Ok, I won’t speak to history. What I will say is that if my labels are Reaganite myths, there are a lot of people who bought those myths and believe those distinctions sincerely. I have a few friends of my age cohort that believe such.
But you are saying that preferring a balanced budget over ever-expanding deficits and debt is just about conserving hereditary power.
In not saying the Republicans have been any good at that goal. I’m saying there are people who value that outcome.
The test isn’t about wanting that outcome, it is how they propose achieving it. Cutting social programs that address economic disparity and needs for adequate food, shelter, and medical care while giving tax breaks to the rich and cutting programs that oversee big business to protect workers’ rights and the environment while expanding spending on questionable military programs does demonstrate where there priorities lie.
So maybe you have me there. Their words may be benign, but their choices show their priorities, and thus their true agenda.
And then the two-party system means people who see one party as preferential to the other on some issues that they rank most important means they are stuck rooting for the party that is the lesser of two evils.
But my biggest issue with describing “conservatism” that way is that it doesn’t actually help fix the problem. All it does is drive the wedge in further.
Because people who see themselves as “conservatives” aren’t seeing themselves as oppressors, they see themselves as the oppressed. They are “oppressed” by the people that want to reshape American culture by changing the ethnic mix that thereby brings in alternative language, food, and other cultural changes. They are “oppressed” by the people who strip Christianity out of the public sphere and thereby lead to moral decline. They are “oppressed” by people who want to behave immorally and degrade our society, and promote those immoral ideas as laudable, even desirable. They are “oppressed” by the people that belittle them as backwoods redneck hicks for being rural and uneducated and working class. "And so they fight back.
Calling them out on the outcomes of their choices doesn’t work if you start by telling them that they just want to hurt people. You might be able to reach some of them (not the fascists, but the folks who just want to be free) by showing them the outcomes and by demonstrating that the changes they fight are not actually hurting them. But you can’t do that if you label them as haters and monsters and seek to ostracize them for just wanting to not feel under attack.
It’s a persecution complex to be sure, but you can’t disprove the persecution by persecuting them.
Yes, I can agree. It doesn’t help that in this particular cycle, the economic situation accidentally mirrors the predictions of the conservative myth.
“The economy was strong under Trump.” Obama-Biden oversaw the reversal of the recession and a handed a growing economy to Trump, but the growth slowed and then covid hit. Biden saw the recovery from covid with rampant inflation caused by supply shortages because of impacts from the global lockdowns. Then came the war in Ukraine, which created existential threat in Europe the way war in Afghanistan and Iraq didn’t, affecting financial markets and corporate stability. And the war impacted Ukraine’s food exports, a big supplier in Europe and around the world. That contributed to increased global food prices and the ongoing inflation.
“Gas prices were low under Trump and high under Biden.” Gas prices responded to a big business president, then covid hit and the lockdown occurred. Gas prices resurged under Biden as driving resumed, coupled with the inflation from the recovery, and compounded by War in Ukraine. One of the responses was to try to sanction Russia buy not buying oil from them, driving up the global price.
The economy is strengthening, and inflation is falling, no thanks to the House getting stuck in obstructionism and collapse that nearly shut down the government again.