I know this is a board with a political bias, so this isn’t meant as a ‘lets score points at their hypocrisy’ post it is more one of genuine curiosity.
Donald Trump’s entire campaign seems based on saying America has serious problems, his campaign is make america great again. But when a black quarter back refuses to do the pledge because he is upset about police brutality he is shamed. Just 3 years ago fox news was making angry white conservatives who were pointing guns at the police in the Bundy standoff out to be heroes. When right wingers point guns at cops they are heroes, when a black guy refuses to say the pledge due to police brutality he is unpatriotic?
Am I the only one who sees hypocrisy in that? From what I’ve seen people on the right feel they are allowed to criticize the country (white christians), but nobody else is or they are unpatriotic. This isn’t just about Trump and the quarterback, I’m having trouble remembering concrete examples, but Jerimiah Wright saying ‘god damn America’ is shamed but a big part of the modern right (which is heavily based in the south) is an embrace of the confederate flag, which was a flag of treason. There was a lot of talk after Obama got elected about secession. I don’t get it. Saying god damn America due to the problems we have caused is horrible to some people, but wanting to declare war on the government (like many on the right do) or at the very least supporting groups who have like the confederacy is ok for some reason. Now people on the right are talking about their love of cops (now that cops are being criticized for killing black people) but when cops were going after right wing, white militias where were these people on the right? If anything they supported the militia members.
If so, where does this come from? I know Jon Stewart made the observation that right wingers feel they are the appointed stewards of the US, and as a result they feel they are entitled to run the country (which would explain their hostility to anyone who isn’t them being elected and how they obstruct and claim fraud when they lose. The modern conservative movement basically believes in the divine right of kings instead of democracy, but replace ‘kings’ with conservative christian white men who they feel are ordained by providence to rule). Is that kind of like a ‘I can criticize my family all I want, but I’ll beat up any outsider who criticizes it’ mentality? Like, do right wingers feel they are the only true members of the American family, which gives them the right to criticize it as much as they want, but anyone who isn’t them isn’t a true American and as a result it is like being criticized by outsiders?
That is the best I can come up with. basically do they feel only they are the true Americans, so anyone who isn’t them who is critical is like a stranger criticizing your family? It is one thing if you criticize your sister, but when some stranger at the bank does it you get upset? That kind of thing?
Is this the right forum for this or is this a debate?
Probably more of a debate. Although one that’s likely to end up in the pit.
But overall, I agree with your point. Conservatives do have a double standard. They can loudly proclaim they want to make America great again. But if anybody else said it, they’d attack them: “How dare you say that America isn’t already great!”
I don’t think you can fall into that fallacy, there are major psychological differences among people on the ends of the political spectrum. Libertarians are not authoritarian conservatives, who are not progressive liberals. Their psychological profiles, threat assessments, how they integrate info, etc do not match.
I’m asking more about authoritarian conservatives, who are a different breed than libertarians or liberals and who (authoritarian conservatives) have taken over the modern GOP. To my knowledge the latter 2 groups do not engage in this kind of behavior. But maybe I’m wrong.
My own observation is that many of the things that some conservatives feel to be illegitimate protests are in regards to issues that the conservatives might term “a feature, not a bug.”
I remember that during the Bush administration some liberals embraced something termed “hate-triotism,” where they showed how much they loved America by criticizing America. To some extent that phenomenon is still ongoing.
Anyway, to answer the OP: I think it’s not so much an “Only we can criticize America” issue as it is just plain old tribalism. “Our criticisms are valid; our opponents’, not so much.” If someone said “I will no longer stand for the national anthem because same-sex marriage is legal;” he’d be on the receiving end of a firestorm of vitriol, probably, too.
I think so. You can’t compare Trump’s “america is not great” to Kaepernick’s “america is not great”, they are almost literally complaining about opposite things. Their reaction is what you would expect someone who is saying “it’s too hot here, turn the AC up” will feel towards someone saying “it’s too cold here, turn the AC down”. Being completely and utterly wrong about everything doesn’t have to mean they are also being hypocrites.
I saw something floating around on FB a few days ago that said
White people: “Black People should protest peacefully” Black person peacefully sits down during the national anthem
White people: “No, not like that”
That, to me, really was trying to have their cake and eat it too. You don’t want them to riot and burn their cities down and as soon as one famous person said ‘hey guys, here’s a way to make a statement’, everyone is up in arms, telling him he should leave the country and even burning things with his name on it (which could be construed as a death threat if it was done towards a non-celebrity).
Of course, I’ve seen some of my social justice warrior FB friends say conflicting things as well.
I don’t want to speak for either of them, so all I can say is that in either case I don’t know if they even realize they’re spouting out conflicting information or if they don’t care and it’s all just a means to an end.
Also, you can’t forget that it’s not always the ‘same people’ when people say it’s the ‘same people’. By that I mean, when someone says ‘The people that complaining about ________ are the same people that were complaining about [opposite of ________] 6 months ago’ Sure, maybe it’s the same general group, but maybe it was me complaining earlier and now that it’s changed, my friend is complaining. So just because you see conservatives saying (for example) ‘you need to protest peacefully’ doesn’t mean those specific people aren’t thinking ‘yup, that’s how it should be done’ even though there’s a lot of other people spewing some pretty vile stuff towards him (which incidentally is doing a great job of spreading the message in a pretty non-violent way).
Very true. The whole burning-the-flag thing was a left-wing thing.
Still, it’s hard to take “Blame America First” as a bad thing when the people who coined the phrase are the ones engaging in it.
I’m not so sure… I think we’d scorn him for opposing SSM, not for not standing for the anthem. We’d focus our vitriol on the real cause, not the outward symbolism.
I don’t think they’d see any kind of firestorm. And, I’d be willing to bet the “same people” that are screaming at Colin (if this had happened before that) would have said “Good job, this is a REAL American” or something like this and would have all kinds of support (remember Kim Davis). But, IME, conservatives take any slight against ‘their’ flag (or national anthem in this case) really seriously, no matter what the reason. But it comes back to the double standard. I really don’t think it was about Colin sitting out of the NA, it was about why he did it (or even moreso that he did it for black reasons and not WASP reasons, if he was protesting taxes or Obama…)
It would be interesting to see how conservatives would react if someone said “I’m going to keep this flag flying upside down on my flag pole* until Open Carry/Concealed Carry/some other gun law is legal in every state”.
What would they do? You’re desecrating a flag, but doing to get something they so badly want?
I don’t think this is accurate. Most of the criticism by liberals (and non-liberals) during the Bush administration was specifically directed at the Bush administration. Bush supporters tried to turn this around by claiming that criticizing a Presidential administration is the equivalent of criticizing America. Of course, many of these same people had no problem criticizing the Clinton or Obama administrations.
Technically true, in the same sense that cross burning is a right wing thing. But realistically, the people that burn flags or crosses are so far out on the fringe they don’t represent any mainstream view. Typical Republicans don’t burn crosses and typical Democrats don’t burn flags.
Lots of good comments up-thread. Here’s another facet:
“Conservatism” in the classic sense is a perspective that the tried and true ways are best. As amplified in today’s echo chamber that translates as “All recent change has been for the worse.”
“Progressivism” (not the same as Liberalism, but close enough for my example) in the classic sense is a perspective that the tried and true ways are at best merely OK and are readily improvable-upon. As amplified in today’s echo chamber that translates as “All recent change (unless hijacked by the Right) has been for the better.”
So conservative criticism of America amounts to saying “Retreat from the current unknown to the prior known. America was capital-G Good and can be made obviously and unfailingly better by returning to that Good.” So although it *is *a criticism of America, it’s of the current bastardized version, not the prior Real one. It’s criticizing the usurpers, not the true-by-divine-rights King.
Compare that with the liberal criticism of America which amounts to saying “America has great potential but has never been good enough, much less capital-G Good. Let’s make changes towards that Good. Which changes are always leaps into the as-yet unexperienced. Our intentions are good, but we’ll make mistakes along the way and progress by two steps forward one step back.” IOW: the old King was fine for his time, but as the Crown Prince becomes King new ideas will rightly come to pass.
Compare that with the reactionary criticism of the reactionary caricature of the liberal position: “Liberals believe America has never been good, much less Good. They want to invert everything America stands for. The American Way is anathema to them.” IOW: “Liberals believe the King himself *is *the problem.”
When you frame the discussion that way, it seems pretty clear why the Noisy Right thinks its complaints about the usurpers are legit and beneficial while the complaints of the Left against the true King are illegitimate. At best they’re undermining the State and at worst it’s Treason pure and simple.
If someone is a conservative, why would they be a hypocrite for protesting change while criticizing those who are advocating change? If they thought change was good, they wouldn’t be conservatives.
And by change, I mean change away from the way things have been, not a change back to the way things were.
To a Believer in Some Dumb Thing, America is to be criticized for its failure to conform to S.D.T., but the criticisms of those who reject S.D.T. are to be disregarded as the ravings of the depraved enemy.
Then that was a bad example. Kim Davis never did anything unpatriotic. What I was saying is that if she had, for example, if she had said “Same-Sex marriage is bullshit and I’m not going to stand up for the National Anthem (or something like that)” no republican would have said “well, if you don’t like it that much then you can move to another country”. She actually got an enormous outpouring of support from the right.
The right is criticizing Colin for not standing up for the National Anthem. If Kim Davis did literally the exact same thing to protest the legalization of Same Sex Marriage, do you think they would have treated her the same way they treated Colin. Probably not. This was just a great way for them to attempt to take Colin/BLM/a celebrity/a black person down a notch, but not directly. They weren’t saying ‘we don’t support your movement’ they were saying ‘you were wrong to not stand up for the National Anthem’. But again, what if Kim Davis sat out for the National Anthem? I bet a lot of her supporters would have followed suit at a lot of baseball games that summer.
