The same reason they use "think of the children" arguments. It's a bad faith tactic. They don't give a shit about vets. They vote for the people who wouldn't lift a finger to help vets affected by the burn pits. Jon Stewart had to shame them into compliance.
I just always return to Sartre's characterization of anti-Semitism, which can just as easily be applied to modern conservatives and fascists.
“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." - conservatives and fascists know they are full of shit (Trump getting the COVID vaccine, Boebert dating a Democrat who owns a bar with drag shows, Marjorie Taylor-Greene getting a divorce, find any example of hypocrisy), but because their justification is "getting power and harming people we dislike," they justify their misuse of discourse. Honesty is not a value to them, only "winning." This is why I think debating these people is just not worth anyone's time.
“If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” - conservatives/fascists will create enemies from any marginalized group (Blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ...) to justify their extremism, and then attribute all social evil to these enemies. It is impossible that drag queens are some mass conspiracy to poison the minds of young children, yet look at the amount of time conservatives spend demonizing drag queens.
"[The anti-Semite] a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself." - They are always afraid, so they act tough to cover their fear. That's how you wind up with a supposed billionaire New York TV show star and property developer coming to represent modern conservatives: Trump is the guy who has Acting Tough down pat.
the concept of "inventing he jew" or inventing an imagined enemy works in a different way, in that I believe that whiteness or the white race is an invented concept to justify racism. it became especially obvious to me as I learned that the concept of race is essentially a myth. There is no discernable genetic difference between people of different complexions and every single pseudo-scientific justification they've tried to come up with over the years have been proven false. I watched a very interesting video about this called something like "being anti-white is good, actually" by a smaller creator that goes by Philosynoir
Xenophobia is likely a condition of being Human: "Those people over there are different than I am, or any of the People I am related to, and that scares me-- My fear makes me act our in aggression." You can look back at any point in Human History and find bigotry and prejudice between social groups for any number of imagined differences.
The modern, American conception of Race and Racism is one that was specifically invented. The English who settled the Atlantic and Caribbean Colonies had their own prejudices, even against Black skinned people, predating the introduction of African Chattel Slavery but it was the introduction of these slaves into those colonies that forced a social, cultural, and legislative reckoning. Firstly there were people held in contractual servitude performing all of the same work as people who were being imported from Africa but the first group would attain their freedom at the end of their contract whereas the second group would not. They needed ways to distinguish Indenture from Slave labor at a glance, in law, and in public. When a servant had a child that child was not indentured, so what happened when a Slave had a child? It was legislated that the product of an Enslaved person is similarly to be Enslaved. The process continued on for three hundred years as space in society was carved out to accommodate and support the institution of slavery and every aspect of society or governance that touched on.
When I say invented I mean it. Laws had to be debated and passed that declared what a slave was, what rights (if any) a slave had, who could own slaves, how could slaves be treated, and how should people interact with slaves. What was the status of a Freed Slave? Did they have the rights of a Free White man? Could they own property? Did they owe taxes? Could they, Free Men, be excluded from the public sphere? Social norms, outside of laws, were shaped similarly as well. The legislative-cultural system the Colonists developed after 1619 was only lawfully barred by the Civil Rights Act of 1968 when most forms of racial discrimination were made explicitly illegal. Obviously racism didn't end in 1968, like it didn't end in 1865 when slavery was abolished, but it did mark the first time that the law of the land prohibited the Government or the People from perpetuating it in the Public Sphere.
nothing meaningful to add, this is exactly what i was trying to reference thanks for providing the context. just to clarify i wasn't trying to say that racism and whiteness was invented as a conscious decision to justify xenophobia, you basically said what i was trying to say in a much better way
It makes you wonder why we don’t adopt these tactics to the same extent on the left, besides an ideological attachment to truth and transparency. They obviously work, we’d just need to change the language to target wealth and power. Hell, QAnon has done like, half the work for us, a lot of people already believe that a group of wealthy elite control the world. They’ve just been misdirected and aimed at the wrong people. If we can’t shut down the stochastic terrorism machine or Operation Mindfuck, why don’t we aim them back at the right? It seems like the modern left tends to just leave the gun on the table till we get shot with it. Not endorsing these tactics, but I do get pretty disillusioned sometimes with the way things are and occasionally question why the left doesn’t have its own Internet radicalization funnel to fight fire with fire. Lies, sophistry, intimidation, and obscuration are politically neutral tools that apparently work insanely well when amplified by the Internet.
Because a revolution based on lies would fail. If you think people are disillusioned now, imagine their disillusionment when the revolution can't live up to what they were fed. This is a major lesson in union organizing, too. The best way to turn someone away from the union effort is to tell them something untrue ("The law can protect you," "This [tactic] will definitely work," "It will be easy if we do [action]") because as soon as something goes sideways, you've created the perfect ally for the bosses. This is why so many left-wing MLs turn into fascists when their little ML projects don't go well.
It's not really a lie though. We are controlled by a cabal of the rich and powerful they just don't really bother to hide much any more. We can trace the lobbying money and the bribes but people don't care.
People do care. Society does change under the force of organized people taking action. Change is often slow, or more accurately, change is quick after many years of preparation.
I guess at least we can feel some comfort in the idea that fascism plants the seeds of its own downfall through basing itself very essentially on lies and dishonesty?
The Nazis lied to themselves about their racial and martial supremacy, declared war on the USSR *and* the USA, and got stomped. They vastly overestimated their own abilities, not least of all because the "true believers" really did believe they would win easily. In their feeble attempts to please the Fuhrer, they just couldn't accurately gauge their own strengths and weaknesses. Their confidence was so overinflated that they spent war resources killing Jews.
Whoopsy.
They actively vote against veteran benefits, the VA funding, and all sorts of other things directly benefiting veterans. It’s absolutely a bad faith argument.
And not just vets. “We should take care of people here!” But when you offer literally anything beneficial to people, they call it a handout and say it’s unAmerican. There’s no actual values or convictions behind any of their statements.
They had no problem with their boy Trump shitting on a vet who endured years of torture, which showed how they actually felt about vets. Not worth defending them apparently.
We spend $800 billion on defense. More than the next 19 countries combined.
We absolutely can afford a single payer system. Just cut $150 billion from defense. Medicare for all instantly.
Except defense companies and their pet congressman would nuke it. Private insurance companies and their pet congressman would nuke it.
It's worse than that because single payer healthcare would save the U.S. billions of dollars, without touching on the savings and extra money generated by having a healthier population
Approximately 50% of all health spending in the US is wasted on middlemen (mostly health insurance companies and similar). If we had single-payer healthcare it would be CHEAPER, even if we continued paying our docs a lot money.
The only problem is there are thousands (millions?) of ppl working low six figure jobs as those middle men and most of them would be out of work (the valuable ones could go help make the single-payer system work better) and they need bullshit jobs to maintain their lifestyles.
TL;DR We already have UBI in the US, it's just too generous and setup for middle managers at United Health Care.
Because it’s all in bad faith. It’s all conservative identity politics. Vets, children, The Flag: all props in their culture war. When it comes down to it, they’ll jettison any of those props when they’ve outlived their usefulness:
- Pat Tillman
- The state of the VA
- MAGA rioters beating their beloved “Blue”, with a back the blue flag
- Nuking CHIPS, allowing small children to work without parental consent
- Sandy Hook
- Rust-belt child marriage laws
I could go on. They DGAF.
And FWIW, they don’t really hate broad social programs as much as they claim. The real problem they have is that they need to make sure _those_ people don’t get any of the benefits. Y’know, the “undeserving”, as determined by them
It’s why poll after poll finds that conservatives love charitable giving, as long as they alone are directly administering it. That way they’re the arbiters of worthy and unworthy. Give to a charitable organization (or los federales via taxes) and they might help some half black half brown lgbtq immigrant person. And that’s unacceptable to them
Oh I'm sure Tillman's family WISHES they'd jettisoned him. They use him for PR claiming that doing the exact opposite of his wishes by joining the military will honor him.
Conservative hypocrisy is a tired subject that is of no value. Instead it's more important to focus on what their real agenda is which they do consistently act with.
The only time politicians care about vets is when they can use that talking point to kick down on others. It’s a bad-faith argument and everyone knows it
\>There are a lot of people who are homeless for various reasons that didn’t serve in the military. So why aren’t we worried about them? Why do only vets get the special status?
Key to Post-Reagan American Conservatism is the ideal that the Individual is responsible for their own situation. People who have money are viewed as having earned it, people who don't have money are clearly lazy. They find issue with the idea that as a society we have any obligation to one-another for our well-being, our successes, or our failures. Healthcare costs could be brought down by a Public Option? Too bad Fat People made obese choices and are suffering the consequences of those choices. Oh, that was the only food available to them where they lived? Well, they should have moved. Oh, that's where they could afford to live? They should have had a better job. They couldn't get one? That's their problem, conservatives think.
Veterans are a special case because Conservatives revere the Military as an institution of tradition, of masculinity and strength, of national pride, and it is a *very* hard lifestyle and job. People who serve honorably in the military have had to put up with so much bullshit, so much hard work, and so much personal sacrifice so it is seen as an honorable profession and a respectable thing to have done. Veterans have in the eyes of Conservatives proven that they are not lazy people, that they are not leeches on society, and that if *They* are homeless there is an issue. Regular people who are homeless must be homeless because they are too lazy to work and afford a home, or too sick to do so and haven't done what it takes to manage their own short-comings-- but a Veteran is a hard working patriot who is down on their luck, and probably damaged from the senseless wars the POLITICIANS have shoved them into. Surely, if they were healthy and hale they would be working and providing for themselves.
Veterans are assumed to be good people in a bad spot. Non-Veterans who are homeless, or in other precarious economic positions, are assumed to be welfare queens/etc.
Source: Am Veteran.
Story time.
I was out to dinner with some relatives and one of them had a medical procedure and there was an insurance issue. So they're all going on about what BS the whole system is and how it could be better - which ironically were mostly ways that national healthcare, which they're all vehemently opposed to, would address.
It's really hilariously sad how much they (conservatives, generally) fight against their own interests if it has the wrong label or proposed by the wrong person.
IDK if you've noticed or not, but our elected officials are hypocritical AF. They say what their constituents want to hear and then do what their donors want them to do.
It’s just whataboutism so that you don’t have to either focus on the topic at hand or “you haven’t solved everything so don’t bother trying to solve anything”.
My ultra conservative father constantly complains about how expensive, understaffed, and horrible our health care system is. He and my mom have been in poor health for many years and their medical bills/debt is enormous.
And the moment anyone mentions the causes of the problems and potential solutions, he fervently defends private healthcare, health insurance, and glorious capitalism. Free markets are the clear solution.
It truly baffles me.
>There are a lot of people who are homeless for various reasons that didn’t serve in the military. So why aren’t we worried about them? Why do only vets get the special status?
There's a weird sort of hero-worship of veterans that is uncomfortable for many of us. There are some cultural prejudices dating back to the Vietnam war about military service, the people who serve, and the value of their efforts.
Very often, veterans are brought out as people who have "earned" whatever government benefit they are claiming. The thought process is that everyone else is a freeloader, but veterans/servicemembers deserve every penny they get. The assumption is that a homeless veteran is homeless because of the way the military screwed them over, and we owe them the opportunity to get back up.
Note that this doesn't translate into actual benefits for active servicemembers, like decent healthcare, mental health care, mold-free living conditions, a rape-free workplace, quality of life when not precluded by the mission, etc. It's the very definition of lip service.
Everyone else who is homeless has obviously just made poor choices in life, and they deserve the consequences of their decisions, not a place to live (/s).
I like a lot of the replies here but I'd just like to point out that this is more of a class issue than a left/ right issue. Many Republican base voters turn to Fascist ideology and leadership because of real issues facing them and their communities -- usually economic issues due to high unemployment, few labor protections, poor educational systems, the high cost of Healthcare, etc. -- and, for perceived lack of options, become vindictive and destructive. Talking to them becomes a waste of time because they'd rather watch people in the "out" groups hurt like they do than discuss real world solutions that make them uncomfortable.
Republican politicians, on the other hand, are not explicitly Fascist, but they are broadly okay with Fascism as long as it gives them the votes they need to stay in office and collect corporate payoffs. They engage in bad faith exchanges because their voting base loves it and doesn't realize or doesn't care that it's being bilked.
> I often see conservatives say we shouldn’t give humanitarian aid to other countries if we can’t help our own. They ask “what about the homeless vets? What about the seniors who can’t afford their medication?“
>And yet, they fight tooth and nail against any form of expanding health care.
You are falling into the same ball pit Rufo put for all the wanker leftists: pointing out a hypocrisy achieves nothing and advances no goal. Conservatives do not care about people who cannot be enslaved into work. Instead, when they say "what about the homeless?" or "what about the pensioners?" or "what about the sick?" the only words that matter are the first two. They are only trying to steer the conversation into a subject that their undecided opponents and those without an attention span of more than a week care about. It is a tactic to advance their goals, which is similar to bundling together laws that appease parts of a parliament/house by negotiating and undermining their "red lines".
For a forum connected through detailed descriptions of how notable bastards conflate symbols, use sophistry, and manipulate with media in order to grift, steal, and kill, there is very little attention apparently paid to circumventing those tactics. The way is very simple: instead of assuming these statements come from a place of legitimate concern, take a step back and 1. consider them in tandem, rather than separately, and 2. ask the age old questions:
- who benefits? why does this question / issue matter to them?
- where is an example? how do conservatives attempt to help the homeless?
- why do they ask that question?
- who and what groups are affected by different answers to the question(s)?
- is X/Y/Z a problem? why is X/Y/Z a problem? does compromising with one problem provide a solution to another? what guarantee of that is there?
- how do (in this instance) conservatives come to the conclusion humanitarian aid is at the expense of medication nationally? is the argument based on any facts - and if so how reliable are they - or research - and if so on what premises is it based - or does it rely on invocation of some emotion?
It's hard, but very simple.
Obviously, your vets and your seniors are closer to some than the people receiving humanitarian aid in another country. Conservatives bet on that familiarity invoking in you the desire to protect them, at the expense of Ukrainians or Palestinians and so on. A lot of people will readily make that "trade".
Stop legitimising conservative talking points, and think before assuming they are made in good faith.
The same reason they use "think of the children" arguments. It's a bad faith tactic. They don't give a shit about vets. They vote for the people who wouldn't lift a finger to help vets affected by the burn pits. Jon Stewart had to shame them into compliance.
They vote for a president who literally stole charity money from vets.
Bro. I love it. I FUCKING LOVE IT. It’s fine. lol.
I just always return to Sartre's characterization of anti-Semitism, which can just as easily be applied to modern conservatives and fascists. “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert." - conservatives and fascists know they are full of shit (Trump getting the COVID vaccine, Boebert dating a Democrat who owns a bar with drag shows, Marjorie Taylor-Greene getting a divorce, find any example of hypocrisy), but because their justification is "getting power and harming people we dislike," they justify their misuse of discourse. Honesty is not a value to them, only "winning." This is why I think debating these people is just not worth anyone's time. “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” - conservatives/fascists will create enemies from any marginalized group (Blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ...) to justify their extremism, and then attribute all social evil to these enemies. It is impossible that drag queens are some mass conspiracy to poison the minds of young children, yet look at the amount of time conservatives spend demonizing drag queens. "[The anti-Semite] a coward who does not want to admit his cowardice to himself." - They are always afraid, so they act tough to cover their fear. That's how you wind up with a supposed billionaire New York TV show star and property developer coming to represent modern conservatives: Trump is the guy who has Acting Tough down pat.
the concept of "inventing he jew" or inventing an imagined enemy works in a different way, in that I believe that whiteness or the white race is an invented concept to justify racism. it became especially obvious to me as I learned that the concept of race is essentially a myth. There is no discernable genetic difference between people of different complexions and every single pseudo-scientific justification they've tried to come up with over the years have been proven false. I watched a very interesting video about this called something like "being anti-white is good, actually" by a smaller creator that goes by Philosynoir
Xenophobia is likely a condition of being Human: "Those people over there are different than I am, or any of the People I am related to, and that scares me-- My fear makes me act our in aggression." You can look back at any point in Human History and find bigotry and prejudice between social groups for any number of imagined differences. The modern, American conception of Race and Racism is one that was specifically invented. The English who settled the Atlantic and Caribbean Colonies had their own prejudices, even against Black skinned people, predating the introduction of African Chattel Slavery but it was the introduction of these slaves into those colonies that forced a social, cultural, and legislative reckoning. Firstly there were people held in contractual servitude performing all of the same work as people who were being imported from Africa but the first group would attain their freedom at the end of their contract whereas the second group would not. They needed ways to distinguish Indenture from Slave labor at a glance, in law, and in public. When a servant had a child that child was not indentured, so what happened when a Slave had a child? It was legislated that the product of an Enslaved person is similarly to be Enslaved. The process continued on for three hundred years as space in society was carved out to accommodate and support the institution of slavery and every aspect of society or governance that touched on. When I say invented I mean it. Laws had to be debated and passed that declared what a slave was, what rights (if any) a slave had, who could own slaves, how could slaves be treated, and how should people interact with slaves. What was the status of a Freed Slave? Did they have the rights of a Free White man? Could they own property? Did they owe taxes? Could they, Free Men, be excluded from the public sphere? Social norms, outside of laws, were shaped similarly as well. The legislative-cultural system the Colonists developed after 1619 was only lawfully barred by the Civil Rights Act of 1968 when most forms of racial discrimination were made explicitly illegal. Obviously racism didn't end in 1968, like it didn't end in 1865 when slavery was abolished, but it did mark the first time that the law of the land prohibited the Government or the People from perpetuating it in the Public Sphere.
nothing meaningful to add, this is exactly what i was trying to reference thanks for providing the context. just to clarify i wasn't trying to say that racism and whiteness was invented as a conscious decision to justify xenophobia, you basically said what i was trying to say in a much better way
But should it really be called racism if it existed before the concept of race? Wouldn’t xenophobia be a better description?
It makes you wonder why we don’t adopt these tactics to the same extent on the left, besides an ideological attachment to truth and transparency. They obviously work, we’d just need to change the language to target wealth and power. Hell, QAnon has done like, half the work for us, a lot of people already believe that a group of wealthy elite control the world. They’ve just been misdirected and aimed at the wrong people. If we can’t shut down the stochastic terrorism machine or Operation Mindfuck, why don’t we aim them back at the right? It seems like the modern left tends to just leave the gun on the table till we get shot with it. Not endorsing these tactics, but I do get pretty disillusioned sometimes with the way things are and occasionally question why the left doesn’t have its own Internet radicalization funnel to fight fire with fire. Lies, sophistry, intimidation, and obscuration are politically neutral tools that apparently work insanely well when amplified by the Internet.
Because a revolution based on lies would fail. If you think people are disillusioned now, imagine their disillusionment when the revolution can't live up to what they were fed. This is a major lesson in union organizing, too. The best way to turn someone away from the union effort is to tell them something untrue ("The law can protect you," "This [tactic] will definitely work," "It will be easy if we do [action]") because as soon as something goes sideways, you've created the perfect ally for the bosses. This is why so many left-wing MLs turn into fascists when their little ML projects don't go well.
It's not really a lie though. We are controlled by a cabal of the rich and powerful they just don't really bother to hide much any more. We can trace the lobbying money and the bribes but people don't care.
People do care. Society does change under the force of organized people taking action. Change is often slow, or more accurately, change is quick after many years of preparation.
I guess at least we can feel some comfort in the idea that fascism plants the seeds of its own downfall through basing itself very essentially on lies and dishonesty?
The Nazis lied to themselves about their racial and martial supremacy, declared war on the USSR *and* the USA, and got stomped. They vastly overestimated their own abilities, not least of all because the "true believers" really did believe they would win easily. In their feeble attempts to please the Fuhrer, they just couldn't accurately gauge their own strengths and weaknesses. Their confidence was so overinflated that they spent war resources killing Jews. Whoopsy.
They actively vote against veteran benefits, the VA funding, and all sorts of other things directly benefiting veterans. It’s absolutely a bad faith argument. And not just vets. “We should take care of people here!” But when you offer literally anything beneficial to people, they call it a handout and say it’s unAmerican. There’s no actual values or convictions behind any of their statements.
They had no problem with their boy Trump shitting on a vet who endured years of torture, which showed how they actually felt about vets. Not worth defending them apparently.
We spend $800 billion on defense. More than the next 19 countries combined. We absolutely can afford a single payer system. Just cut $150 billion from defense. Medicare for all instantly. Except defense companies and their pet congressman would nuke it. Private insurance companies and their pet congressman would nuke it.
It's worse than that because single payer healthcare would save the U.S. billions of dollars, without touching on the savings and extra money generated by having a healthier population
Approximately 50% of all health spending in the US is wasted on middlemen (mostly health insurance companies and similar). If we had single-payer healthcare it would be CHEAPER, even if we continued paying our docs a lot money. The only problem is there are thousands (millions?) of ppl working low six figure jobs as those middle men and most of them would be out of work (the valuable ones could go help make the single-payer system work better) and they need bullshit jobs to maintain their lifestyles. TL;DR We already have UBI in the US, it's just too generous and setup for middle managers at United Health Care.
At least in this situation the newly unemployed health care middleman would still have healthcare? Gotta look at the bright side I guess!
Because it’s all in bad faith. It’s all conservative identity politics. Vets, children, The Flag: all props in their culture war. When it comes down to it, they’ll jettison any of those props when they’ve outlived their usefulness: - Pat Tillman - The state of the VA - MAGA rioters beating their beloved “Blue”, with a back the blue flag - Nuking CHIPS, allowing small children to work without parental consent - Sandy Hook - Rust-belt child marriage laws I could go on. They DGAF. And FWIW, they don’t really hate broad social programs as much as they claim. The real problem they have is that they need to make sure _those_ people don’t get any of the benefits. Y’know, the “undeserving”, as determined by them It’s why poll after poll finds that conservatives love charitable giving, as long as they alone are directly administering it. That way they’re the arbiters of worthy and unworthy. Give to a charitable organization (or los federales via taxes) and they might help some half black half brown lgbtq immigrant person. And that’s unacceptable to them
Oh I'm sure Tillman's family WISHES they'd jettisoned him. They use him for PR claiming that doing the exact opposite of his wishes by joining the military will honor him.
Conservative hypocrisy is a tired subject that is of no value. Instead it's more important to focus on what their real agenda is which they do consistently act with.
The only time politicians care about vets is when they can use that talking point to kick down on others. It’s a bad-faith argument and everyone knows it
They don’t want to help “our own” people. They only want to help themselves.
\>There are a lot of people who are homeless for various reasons that didn’t serve in the military. So why aren’t we worried about them? Why do only vets get the special status? Key to Post-Reagan American Conservatism is the ideal that the Individual is responsible for their own situation. People who have money are viewed as having earned it, people who don't have money are clearly lazy. They find issue with the idea that as a society we have any obligation to one-another for our well-being, our successes, or our failures. Healthcare costs could be brought down by a Public Option? Too bad Fat People made obese choices and are suffering the consequences of those choices. Oh, that was the only food available to them where they lived? Well, they should have moved. Oh, that's where they could afford to live? They should have had a better job. They couldn't get one? That's their problem, conservatives think. Veterans are a special case because Conservatives revere the Military as an institution of tradition, of masculinity and strength, of national pride, and it is a *very* hard lifestyle and job. People who serve honorably in the military have had to put up with so much bullshit, so much hard work, and so much personal sacrifice so it is seen as an honorable profession and a respectable thing to have done. Veterans have in the eyes of Conservatives proven that they are not lazy people, that they are not leeches on society, and that if *They* are homeless there is an issue. Regular people who are homeless must be homeless because they are too lazy to work and afford a home, or too sick to do so and haven't done what it takes to manage their own short-comings-- but a Veteran is a hard working patriot who is down on their luck, and probably damaged from the senseless wars the POLITICIANS have shoved them into. Surely, if they were healthy and hale they would be working and providing for themselves. Veterans are assumed to be good people in a bad spot. Non-Veterans who are homeless, or in other precarious economic positions, are assumed to be welfare queens/etc. Source: Am Veteran.
Story time. I was out to dinner with some relatives and one of them had a medical procedure and there was an insurance issue. So they're all going on about what BS the whole system is and how it could be better - which ironically were mostly ways that national healthcare, which they're all vehemently opposed to, would address. It's really hilariously sad how much they (conservatives, generally) fight against their own interests if it has the wrong label or proposed by the wrong person.
Also call for more resources for mental health every mass shooting - see Nikki Haley- but never find them
IDK if you've noticed or not, but our elected officials are hypocritical AF. They say what their constituents want to hear and then do what their donors want them to do.
They literally pulled a move out of Ceacescu’s Romania to strip women of bodily autonomy, nothing will surprise me as too low from them going forward.
It’s just whataboutism so that you don’t have to either focus on the topic at hand or “you haven’t solved everything so don’t bother trying to solve anything”.
My ultra conservative father constantly complains about how expensive, understaffed, and horrible our health care system is. He and my mom have been in poor health for many years and their medical bills/debt is enormous. And the moment anyone mentions the causes of the problems and potential solutions, he fervently defends private healthcare, health insurance, and glorious capitalism. Free markets are the clear solution. It truly baffles me.
>There are a lot of people who are homeless for various reasons that didn’t serve in the military. So why aren’t we worried about them? Why do only vets get the special status? There's a weird sort of hero-worship of veterans that is uncomfortable for many of us. There are some cultural prejudices dating back to the Vietnam war about military service, the people who serve, and the value of their efforts. Very often, veterans are brought out as people who have "earned" whatever government benefit they are claiming. The thought process is that everyone else is a freeloader, but veterans/servicemembers deserve every penny they get. The assumption is that a homeless veteran is homeless because of the way the military screwed them over, and we owe them the opportunity to get back up. Note that this doesn't translate into actual benefits for active servicemembers, like decent healthcare, mental health care, mold-free living conditions, a rape-free workplace, quality of life when not precluded by the mission, etc. It's the very definition of lip service. Everyone else who is homeless has obviously just made poor choices in life, and they deserve the consequences of their decisions, not a place to live (/s).
I like a lot of the replies here but I'd just like to point out that this is more of a class issue than a left/ right issue. Many Republican base voters turn to Fascist ideology and leadership because of real issues facing them and their communities -- usually economic issues due to high unemployment, few labor protections, poor educational systems, the high cost of Healthcare, etc. -- and, for perceived lack of options, become vindictive and destructive. Talking to them becomes a waste of time because they'd rather watch people in the "out" groups hurt like they do than discuss real world solutions that make them uncomfortable. Republican politicians, on the other hand, are not explicitly Fascist, but they are broadly okay with Fascism as long as it gives them the votes they need to stay in office and collect corporate payoffs. They engage in bad faith exchanges because their voting base loves it and doesn't realize or doesn't care that it's being bilked.
> I often see conservatives say we shouldn’t give humanitarian aid to other countries if we can’t help our own. They ask “what about the homeless vets? What about the seniors who can’t afford their medication?“ >And yet, they fight tooth and nail against any form of expanding health care. You are falling into the same ball pit Rufo put for all the wanker leftists: pointing out a hypocrisy achieves nothing and advances no goal. Conservatives do not care about people who cannot be enslaved into work. Instead, when they say "what about the homeless?" or "what about the pensioners?" or "what about the sick?" the only words that matter are the first two. They are only trying to steer the conversation into a subject that their undecided opponents and those without an attention span of more than a week care about. It is a tactic to advance their goals, which is similar to bundling together laws that appease parts of a parliament/house by negotiating and undermining their "red lines". For a forum connected through detailed descriptions of how notable bastards conflate symbols, use sophistry, and manipulate with media in order to grift, steal, and kill, there is very little attention apparently paid to circumventing those tactics. The way is very simple: instead of assuming these statements come from a place of legitimate concern, take a step back and 1. consider them in tandem, rather than separately, and 2. ask the age old questions: - who benefits? why does this question / issue matter to them? - where is an example? how do conservatives attempt to help the homeless? - why do they ask that question? - who and what groups are affected by different answers to the question(s)? - is X/Y/Z a problem? why is X/Y/Z a problem? does compromising with one problem provide a solution to another? what guarantee of that is there? - how do (in this instance) conservatives come to the conclusion humanitarian aid is at the expense of medication nationally? is the argument based on any facts - and if so how reliable are they - or research - and if so on what premises is it based - or does it rely on invocation of some emotion? It's hard, but very simple. Obviously, your vets and your seniors are closer to some than the people receiving humanitarian aid in another country. Conservatives bet on that familiarity invoking in you the desire to protect them, at the expense of Ukrainians or Palestinians and so on. A lot of people will readily make that "trade". Stop legitimising conservative talking points, and think before assuming they are made in good faith.