How many people are REALLY what they claim to be?

I’m thinking here mainly, of the socio-political labels that so many people ascribe to themselves and to others. Especially “liberal” and “conservative,” but others as well.

What I keep seeing, and seeing A LOT, are people proving even as they proclaim such labels, proving that they are anything BUT what they say they are.

I seem to have been born what I call small-c-conservative, myself. That means that I tend to choose the least change-requiring solutions to life challenges that I can find, while ALWAYS staying true to my basic principles.

What I see a lot of people do, who either call themselves BIG-C-Conservatives, or at least who attack and label people who they don’t like as Liberals, is they choose their course of action according to what the people they dislike, most will resent. And they openly ignore their own claimed principles as they do it.

Same exact thing I see happen with people who call themselves BIG_L_Liberals, or who attack what they label as Conservatives. I tried to be a Liberal when I was younger, because I heard all the grand talk about equality of all people, rejection of all prejudice, and support and care for all people and animals and so on. But I found that too many of he practitioners of all that wonderfulness would drop it all in the trash as soon as they were mad at someone, and then suddenly all bets were off, equality meant they were in charge of all that is holy, and suddenly everyone who did suffer as a result, were just getting what they deserved. Just like the Conservatives I had left behind earlier.

Nowadays, there seems to be almost a perfect storm of such empty-headed, self-delusional, egocentric vindictiveness masquerading as ideals. I can see no one on a national level who isn’t proving as they criticize others, that they are themselves at least as guilty of what they pretend to be above.

Nothing but posturing for the sake of taking a cool selfie.

Anyone else here see something different?

Consider the Zodiac.

One reason (and there are many) to discredit horoscopes and the like surrounding it is it seems crazy to suggest you can divide the world population into twelve neat containers that will broadly describe who they are.

Now consider that you want to take the 300+ million people in the US and put them into one of two categories that describes their political positions.

It’s nuts. You won’t even get the same answers on policy questions from party leaders in the same party.

In the end we have to pick and choose and align ourselves with the whatever group is on offer that comes closest to our political views. They almost never will align 100% though.

It is a broad continuum. I imagine it is likely a classic bell curve too if you plotted it although these days I am guessing that bell curve has been skewed.

It should come as no surprise to anyone by now that hypocrisy is the air that we all breathe. That’s not to say that this makes all socio-political positions irrelevant. Without a doubt, liberal and conservative philosophies exist and are fundamentally different in many ways. It’s just that absolute consistency is not a realistic expectation under every circumstance.

People don’t look at their beliefs and then label themselves. They look at themselves and label their beliefs. Thus
“I am a Liberal and I believe x, so x is a Liberal belief.”
“I am a Conservative and I believe y, so y is a Conservative belief.”
…and most importantly
“I am a good person and I believe z , so z is something good people believe.”
x, y, and z can, and often will, be heinously in opposition to the labeler’s self-identified political or moral position.