I’m honestly curious what people think American conservatism is about if it’s not about violence and white rage.
Stand your ground laws are essentially trial by combat. If Trevon Martin had killed that goober dipshit, he could have claimed he was in fear for his life. Just be the one standing and you get to justify it because you’re a coward.
Ontopic: Conservatives are certainly doing great evil in this country. But to be fair to them, a lot of them are ignorant or misinformed, or mindlessly tribal. Morally those guys aren’t necessarily evil.
Forcing women to bear children?
That pretty much counts as a subset of violence and white rage.
Hey, be fair, they want to force poor white women to bear children too.
There is no way Martin, a black kid in a gated community could have defended himself and not been charged and not been eviscerated by conservatives.
Well, he could have tried. But yeah.
Kids like him who survive an attack get convicted of crimes all the time (if they survive the police response). Once he was attacked, he didn’t stand a chance against the system.
He fought back after some armed weirdo followed him around his neighborhood and conservatives called him a thug. What else is there to the movement? It’s certainly not about fiscal conservatism and it’s not about less government in people’s lives. Other than violence and fear of blacks, what are they about?
Of course I want to kill!
Kill fire, that is. That’s what I carry an assault fire extinguisher with a high-capacity magazine everywhere I go.
I find it interesting–and very revealing–that you focus on the innocent party. You say, " One should not be able to kill just to protect things." What you don’t realize is that protecting things is merely a by-product of protecting one’s life.
There are plenty of criminals who are willing to kill in order to obtain physical possessions. Please explain why I should blithely assume, without any evidence whatsoever, that a criminal targeting me for my money or car is willing to let me live.
Oh so you need to shoot someone in the back as they are fleeing with things? Or even empty-handed? That’s the kind of thing that the castle doctrine is used for. Any rational fear of deadly attack is taken care of by ordinary self-defense standards. The caste doctrine isn’t needed for that.
A person who has killed isn’t solely a victim. E is also a killer. The killing needs justification. Victimhood identity by itself shouldn’t be enough by itself.
There is evidence and it shows that most crimes of theft do not also have murders that occur.
Your “logic” is an utter fail; what else have you got?
American conservatism is a fear based culture, mostly it’s afraid of black people. They react to this fear with violence, both committing it and supporting the state when it kills, especially when the violence is against black people. It all come from a deep fear that Trumpism has tapped in to.
Watch Trump talk about what a “Beautiful Sight” it is to see Ali Velshi get struck with a rubber bullet. And watch those people laugh about it.
If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, I just don’t care to be friends with you. Would you raise your child to see that as something to laugh at?
What? Conservatives delighting in violence against a person of color? That can’t be right.
You’re painting with some very, very broad strokes here. I identify as a moderate (social liberal/fiscal conservative) that prior to 2016 would flip flop on voting based on the local or national representative’s qualifications [ snarky comment deleted as this is GD ] - but I have a CCW and do own and maintain firearms. By your standards I’m evil, or did you mean to imply that only conservatives who own and maintain firearms are evil? As for desire to kill - no, I don’t, but I acknowledge that by owning a firearm that I am willing to kill, if and I mean IF I decide that the situation merits it, namely risk of injury or loss of life to myself or family. Property? Laughable no. Playing a hero for someone else’s injury or property, heck no.
As for the Castle doctrine, again, you overgeneralize. YES there are people who use it as an excuse to kill (see a previous thread about If you shoot someone in self-defense are you better off (from a legal standpoint) to kill the person rather than wound them? But it also deals with a very real situation - if someone breaks into your home you have every right to put yourself and your family first. You are getting called on to make some very tough decisions very fast, and under explict threat. If it were me, would I shoot? Unlikely, for the reasons I pointed out in the thread I linked, but the law does have a point, even if you disagree with it, or even if other people have abused it.
I know many conservatives. My whole family. Most of my clients. Some of my employees. Used to be some of my friends, still some of my acquaintances. I live in the middle of a very conservative area, and work in an even more conservative area.
And yes, you are right, absolutely right, that conservatives are kind. When they want to be, and to whom they want to be. They reserve the right to retract that kindness if you are not “kind” enough to them, by which they will take any disagreement or criticism as excuse to no longer be kind.
They are kind to those they deem worth being kind to, and for anyone else, they really couldn’t give a shit.
Conservatives are always the ones who bring up evil, and the accusations are that we think that they are evil, and they do that without bothering to define it, just something that is bad.
So, evil, as in possessed by the devil and incapable of any form of empathy or kindness? No, such things are extremely rare and not political in nature.
But, evil, as in allowing others to suffer and die, and to even engage in enabling or even directly participating, as long as those are ones that you don’t care to be kind to? Yeah, they got that in excess supply.
I see in “positive gun news” all the time, not a story of a tragedy where a person who society has failed ends up at the wrong end of a gun, but a celebration of another thug off the streets. It’s up to you if you want to call that evil, but it definitely is not kind.
Yes protecting your family. That’s the difference. Conservatives don’t see their fellow humans as their potential family. Only the ones behind their walls with them. That small-minded view of who is worth protecting, the fear of everyone else, and the desire to use violence to keep the line between the two clear. It’s a sick, twisted viewpoint.
More than anything else, conservatives want everyone to be clear about that trench dividing us and them and they want to fill it with blood to emphasize the point. And they’ll dig that bloody trench over and over again to define all the different kinds of uses and thems in ever shrinking boxes until each of them is ultimately alone facing all the world armed to the teeth, shutting themselves in fear of everyone and everything.
I think this is a lost cause, but I’m going to point this out to you. Per your statement, YOU are the conservative here. You are ascribing a specific mindset to a huge group of people loosely defined as ‘conservatives’ and have just demonized them. You have put a wall up that says ‘they’ only wish to kill people. The only difference is that you say you don’t want to kill them, and by your rhetoric, you say they can’t be fixed, so what is your only rational option? Kill them? Disenfranchise them? This is EXACTLY what you’re accusing the other side of.
Now don’t get me wrong, I am absolutely disgusted with Trump and his sycophants, and absolute know people who fit your description to a key, some of them even among my extended family (my former step-father, fits this to a T). But the moment you say ‘everyone is this group is anything’ you’ve turned off your own critical thinking as well as the ability to evaluate individuals.
PS - If you want to complain about conservatives and republicans, I’d suggest joining any number of threads in the pit, I have done so, and sometimes it just helps to get the (largely justified) anger out of the way so I can live with myself as well as the people around me. Free group therapy is good!