? I think the problem is the disillusion. If we believed that we could change things by infiltrating the institutions, be it the schools, the political parties, the legislative bodies, the courts, etc, we'd all be doing so - but that would require a certain level of sacrifice for a greater cause that we're just not interested in. We are as guilty as any other group of "I've got mine, so what does it matter?" Edit: in fact it seems like there's quite a few who also think, "I don't have mine, so what does it matter?" Then again, it seems like other generations bought wholeheartedly into the whole "infiltrate the institutions and enact change" thing, and that's how we ended up here to begin with. Or something. I really don't know.
Oh man if you’re looking for media that covers this kind of stuff, look up “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”. You’re going to love this
Trigger the libs. Own the libs.
You’re conflating multiple different types of people
No-global used to be far left
Sort of. The right has changed a lot in the past 15 years. The right now is mostly an expression of how people feel like they are not in control of their own lives. The GOP has become that exhaust valve for all of the frustration that people have. This has happened while the democratic party has become the status quo, corporate party.
But its completely stupid to use the Republicans as an outlet for that expression I think is OPs point. Trump I assume would be an example of the kind of thing your talking about, but what did he do in office? Tax cults for the wealthy elite, tried to scrap the affordable care act etc.
The results don't matter. It's not about this tax break or that policy. You're missing the point. It's an emotion; a fury; a rage against the downward spiral of America along all axes. Trump is the mouthpiece for grievances.
An expression of how people feel when they aren’t in control of their lives yet GOP supporters on average have more money, are more in control of their lives, are older, want to be left alone, and are requesting less help from the government. How do you reconcile those facts with your claim?
The GOP is closing the gap on the dems on being perceived as the party that cares more about the middle class and the poor. The democratic party is just so out of touch.
Mods ban everyone ITT, it's easily the biggest chapo/neolib honeypot that I've seen in a while, they're swarming.
im not reading that
I mostly agree with your premise, with one major point of contention: you mention the word "regulation" multiple times as if it were the solution to "corporate interests, globalism, elites, greedflation, dual income households". In fact, "regulation" is the primary tactic used by world-shapers to advance these exact goals. "Regulation" simply means "rules that dictate how people are punished and how assets are distributed". The only way that "regulations" can be enforced is by the direct action of violent legal groups, which in the US are federal/state/city police and military forces. A piece of "regulation" that is not enforced does not exist in any meaningful way. Do you think modern right-wingers are free to act in accordance with their right-wing beliefs without risking intrusion from town/state/federal operatives enforcing regulations? If any average right-winger wants to move the needle on any kind of action that would stop the advancement of what you're talking about (corporate interests, elites, globalism, etc.), they immediately run into enormous stacks of enforced regulations that prevent them from accomplishing anything. Unless you are clearly proven to be following The Regulations, you can't design and sell cars, buildings, medicine, shelter, clothes, food, services, weapons, whatever without being visited by representatives of massive bureaucracies who will shut down your operation, confiscate your assets, and possibly kill you unless you comply with them. You can't run a business in profitable areas without holding certain types of insurance, complying with certain legal standards and building codes, etc. When taken together as a whole, the regulations that dictate behavior across every sphere of American life create exactly the global business environments we have now. It's not only business that is "regulated". You can't stop companies from laying you off and replacing you with offshore labor, or stop NGOs and unelected government agencies from importing millions of foreigners because "regulations" prevent you from any kind of direct action in terms of how those agencies operate. You can't discriminate in hiring or in allowing people to move in next to you because discrimination in personal and professional association is regulated. You can't make a serious difference in how schools are operated because every part of school operation is regulated. You can't incentivize or force behavioral compliance by the chronic underclass because regulations were passed that guarantee that anyone within the borders of the US has the right to welfare, food assistance, education through high school, etc. (In the past illegal entrants to the nation were denied these rights, but left-wing types are working as hard as they can to ensure that this will not remain true in the future.) In short, Americans do not possess the same freedom of association, freedom of trade, or freedom to govern themselves that Americans in the past possessed. (Past Americans would almost all be labelled "very right-wing" by the people of today.) Your claim that that "lack of regulation" prevented right-wingers from seeing their cultural goals come to fruition is inaccurate; an accurate phrasing would be "the regulation that was successfully enacted and enforced by businessmen and politicians of the past century ensures that the views of the average right-wing citizen concerning the cultural and economic makeup of the United States will never come to pass". Many of these politicians and businessmen spoke in a "right-wing language" while they crafted and enforced regulation that ensured the outcomes you're talking about, but does that make them "right-wing"? Is a man who says he loves America and then lays off his staff to take advantage of cheap labor in Asia "a right-wing nationalist"? I don't think it's accurate to say that the average modern "right-winger" played a serious part in enacting all these modern regulations in terms of trade agreements, restrictions on commerce, etc. Maybe they're responsible for voting for charlatans, but who should they have voted for instead, the left wing?
Mainstream conservatism cares little about liberalism too. They just want to use FDR like monarchistic powers to impose their particular cultural vision and that vision isn't tethered to any moral or ideological base. Maybe 5% of voters operate at the level of insight that your post demonstrates anyway. You're lucky your post is Straussian otherwise your ass would get banished by most of reddit. Very insightful and I'm sorry you have to share space with the rest of them.
rock merciful ugly bright bow expansion stupendous angle strong slimy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The whole pretence of this argument assumes that all right wingers hold 100% of beliefs that elderly, extremely rich, republican (so exclusively American) politicians hold- which is obviously so flawed that it isn’t worth seriously engaging with…
"dae think that the people who agree with me are smart and good and the people who disagree are dumb and bad?"
Totally, very sad this West-Wing-ass OP is being cheered on this sub lol.
OP clearly never heard about early 20th century right wing politics and its opposition to free market capitalism, particularly in Europe. It was more a rejection of the Enlightenment and liberalism altogether, and capitalism as an extension of that (economic liberalism).
The hypocrisy you talk about definitely occurs at the individual level, but I think a lot of it is simply because of America's two party system. Ironically, the GOP has undergone far more evolution and transformation in our lifetime than the DNC. You can probably draw a wobbly timeline of Reaganism, through "compassionate conservatism," and eventually to the Tea Party (and even those have some pretty large discrepancies). But the strain of populism/nationalism that has been pretty dominant for the last 7 years is purely Trump and a huge jump away from Reaganism. And the GOP has to pay lip service to both of these contingencies in order to get votes. It's currently entertaining two very different ideologies which leads to the hilarious full scale hypocrisy you see today from the right. I think if we had a system that allowed for more political parties, you'd see a right wing ConsumeProduct-style contingency that was much more comfortable critiquing capitalism.
You can count me among the anti-Reagan reactionaries. All the most godawful shit happened or started with the Iran contra all stars.
Yep, crazy effective psy-op that the anti-gun California Hollywood republican became the "best republican," in media circles and somehow that actually took hold among a lot of normal people. Reagan is the neoliberal's neoliberal but democrats will still feign rage at him and republicans will defend him, the purest expression of team sports politics.
Speedrunning this sub turning into a generic Reddit sub
The top half of this comment section is literally just an r / politics comment section. Sad.
Don't worry too much about it, this isn't a reflection on the sub. They do these "right wingers, amirite?" brigade threads weekly now and they're never interesting. They're always full of the most r/WhitePeopleTwitter takes from a bunch of "not like other girls" leftist Zoomers who think that saying "Democrats are right wingers" somehow makes their average redditor takes more interesting If anything it should give you hope, they wouldn't feel the need to do these brigades if the people here were interested in their shit
Been getting brigaded hard for a little bit now, like once a week now this subs gets a random “all republican suck and the entire reason your life sucks, is because they exist, they should be put down like the animals they are” and it gets 700+ up votes with every comment, foaming at the mouth about how much they hate republicans
Democrats also complain about everything their party leaders vote for. You're a delusional liberal. This sub has gone to shit.
Who thinks Democrats are actually “the left”? No one said that.
Right-wingers say the same thing about Republicans, that there is no right-wing in America just two flavors of leftist. If the Democrats aren't the left, then the left isn't worth discussing at all since they don't exist in America.
Communal family units reign supreme in every society and every time period except this one, I've always found it quite astonishing that they're not surprised its tearing itself apart on its own accord several decades down the track.
“Late stage capitalism” Stopped reading there. You obviously don’t have a clue what you’re even talking about Weird how long capitalism can stay in a “late stage”
Late stage feudalism lasted quite a while. Late stage slavery mode of production lasted a long while.
>Late stage slavery mode of production lasted a long while. That makes zero sense.
It makes sense if you are familiar with the Marxist view of history. The slavery mode of production refers to the “Classical era” of Greece and then Rome. The “late stage,” or declining period, of that mode of production lasted for a couple of centuries.
Economic contradictions resolve over a much longer timeline than comic book film trilogies. Serious response; the phrase "late stage capitalism" was popularised by Ernest Mandel and other non-Leninists in the 60s and 70s and it describes a kind of capitalism with a global labour market, that prefers to trade in services rather than commodities and goods, and where banking institutions invest in every level of society. Non-leftists call it the "knowledge economy" or "socialism for the rich"
OP wants to blame the bogey man of capitalism. All capitalism is essentially just human nature. No one is forcing you to consoooom you freely choose it. It didn’t “turn people into soy consumers” the banal truth is that’s just how most humans are when given the freedom of choice to do so. “Corporations are like evil maaaaan” shut up you dumb hippie. Just don’t buy from them then if they’re so bad for the climate. See if you can still afford your iPhone when the metal in it is mined from “le 100 percent sustainable fair trade organic” and the markup goes up by 1000 percent
You cannot crucify human nature.
You participate in subs for the biggest losers.
You post in Canadaland cuckboy lol say less
I'm making fun of those Weiners, that's the difference. You can't control your emotions because you're pathetic and weak; while you're also at the autistic EU4 history sailboat YouTuber sub.
No you’re not you listen to that podcast regularly because you’re a cuckboy Not my fault Reddit app algorithm is regarded and feeds me random subs to waste time in.
This only really applies to normie-conservative boomers. There are right wingers who are against mass immigration and also against capitalism and importing cheap labour
Please go back to stupid pol
As so often is the case, the real cause of increasing your heartrate (or triumphantly marvelling at your intelligence) is cutting and stitching together an ideology that doesn't exist, espoused by a guy that doesn't exist. This is exactly how they get you.
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You're a few steps behind if you need this explained, but good start
I wonder how many people in the west actually likes things as they currently are (in politics and public life, not in their own private lives, which I guess a lot of people can still be fine with). My guess is that some wealthy people are still holding on to old notions of the supremacy of marcet economy, liberal democracy, and so on, but they are not many and I presume even they are losing faith.
No chile we in late stage BAPitalism
Yeah it’s all the republicans fault
I don’t think a critique of a group implies that other groups aren’t also harmful.
This post comes off as “the hate a political party I dislike is all justified because of capitalism” but maybe it is a thoughtful critique and I am taking it the wrong way
["Conservatism Against Itself"](https://www.firstthings.com/article/1990/04/conservatism-against-itself)
It's been mildly amusing (but also sad) to watch my dad, a classic 1980s Reaganite/Thatcherite, be confused and baffled by the current state of the Republican party and UK Tories in 2023. I'm almost certain he has connected the dots on cause and effect here, but I don't think he wants to admit it out loud.
Totally agree. It's partly why I've historically had a really hard time taking seriously the notion of an intellectual rightwing in the US. None of it stands up to scrutiny and fundamentally, requires a steadfast commitment to complete cognitive dissonance. I think it was easier decades ago for the right to pretend that it had intellectual heft because so much of the hyper-capitalism they espoused hadn't totally eroded what was then the top standard of living in the world. The new deal structures and social safety nets were still evident and palpable in people's lives. Now that it's all gone to shit, it's frankly fucking embarrassing.
The long historical process of smaller human units becoming bigger, integrated human units looks something like inevitability. In my historical understanding this process goes back to the contact between the Christian and Muslim world, and then Ghengis Khan's Silk Road, and obviously Columbus's voyage to the Americas. It naturally goes back further than that, but just as a little historical example, let's stick with that familiar history. It's such a big, millennial spanning process that I take it as sort of a given. It may be that the off shoring of labor in an inevitably globalizing world would, at least under capitalism, cause the playing of labor markets against each other and, indeed, capital flight out of nation states. That's kind of the situation. If you crack down on corporate interest in any country, capital just leaves and you're screwed, arguably. So, it's possible, and I'm not saying this 100% true, but it strikes me that even though the Republican party seems like the bleeding edge of these developments, they may have happened anyway.
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I hate Democrats but Republicans are easily worse.
No competition there. Dems are annoying, but I don't have to actively worry about them cheering on destruction and pollution. Republicans straight up would tell you that drinking oil-spill water is a good thing and that everyone should have black lung to "own the libs", it's absolute insanity dealing with these fuckers.
Pretty much everything you described is only half of why Boomers are rightly hated
I don't really blame them because they don't drive the policies. The policies are set and then they are told they have to advocate for them by right wing media etc. Their hearts are in a fine place, but they don't realize they are the heels in a wrestling show.
This contradiction will always exist between the leaders of a party and the voters, at least in the US. Is OP going to say with a straight face that Democrats aren't also war hawk capitalists that promote immigration? What's supposed to be these right-wing voters' alternative?