Before I found this place, I was very happy as a Kinda-Libertarian (more about why they’re all “kinda” later). Raised by a military dad and a mom that was a Goldwater Girl, I voted for Nixon, and was pro-Reagan back in the day.
At a staunchly Libertarian college, I met quite a few smart conservatives, who cared about their country and the level of discourse in it (like William F. Buckley).
But the “conservatives” here are maddening. They will do or say anything to bolster their “side”, as if this is some sports event where, if you get a liberal mad, you win a point. Actually, they must feel like they’ll get 100 points if they can say “Nuh-uh, you too!”; their tu quoques are laughable
And they have no shame, pretending not to understand basic tenets of civilization if they can “score a point”. Witness one of them puzzled as to why we can’t portray Malia and Sasha Obama as monkeys:
Posts like this have really pulled back the curtain on the real motivations behind what the right-wing says and does. You love your privilege, your advantages, more than you love this country, and certainly more than 99% of the people in it.
So, even though I grew up hating liberals, dammit, you jerks have pushed me into it.
Why are you limiting the blame to conservatives here? I don’t see any difference whatsoever between conservatives here and conservatives on Facebook, Fox News, in my family, the Yahoo comment section, Trump rallies, GOP debate audiences, GOP campaign lit, etc.
To be fair to conservatives (ha, ha!), adaher is a special case, and a special cause. Willful ignorance is one thing, willful idiocy is exciting and new.
More than once I noted that adaher is an enabler of racists and xenophobes, his quote from the OP is yet another bit of evidence that he is not just an enabler.
I feel your pain, kinda sorta. Military brat myself, with a Dad who believed right down to his toes that there was no earthly problem that could not be solved by self-discipline and order. Went door to door for Goldwater (easy duty on an Arizona air base…).
(Funny thing about brats: on the rare occasion that I find out that someone else shares that with me, we realize that there is an intangible something that we share, but cannot quite define. Close as I can get is the old aphorism: If the Air Force thought you needed a family, they would have issued you one…)
You don’t have to be a liberal, you can be a centrist! Non-partisan centrist, which is especially good because all partisans are stupid, and you are not partisan! Or, go whole hog and become a radical lefty, like so many brilliant and witty people do. Trouble with that is…well, one of the troubles…that over the course of a long life, your radical ideas slowly become mainstream, and then you have to hear smug and self-righteous liberals telling you what they believe, and you have to nod your head in agreement, mixed with shock, horror and dismay.
Radicals hack out the trail and clear the site, progressives build the cabins and the fireplaces, liberals come along as soon as the hot showers are installed.
Yes, because one idiot speaks for 100% of every other conservative in the world. It has been my life-long dream to call the children of a President “chimps” and now that adaher has said it is ok I now finally can. How dare you spake unkindly of our leader, our thought provider and God, adaher.
It is nice to know you chose sides. As I can now put you in the category of an “retard” with the other retards because just like BigT I like to keep tabs on you people.
Well, more than once I have seen people like Bricker declare that if we are not denouncing idiocy from the left in a thread it means that a poster is in agreement with him, it was a silly point to make when in a case I posted I had criticised a dumb OP in a thread already. And of course it is clear that you are indeed criticising guys like adaher here, the point I’m trying to make is that we need indeed much more criticism of the idiot right from conservatives.
More than ever before because Drunky Smurf, many of those idiots are getting the idea that they are running the party and they might do it.
Not wading into either side of the partisan aisle, but can anyone tell me why it seems, all of a sudden, that political jabs are everywhere? If I’ve seen a movie, I go peruse (not post to) the IMDb message boards to get others’ opinions on actors and things I missed, etc. And without fail, some yahoo will exclaim something about the impact of Washington on the director’s choice to use a certain brand of toothpaste in a close-up and then nonsense ruins a perfectly useful thread. Gah! I’ve even seen it some here, but this kind of behavior has only really ramped up in the, say, last decade or so. What the hell? Can these people no longer control themselves at all? Are they so pissed off all the time at the government that it permeates everything? Sweet stars above, it’s fricking stupid and annoying.
I am still conservative, but the self-proclaimed leaders of American Conservatism all seem to be bigoted idiots lately. I really want to vote Republican but they haven’t put up a candidate since Dole that I would trust with a burnt match.
(McCain would have been my choice in 2000 but he did not get the nomination, he was not the right candidate for 2008.)
Why would someone turn into a liberal/conservative based on their perception of the motivations of other people on their “side”, especially a limited subset on one MB?
I tend to be skeptical of all such claims. But to the extent that there’s any validity to them, they’re probably just a socialization process. Nothing to be proud of, IOW.
It happens. I used to have no opinion on the abortion issue; it didn’t matter to me at all.
Then some asshole set fire to a women’s health clinic, here in San Diego, and there were follow-up attacks with chemical bombs and other vandalism at other clinics.
I suddenly realized the issue was important to me, and I took up a strong pro-choice partisanship. I had seen evil, and knew it must be opposed.
What you seem to be saying is that you never thought about the issue until some violence brought it into focus. That makes sense. But the suggestion in the OP is that the guy already had an opinion, but changed it in response to personal antipathy to other holders of this opinion. That is not rational.
In your example, it would be as if you felt abortion was morally wrong but that violence against abortion providers was also morally wrong. And then some other holders of the “abortion is morally wrong” position engaged in violence, so you decided that abortion is not morally wrong after all.
I see two factors. Political discourse has become a part of the news culture, with a demolition of the other side to increase viewers.
This is combined with the positions of the parties genuinely evolving along moral lines, instead of being a mixture. And those moral lines include religion. So you’ve tied the three things you previously didn’t discuss in polite company and made them things to discuss.
Combine that with th Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and you get where we are today.
