Only one side is fact and the other is fiction. You can’t both-sides reality.
There is only one reality, so they can’t both be right.
ETA. What Acsenray said.
Can you tell me stupid things I believe? As a conservative,of course.
Every person is different, even among conservatives. So no, I can’t tell which specific nuttery you’ve absorbed.
One common stupid belief among classic conservatives is “trickle-down economics.” Now, unlike certain other stupid ideas (like, say, racism) it has something of a veneer of argument behind it - but it doesn’t hold up under either direct examination or historical assessment. Funneling money away from people motivated to feed it back into the economy doesn’t boost the economy, and moving money away from the lower classes to the upper classes does not, in fact, enrich the lower classes. (Shocking, I know.)
Now, do you believe in trickle-down economics? Who knows!
Let me do a little research on what specifically is trickle down and I will get back to you.
If you haven’t heard of it you probably haven’t been learned it. It was a fairly specific Reagan-era lie intended to sell the common folk on shunting money to the rich folk who so desperately didn’t need it.
I just wanted to review the terminology. Many misunderstandings result from people using terms differently.
My taxes were cut under Trump. I did invest that money. I came out ahead.
Did my investment end in greater employment for low income people?
I will admit it could have gone to bonuses and stock buybacks that didn’t help low income people.
I think it’s both sides calling the other side stupid for not agreeing with them.
glad to see there is an honest attempt by folks to understand the other side.
They can both be wrong.
My taxes went up under trump. So YMMV.
Trickle down economics is another name for supply side economics. It is a useful policy sometimes and a really bad policy other times.
I think Progressive people misunderstand Conservative people. It is not that we disagree with your goals, it is that we don’t believe the policies you promote will achieve the goal.
I believe that if you reward a behavior you will get more of that behavior.
The inverse is also true, punish a behavior and you will get less of that behavior.
Is there any agreement on that?
Why don’t you tell us what you believe, as a conservative of course, so we can determine which parts are stupid?
I believe everyone should work hard to be a productive member of society.
I believe everyone should contribute to society by paying an appropriate level of taxes.
And here we have the reason for the phrase “The devil is in the details”.
Agreed.
How about the reward/punish question?
If you want more junkies you hand out free needles,right?
I agree, we should punish junkies by doing everything we can to make sure they get AIDS.
One side is calling the other stupid for not agreeing with reality.
For example, at present there are millions of Americans still convinced that the Trump won the election and that there is massive evidence of election fraud that somehow never seems to make its way into a courtroom. Belief in QAnon theories is rife. We’re told that COVID is simultaneously a hoax and a manufactured virus spread as part of a China-Joe Biden-Dr Fauci conspiracy in order to make Trump look bad, that it’s harmless and that it will kill lots of old people, that it will go away on its own and that Trump has saved the nation with his vaccine. Newsmax and OANN regularly report material that borders on outright delusion. And this level of insanity goes right up through both Houses of Congress and the whole Executive Branch.
But it’s liberals who are the big meanies for pointing this out.
Right now there are angry armed right-wing mobs threatening election officials with death simply for refusing to throw out the election results, and we’ve had angry armed mobs breaking into State Houses just to protest having to wear masks. “Frothing rage beasts” is only mildly hyperbolic.
But again, liberals are being mean for pointing out things the right-wing are doing and saying.
Can be. But that doesn’t mean they are.
Exclude the middle much?
If you give tax breaks and subsidies to industrial polluters, you reward industrial polluting.
Another angle: Free needles do not create new junkies, as they do not contain the substances that would make them junkies.
I think you might have a problem with the distinction between “rewarding behavior” and “taking measures to reduce health risks among those already participating in risky behavior.”
Ignore reality more? What middle are you referring to?
Where is this excluded middle?
‘Junkies’ are gonna shoot junk whether they get free, clean, needles or not.
Can you acknowledge that?
Will you also acknowledge that society is going to pay for the known issues caused by using ‘dirty’ needles?
With ameliorating the problems caused by ‘dirty’ needles being the, almost, entire reason needle exchanges exist in the first place.
One can understand why people are acting the way they are without ignoring the way they are. Conservatives as a group are being riled up toward fear and anger, and this is resulting in a disturbing number of them adopting and demonstrating behaviors that, to be charitable, are based on incredibly bad reasoning and which do not demonstrate calm thought processes. This is really happening, and pretending that all or even most conservatives are being calmly rational with a reasonable opposite perspective is to live a lie.
Not all conservatives have been turned into frothing morons, but many have, and their leaders and media sources want them to be that way. The question is, how are they being pushed in this direction, and why are they going along with it? What opinions do they hold that are driving them to think and behave this way?