What's the worst thing conservatives have to fear?

Not sure about that. A great many liberal campaigns or movements are based off of fear.

If Republicans win, LGBT rights will be lost.
If Republicans win, Roe will go and reproductive rights will be lost.
If Republicans win, climate change will dramatically worsen.
If Republicans win, minority rights will be lost.
If Republicans win, income inequality will worsen.
If Republicans win, the Affordable Care Act will be lost.
If Trump was reelected, it would be the end of democracy.
The GOP wants to take minority votes away.

Etc. etc

A person who does not want to be responsible for the murder of unborn children will be forced by the government to pay taxes which will then be used to fund the murder of unborn children. That’s a pretty big deal. Imagine that, instead of fetuses, we’re talking 2 year-olds. You probably do not believe it is okay for parents to chose to kill their own 2-year old. How would you feel if the rest of the country thought it was okay. Would you be fine with this just because you personally wouldn’t have to kill your own child? Would you be okay with other people in the country being allowed to kill their 2 year-old children? If not, why not? What they do with their own children does not affect you. Let them have their choice, right?
Now imagine that you were forced by the government to pay taxes, and your tax money was being spent to subsidize or fully-fund the murder of 2 year-olds.
For someone who believes that a 2 year-old and a fetus are morally equivalent, this is a pretty big deal. Currently, the Hyde Amendment prevents federal tax money from being used to fund abortions except in cases of rape or incest, or when the mother’s life is threatened. Only 16 states allow their own state funds to pay for abortions, and one of those has zero state income tax and zero state sales tax.

If it “takes a village” to properly raise a child, to include teaching proper manners, etiquette, behaviors, social norms, and behaviors, then you wouldn’t want your “village” to be supportive of immoral behaviors. If people with these types of mental health problems are treated as if there is nothing wrong with them, then it will be less likely for children and young adults to seek help if/when they suffer from the same mental illnesses. You’d want people with schizophrenia to seek help, right? What about a scataphile who can’t help shitting out in the open in public places like the subway. You don’t want your village to act like that’s okay, right? These kinds of “personal choices” shouldn’t be allowed. We need to set boundaries for proper behavior based on a set of morals and standards. These standards are of no use if they’re allowed to degrade and devolve each year. Standards that change so easily are not standards at all. For the same reason you don’t want to live in a society that is “accepting” of people who shit in the aisle on the subway, conservatives don’t want society to allow homosexual marriage. Conservatives want people with these mental illnesses to seek help. They don’t want to be “accepting” of such behaviors, and they don’t want to live in a society that is either.

Conservatives don’t want all their tax money going to support all the lazy people. And Venezuela. Also, Socialism!

Guns will only be taken away from law abiding citizens. Criminals will always have guns. Conservatives don’t want the government to disarm them while there are armed criminals running around out there. Also, if the government took all the guns away from the citizens, then another Hitler or a Clinton could come and take over the entire country.

The general consensus thus far seems to be that conservatives have almost nothing material to lose. The main things they fear losing are psychological.

A black lesbian atheist woman (superfecta!, but perhaps he should have added “socialist abortion-receiving trans-male” for added color) at a “Christian” college was making $400K in 2004? A person making minimum wage in 2004 pulled in 24k per year?

Yeah, I call Bullshit.

First of all, do you feel much better about yourself by belittling me? Does it make you feel wise and superior? Does being insulting seem like the best way to fight ignorance, the best way to understand and discuss various points of view? Because none of those things strike me as a good way to demonstrate your obvious superior intellect.

May I also ask you if you ever heard of a visiting professor having another source of income? Does it seem possible in your very astute view that someone in that position might also pursue other opportunities? Because I know mid level supervisors who hold patents and have lucrative businesses selling their inventions online. In addition I have a relative who owns a multi-million dollar manufacturing business who not only teaches engineering some years at American universities, but has taught at university in Germany. Of course most people who know him don’t think of him as a visiting professor, they think of him as ‘Gary’ (not his real name), the sole owner of the factory (largest employer in the area and has never had an employee quit!) near the county line - - but I bet some of his students think of him as a part time professor.

Further, I feel compelled to ask you if you think there is ever any valuable lesson to be learned from stories that are fictional? Is there any value in keeping Greek fables alive? Stories constructed to teach a moral must be beneath you. And why would anyone read Charles Dickens or Jonathan Swift, or the Norwegian author Jostein Gaarder as all of their books are not actually factually true? Why read Melville or John Irving if there are no lessons to be learned unless every fact of a story is solidly and factually true?

It does not matter to me if the story actually happened or not. There is a lesson to be learned from someone who hears or sees a lesson that might actually have some basis in truth but does not fit his life experience. There are black women professors who make more than janitors, and some black women professors do write books and teach classes on white privilege. The amount of income disparity does not greatly affect the impact of the story even if it does not meet your veracity meter. Treating it like an urban legend or a morality tale allows us look at the thoughts, feelings, and possibly the fears of the players just as much as if it was a well documented factual case.

The irony is clear, a white man supposedly advantaged by birth is serving a black woman who is supposedly disadvantaged by birth and he cannot fathom the lesson that her success took great effort and his situation is the result of bad luck or lack of effort, or possibly both. It requires the studious to ask if he had a preexisting bias that say whites are superior to blacks — or that men are superior to women that kept him from learning the lesson. Most people who would qualify for admittance to college before circumstances caused them to be blinded (yet somehow hold a job that required use of tools – that is more to be questioned than the income of the professor in my view) could grasp that something that is generally true might not be true in each and every case. The point is that world view can very strongly influence thought processes and fears.

Now, all of that said it is the middle of the night here after a particularly unpleasant holiday after a particularly bad week. I should be asleep preparing for another week but I am instead responding to an insult on a message board- so I will kindly ask you to either make a polite apology to both me and the poster of the story, or attack me with something more than you just happen to disagree. See, I thought that kind of pay for a visiting professor was out of line too-- but before I called anyone a lair I took a moment to think about it and it was not hard to see a possibility where the story might be true through other means. I believe you might have a hard time proving there was never ever in the history of our country a white janitor who . . . . but if the best evidence you have that the story never happened is your own opinion then I suggest you take a less condescending tone with me. I have zero interest in having a flame war with you in the pit, but I also have little interest in being insulted for concocting a possible solution to a theoretical and insignificant situation.

See, Czarcasm was able to grasp the lesson within the story without debating its veracity or insulting anyone. May I recommend this as a model post for future reference?

I have to admit that each of these are legitimate concerns of ALL the conservatives I know. I have to further admit that ten or twelve years ago I held pretty similar views (see what reading the SDMB will do for your world view?).

Here is the thing, as someone who has been on both sides of the debate I can sympathize with the arguments even if I now think they are misguided and I DO understand their concerns. If somehow we could try to bring concerns and argue the merits of the argument rather than the hard and fast positions of the opposing party lines - - there is plenty of room for compromise, for reasonable solutions that are not ideal for anyone - but also not unacceptable.

In my opinion there will never be any compromise or any solutions at all as long as Mitch McConnell draws breath- obstructionism is the one thing you can always count on from that man. He lives in a kill or be killed world and he can rope-a-dope with the best of them!

But if our progressive leaders would sit down with real republicans and listen to their concerns they could possibly make some headway. You don’t want to send your tax dollars to help foreign countries?? Okay, I can see where that seems ridiculous with all the problems we have here at home . . . but do you realize if we don’t help Afgani farmers the terrorists will have them all growing drug crops to sell to America to fund their terrorist jihads? And that if we don’t give some nations deeply discounted drugs they will have regional wars that will disrupt the production of items vital to our national defense? So you are okay with SOME foreign aide as long as it benefits us first- okay good to know. Now, we understand your views about the rights of unborn babies (but not death row inmates), can you understand the concerns of a frightened underaged pregnant woman who has been kicked out of her home and her school, has no job and no job skills . . . do you want her on welfare - and her children too for the rest of their lives? Then let’s find a better solution together. Are you in favor of mass shootings? ? ? Let’s talk about background checks, is there a better place to weed out the mentally ill?

But these conversations can never be held because now instead of electing leaders who are wise and gifted at resolution, we (and especially they) elect the loudest and most insane rabble rousers imaginable to not solve the problems but FIGHT THE ENEMY which is really fellow Americans with different views- not enemies at all!

My mistake, upon review he was deaf not blind. I apologize for the mistake.

Even when I was in Junior High in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s we had greenboards (but still used chalk). By the 1990’s white boards and dry erase markers were pretty standard. If this guy was actually erasing blackboards I suspect he was working in the school where John Wayne found the schoolboys who would drive his herd to Belle Fourche, or was working where professor Indiana Jones taught archaeology. Once again, it does not distract from the intent of the anecdote, but it also seems unlikely. This is just another quibble that should never have seen the light of day in my opinion but now I am stirred up.

Yes the professor salary tweet is made up. As an academic I can tell you that

  1. Private Universities do NOT publish what their faculty make. Only public Universities do, and not all of them. It depends on the sunshine laws of the particular state.

  2. Faculty in humanities don’t make that kind of money unless they were world renowned Pulitzer winning authors at an Ivy League institution. A normal humanities prof ata normal small private institution would be making about 1/10 of that.

  3. Particularly at a small private Christian university. They pay the worst.

In short, its fucking bullshit.

…and that deaf man, cleaning out spittle bottles, was Albert Einstein.

I’d say the worst fear (actually for anyone) would be to become so marginalized that no one listens to you any more. This would be the equivalent of the British punishment “being sent to Coventry”.

One other thought, if one party took over to the extent mentioned in earlier mails, it would split apart. I believe that Thomas Jefferson had something to say about people invariably forming two parties. That might be an even bigger fear, to become the Chrysler of the political parties.

I think the biggest thing they would need to fear is their loss of CONTROL. That’s pretty much what their unspoken agenda is on almost every front. If you look at the last 10 years, conservatives don’t actually “build” anything, they control it or say no to whatever liberals want. Since I feel religion is pretty much a Conservative ideal, it’s pretty safe to say that organized religion is a control mechanism which is dying out. Conservatives like a beefed-up police force and military, so again yet more control. Conservatives are currently passing voter laws in almost every state to “control” the masses and who, where, when and how they vote. More control.

With power comes control. They’re losing both, bit by bit. Eventually conservatives will die the death of a thousand tiny cuts. Personally, I’d like to use an ax, but I’ll be patient.

And now you know… the REST of the story!

At this point, I feel like this thread has diverged into two separate threads: The professor-salary thread and the actual topic, what-conservatives-have-to-fear thread.

But - again - Dernhelm said she was a visiting professor. Not a member of that private Christian college’s faculty.

Okay, but this doesn’t quite state what the loss of control would bring. If they were totally powerless, they still wouldn’t lose their healthcare. Their taxes might go up, but so would everyone else’s. They might lose their guns (which is perhaps the most tangible loss, yes.) They wouldn’t have to get abortions.

It doesn’t matter, it’s still BS. Professors don’t make that much.

I also admit I missed something. The right wing fantasy insists that this happened in 2004. That makes this even more insane. Professors were making less than $100K back then.

Really the point of the story is how greedy and entitled those academics in their ivory towers are. In which case facts really do matter. If the person used realistic numbers, saying “I made 24K a year to pick up after her and she made three times as much to complain about me” it wouldn’t have nearly the gut punch it would have. It needs those numbers to work, to have the shock value required to summon outrage. You also need to believe that in 2004 a janitor had the means to properly research a professor whose income information should be private.

I mean, she was a visiting professor, was she visiting from the year 2030 when professors might be making that much money…?

The worst thing Conservatives have to fear is success. Had Trump succeeded in holding on to the Presidency he would have immediately begun to purge the right wing of opponents and further tighten his grip on the office. His support of religion would have moved toward a narrow religious view and his economy toward a core of supporters.

That process would move most “Conservatives” outside of the tent.

Agree that the story is bullshit, but even if it were 100% true, it still wouldn’t prove that white privilege isn’t real.

“White privilege” doesn’t mean all whites grow up wealthier or earn more money than other people. That’s obviously not true. It means – among other things – that if that janitor and that professor were pulled over in separate traffic stops by the same random police department on the same night, the white janitor would not fear for his life but the Black professor might have reason to.

I dunno…I agree that there should be some opposing forces in government but conservatives have been going down crazy street for many years at this point, and disqualified themselves many times over in the Trump era. So I’d be happy for those two forces to look like the current progressive and centrist wings of the Democrat party.
Heck, that would actually be very similar to the political landscape of most countries of the Western world.

(Sorry I got here late)

But that’s because Trump was an abnormal conservative president. If a conservative party were within normal parameters, success would be the best thing they could want. They’d grow influence and power and slowly shift the Overton Window while remaining indefinitely electable.

This thread reminded me of a license plate frame I saw the other day:

I LOVE MY COUNTRY
I FEAR MY GOVERNMENT

I’m kind of curious how people separate those two concepts, and whether the driver’s fears were well-considered or just the usual rightwing claptrap of gun seizure and religious oppression.