Part of the problem is mapping multiple dimensions onto a one dimensional liberal-conservative axis.
World’s shortest book?
People compare Trump to Cyrus the Great? Cyrus supported racial equality, freedom of religion, getting rid of slavery, etc. And this was over two thousand years ago. Had Trump been around back then, or if Cyrus was around now, I imagine the difference between the two of them would be even more obvious.
Yes: Planned Parenthood reduces abortions, ironically enough. Countries such as Sweden with readily accessible birth control have low abortion rates.
While red states have lower abortion rates than blue states, they also have higher rates of unintended pregnancies. The highest rates for unintended pregnancies are in the deep south. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/01/29/states-that-are-more-opposed-to-abortion-have-fewer-abortions-but-not-fewer-unintended-pregnancies/
This thread would be a perfect place to explain those dimensions.
The technical term for this is tribal epistemology: instead of grounding belief upon fact, you ground your belief on what your tribe thinks.
Before Trump, I argued here that conservatives weren’t evil and they weren’t stupid. They simply lacked character. As evidence, I pointed that their information sources (Fox News, talk radio) routinely screwed up their facts, as documented any month at Media Matters for America.[1] Choosing such a demonstrably poor info source because it makes you feel good reflects poor character.
Now we’re a ways beyond that. You ask a good question. I’d submit though that it turns on the ability of conservatives to compartimentalize their political ethics from their personal ethics. That’s an empirical question, not a question of principle. My guess is that when Fox News gives their viewers permission to base their opinions on feelings rather than fact, that such habits bleed out into the remainder of their lives: such viewers are more likely to be head cases. But if that’s the case you should be able to easily come up examples among your conservative acquaintances showing such an effect.
(One documentary: The Brainwashing of My Dad, about a dentist who turned conservative after listening to Rush during his commute. Meh: anecdotal evidence: The Brainwashing Of My Dad By Fox, Rush Limbaugh & Hate Media - Update )
[1] In contrast, conservative media critics such as Accuracy in Media harp on bias which is something different: essentially it reflects hurt feelings.
Politics and religion are a dangerous mix. I find some support for Trump by religious people a perfect, walking, moving and breathing example of what hypocrisy means. Both politics and religion support each other: one tells you to blindly worship while the other preaches being rich, white and racist are true American values.
What this kind of discussion comes back to is that we need to save little old white folks from Fox News.
I didn’t say they were right.
I realize you’re only questioning rhetorically so I’ll just link for your amusement:
Yes.
But it’s difficult. Trump made up a 10% tax cut proposal on the fly while campaigning. After the election was over, they shelved the idea and stopped talking about it. Similarly, Trump jizzed up his base with talk of an invasion of Guatamalan mothers with baby strollers. But taking cues from the administration Fox News barely mentioned the caravan the first morning after midterms. More crickets on the topics they purportedly ran on.
Trump treats the base as easy marks, and they are just fine with it. As Trump once told Billy Bush regarding intentionally false claims: “Billy, look, you just tell them and they believe it. That’s it: you just tell them and they believe. They just do.”
Not all people do. But Trump’s base does, even when it’s against their financial interest. Trump’s proposed tariffs represent tax increases far exceeding the taxes used to fund Obama’s healthcare reform. Unlike the Dec 2017 tax cuts, they fall most heavily on the middle class.
Not disagreeing but can you elaborate on why Kav-Dawg isn’t a conservative?
Hey nice to meet you. I want to first say I really value you your input and hope to read more from you.
The “responsibility” of the woman, who may or may not have a family who can support her, might incur more difficulty than others depending on the availability of opportunities, which we all know are not evenly distributed. Part of why the USA is ranked either 8th or 10th in Best Nations to Live In is due to how terrible our healthcare is.
Yesterday I read a story of someone who called a suicide prevention hotline, who in turn rushed an ambulance to get him. He spent 4 hours in a room at the hospital waiting to talk to a psychiatrist, which he did for around 20 minutes before being discharged under his own recognizance. He was hit with a bill for over 3 grand…for seeking help for a suicide.
I think it’s hard to argue the system ISN’T broken.
Believe me, it took me a long time to realize how hard some people struggle to make ends meet. I as an adult have never been able to afford healthcare so I just have never gotten anything I need. Now I have an esophageal ulcer to deal with. Needless to say, I can’t afford it.
I am a full-functioning, self-employed person who makes a living wage. But the cost of what I need is astronomical.
As far as Planned Parenthood, I was unaware of what you were saying, so I did a little research.
According to government oversight groups, PP provides around 34% of its services in contraceptive care, which prevents 600,000 unwanted pregnancies. They say only 3% of the provided services comprise abortions.
On that stat, there is a lot of miss-information floating around. The board of Catholic Bishops, for example, say that “100% of PP branches MUST provide abortions.” This is patently untrue, as there literally isn’t a single PP in my state that will preform them. To that end, there is, that I know of, only 1 single clinic that will provide abortions in my state.
I suppose this accounts for the state of adoption and foster children–“we don’t care about you after you’re born but by God we demand you have to exist, in hell and squalor or not.”
Search for more posts by that guy if you really hate yourself and like being flabbergasted and angered.
I’m starting to fear we are living in a “post-truth” era. For example, my parents are just OVER “truth.”
Trump has adeptly–strange to say he is adept at anything–but he has adeptly muddied the waters over if there even IS truth. He constantly appeals to false higher authorities–“MANY PEOPLE ARE SAYING. MANY PEOPLE.” “They tell me…They are Saying…”
Not only that, but if he doesn’t like it, it’s fake news. He accuses everyone of doing what he is or has done.
I feel like my parents are angry all the time because they have come to HATE truth. What the fake media is saying (about what Trump did wrong this time) and how angry it makes them! I feel like they hate truth now because they are simply on the wrong side of it. Fox has as well engendered a ferocious disdain for academia. I am the only person in my entire family who ever attended college–much less graduate–but my father will tell you ALL ABOUT exactly what godless treachery they are teaching kids at colleges all over the nation.
I don’t know how I can ever have a “come to Jesus” meeting with them about this. At most, I want to assert my personal aversion to Republicanism as a whole concept–as to no personally attack THEM–but when we cannot agree on the concept of “truth” or “facts” any longer, how do you even have a rational conversation?
The fight is the point, not the facts. I have some experience with this and a Fox News parent of my own, and I’ve been where you are. People like this are locked into a passionate battle against caricatures of their own creation for the soul of the country, and they are dying to unload all of this righteous anger upon whatever adversary. Meanwhile, you know, I just want more attention paid to public health and welfare. It would be tough for me to match their anger level on a regular basis. Plus I don’t have time for bullshit games, but often they do.
So, the idea of Planned Parenthood requiring abortions, or having an abortion quota or what have you, is the kind of thing that is demonstrably untrue and weird and exactly the the type of thing they will say to kick off the game. Our job is essentially punt return – catch the ball by reacting to what is said, run it downfield by countering the point, and then their defense is up and running and saying Liberals this and Leftists that, and the battle is on.
If you play. I don’t. I am in the camp that believes that people like this, known and loved by many, do not actually believe the things they are saying. These things (insert your crazy factoid of choice) rather represent their feelings about any given topic. Saying them has the effect of expressing their derision and poking at liberals at the same time, and maybe releasing some of that anger, or perhaps casting for more sources to sustain it.
This is kind of an evolving subject. It’s fascinating.
Well, he probably is politically “conservative” by several measures; unfortunately, there is not one agreed-upon meaning of that word. But judicially, he is a partisan, and known for “interpreting” the law to mean what he wants it to mean. That makes him a judicial “activist,” which is arguably in opposition to sober conservative jurisprudence. Specifically, he once tried to interpolate into existence a whole bit of labor law that contradicted actual written labor law. As I understand it, he has also been accused of being an active part of the GWB administration’s reinterpretation of the Geneva Accords to let them do things the Geneva Accords were specifically written to prohibit–but I’m not sure how much he had to do with that.
To get an idea of the endpoint of this conservative process, look at WAPO’s article on America’s Last Line of Defense. Written by a liberal, it contains the disclaimer, “Nothing on this page is real”. The author says, “No matter how racist, how bigoted, how offensive, how obviously fake we get, people keep coming back. Where is the edge? Is there ever a point where people realize they’re being fed garbage and decide to return to reality?”
Examples in the article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nothing-on-this-page-is-real-how-lies-become-truth-in-online-america/2018/11/17/edd44cc8-e85a-11e8-bbdb-72fdbf9d4fed_story.html
Twitter link: https://twitter.com/PostBaron/status/1064146009058668544
In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55.
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Timothy Snyder: “Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
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My summary of Christian scripture follows: “Love God and His Creation, Love thy Neighbor as thyself, but try not to be a sanctimonious prick about it.”
The part about His Creation is old testament: it comes from Genesis and Job. So set it aside. The eagerness of conservative Christians to judge others, even flying in the face of facts, is not only False Witness in practice, it’s the sort of thing that Jesus constantly railed against. We can set aside Love thy Neighbor. That leaves the first aspect, Love God. That they do. Sort of. Though I perceive a great deal of pride.
This mismatch is puzzling. I guess righteous anger is quite the drug, overcoming not only fact and economic self-interest but also Christian doctrine.
I am sorry for the hijack but I could not ignore this.
I am a not so little old white guy. Please explain how exactly you plan to save me from Fox News.
You are starting to touch on the crux of what I think bothers me so much–how dangerously close we are getting to the point of just saying (or even thinking) “ok, well–that makes you a hypocrite.” Perhaps I’m being old-fashioned–and I realize everyone is a bit of a hypocrite to some nth degree–but being a complete wishy-washy, “right and wrong cannot be evenly applied because if MY GUY does it, it’s not wrong anymore” level hypocrite seems to me is one of the worst moral stances I can think of. It’s in my mind the goal of any moralist to AVOID being that kind of bone-marrow-deep hypocrite.
Part of the issue is the immediacy of the folk they are judging. I said I can cite they are good people–they are, if you’re a tangible human they are faced with. They had their own ministries over the years and would help anyone who came and asked.
Another example is when we were out at dinner and my mom started complaining about the illegals. When I pointed around the restaurant to the bus boy, the cooks, the guy doing the dishes, and speculated that at least SOME of these people are 100% illegals, she promptly said “WELL, not THESE people. I mean the BAD ones.” Which is just the problem–she’s abstracted a whole faction of humans into imaginary bad guys.
And there’s the problem–an uneven distribution of ethics. She just doesn’t apply them when she’s faced with the humanity of it all. She also lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the legal immigration process, so her attitude that anyone who wants to just come be a legal American is welcomed so long as you fill out the paperwork is so misguided I don’t even know if she’ll ever grasp the reality of it.
For me, I know there is a way to discuss this where I can go under the politics and talk about the principles, and I know we could see eye-to-eye. But honestly I feel like it’s going to be a huge battle just to get them to look at things as humans, as Christians, or with empathy instead of only seeing everything through their myopic Fox News Republican eyes. “Stop being a Republican for just one conversation…”