Most MAGA are conservatives and Never-Trumper conservative are electorally small. Yes, there’s a huge ideological jump from conservatives-before-Trump to Trump. But that just underlines the way that conservatives lack self awareness, so much so that they are the last people you would ask if you want to know why they behave the way they do.
I do agree that conservative drift away from this board preceded Trump, which is why I mentioned the Iraq War. Also, the word conservative became highly ambiguous after 2016, so much so that you should probably define your terms every time you use it on this message board (though I won’t do so because of brevity).
No promises that I will participate in this thread much. I just wanted to limit the hijack.
Is the answer any more complex than that this board skews liberal, and it can get awfully tiring to always be in the minority? I don’t seek out a bunch of conservative leaning boards to hang out in.
Putting on my partisan hat, I personally think that many “liberal” issues reflect greater compassion, respect and inclusivity. Add in a greater respect for fact and reason over belief, and that gives you a relatively stronger position from which to debate.
For all I know, there might be any number of folk from all portions of the right hanging out in Cafe Society, The Game Room, MPSIMS…
One has to be aware of what took place with other sites that did give value to accuracy and facts. Fact-checkers on the internet and Snopes are nowadays being accused of being in favor of the left.
I have seen also groups that in the past did dedicate solely to education report that they are not amused on what the republicans are up to nowadays.
The “Vlog Brothers” from Crash Course and Sci-Show on how inefficient DOGE is and how bananas the Trump tariff formula is:
In the early days, the skew to liberality was far less pronounced. The conservative position on guns dominated for years. Libertarianism has always had a fan base on the internet. Some posters here have trended leftwards over time.
Yes, but @Saint_Cad correctly points out that much of the conservative exodus from this board occurred before 2016.
I see @Der_Trihs is replying. I’ll note that he joined after the point where the conservative-liberal discussion was relatively more balanced. He’s welcome to join the discussion: I’m just saying that we’ve had a number of eras here.
Neither do I, but I do look in on one from time to time. Some assertions are absolutely crazy, way out there, and naturally, uncited (aside: why do conservatives have such an aversion to cites?); but every now and then, somebody does post something sensible and backs it up with a solid, reputable cite.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is scary.
“Conservatives” - which is essentially the polite way of saying “Nazis” these days - are incapable of tolerating others; hatred is the essence of what they are. They will either turn a forum into their own playground and drive everyone else out, or leave when they aren’t allowed to persecute everyone else on the site. Simple rules like “you can’t threaten other posters or moderators” or “calling for genocide isn’t allowed” will drive them away. And them being allowed to act as they please will drive everyone else away, since most people don’t like environments filled with death threats and the like.
I actually did approve a lot on gun rights, but when I noticed how the NRA supported with fake data the position that lead bullets was not harmful to wildlife (not the one shot, carrion and other predators got poisoned when consuming remains of shot game) I began to doubt a lot of what they claimed; also: getting into corruption and receiving Russian support did not help at all.
Quite a few moved to the left and are still here, or, at least, ye olde Overton Window shifted so much that a typical conservative-leaning moderate now looks like a total radical commie to most MAGA types now.
Popularized by an anecdote shared by Michael B. Tager (@IamRageSparkle) on Twitter in July 2020. Tager recounted visiting a “shitty crustpunk bar” where he saw a patron abruptly expelled: the bartender explained that the man was wearing “iron crosses and stuff”, and that he feared such patrons would become regulars and start bringing friends if not promptly kicked out, which would lead him to realize “oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now” only after the unwanted patrons became too “entrenched” to kick out without trouble.[1][2] (Instances of people noting that if a bar starts serving Nazis other customers stop going and it becomes a Nazi bar are older.)
For years explicit racists were tolerated on this message board for their racism. But they didn’t stick around for long because they were prone to freakouts and generally couldn’t follow the other rules. It was pretty funny. I think one of them lasted a couple years here, but he was the exception. Of course there are plenty of posters here with less than enlightened views, but the self-identifying Nazis and racists are another kettle of wax.
I agree with @Der_Trihs that the line between conservatism and outright far-right extremism has blurred. In the early days libertarians would hotly deny being racists. Now much less so.
ETA, quoting the next post:
Reminder that The Economist magazine is considered to be a conservative newspaper in Europe and they are very much fact-oriented. I trust it’s far-left liberal by MAGA standards, but still. The very conservative and not especially honest Wall Street Journal editorial page also doesn’t go on about Satan, the Deep State or the Jews. They aren’t exactly MAGA though.
ETA2: GIGO: “The drive to reach for the idiot ball”. Stealing this. That said, we’re discussing this message board: Doper conservatives were always cut from a different cloth. This board attracts people who are more curious than average.
The answer to why conservatives have an aversion to cites is that they are factually wrong about virtually everything they believe, and operate on faith, not facts or logic. And they know that nobody but a fellow believer is likely to take a “cite” that’s a baseless assertion from a politician or preacher seriously, so they don’t bother.
A “solid, reputable cite” to them is going to be assumed - again, by faith - to be a deception. It cannot be true if it contradicts the dogma, and “everyone knows” the dogma is true, therefore it’s a lie. Who the “lie” comes from will vary according to the flavor of conservative, whether it’s “Satan”, “the Deep State” or “the Jews”.
That is nice, but all the fact checkers I mentioned started before that year, the drive to reach for the idiot ball started in earnest since Newt Gingrich.
Yes. One reason there are fewer conservatives is that the definition of "conservative " has moved so far rightwards. When everyone not a fascist is a “leftist”, there’s an awful lot of leftists.
Sure. Makes sense. But why does it skew liberal? I think you answered it yourself:
Simple as that. Conservative ideology simply does not withstand scrutiny. More than a few have tried on this board to put forward a well reasoned conservative argument but almost always they do not succeed because it is a broken and failed belief.
The only way it works is to be a sort of Eisenhower republican. Mostly fiscal responsibility. But that ship sailed with Reagan in the 80s and never came back.
Yup…Reagan broke the whole thing. He started this shit-show. (Nixon certainly didn’t help either)
One thing I’ve noticed with just a couple of posters is that they do not distinguish between MAGAs, right-of-center and not-liberal. To them EVERYONE who does not agree with every aspect of their progressivism is MAGA. Again, not calling out all leftists here but a couple.
I would agree with this. One reason I left the Republican Party was that the “moderate” wing of the party - those in the center of current Republican ideology - were religious fascists. My support of SSM, pro-choice, hell even an EV in the household made me as bad a woke progressive as AOC.
That is why I’m not objecting in this thread to conservative = MAGA. Perhaps a better title would be about right-of-center leaving the board.
Then of course you would have to actually back up your case with actual posters that followed the stated rules then actually were forced away, wouldn’t you?
Disagree. Different people have differing tastes for the generosity of the safety net. There’s no hard argument in favor of one redistribution or another (except for Rawls, who is more redistributionist than any explicit argument I’ve encountered outside of philosophy).
But that’s liberalism vs conservatism, where conservatism is a variant of liberalism. Because both support the US constitution. Fascism is another category, supported by most self-identified conservatives in the US. When a major party runs on a platform of scapegoating (“Deportation Now!” was one of 2 signs handed out during the 2024 GOP convention) and is not supportive of democracy, then it’s a fascist enterprise. And here we are.
No Czarcasm, because plenty of conservatives have left this board without being banned. I agree they were not persecuted, but @Saint_Cad’s remark isn’t restricted to moderator action. “Made to feel unwelcome”, doesn’t necessarily involve moderation here.
ETA:
???
Some of them left last words, but I don’t see why that’s necessary or even advisable. Unless they were complaining about moderation. Those discussions belong in ATMB but suffice it to say that I don’t think their arguments survive scrutiny. IMO. We’ve discussed that in ATMB in the past, endlessly.
Saint Cad’s point can apply easily to conservatives who have drifted away. Admittedly most posters here have drifted away, but conservatives have been more prone to it. Frankly, I don’t think it’s been a big loss on the ignorance fighting front --conservative views are much less iconoclastic than they imagine – but that doesn’t change the underlying observation.
