I don’t think that “basic impulses of decency” have disappeared. I think that the ratio of basic decency to hatefulness in the ethical makeup of US conservatives (or anybody else) is probably much the same as it’s always been.
What’s changed now is simply which kind happens to hold the reins of power. The conservatives without basic decency, largely enabled by solidarity in self-selected online communities where they didn’t get shamed for being vicious assholes, have denounced and repudiated decency and moderation in their fellow Republicans to the point where that type can’t win primaries anymore.
That rise of hatefulness is independent of strength or decline of religious belief. Look at the sociopathic levels of hatefulness against Black Americans, for example, promoted by conservative anti-egalitarians during Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era. The white racists who lynched Black people on Saturday night showed up in church on Sunday morning, no problem.
Religious belief in and of itself has never been a guarantor of decent behavior towards one’s fellow humans, although it’s certainly true that in all cultures and eras there have been various specific religious movements that did promote compassion and decency.
Again, although embarrassed non-Trumper conservatives such as Douthat might like to deflect the blame for Trumpism onto the cultural phenomenon of weakening religious belief (for which, as a convenient bonus, they can blame those “freethinking” liberals), the number of high-profile counterexamples contradicts them.
Is Catholic VP J.D. Vance “post-religious”? Is Evangelical Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “post-religious”? Is Christian nationalist OMB Director Russ Vought “post-religious”? Is Christian nationalist Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “post-religious”? Like hell they are.
Nah, just more self-serving bullshit from conservatives who won’t take responsibility for allowing malevolent shittiness and ignorance to be made the face and heart of their movement.
So you think the root cause of the change was the rise of the internet?
Either way, from my observations there’s been a generational change: older, religious conservatives had morals that I didn’t personally agree with, but at least they had them. The younger, irreligious ones just don’t care about morality at all, they’re purely selfish. And that’s pretty alarming when you consider the future.
I see little evidence they are less religious. And the “morality” of the right wing believers is entirely about mass murder, cruelty, bigotry and tyranny. Their “morality” is indistinguishable from evil; who else would consider empathy a sin?
In fact the people without morality at all are some of the ones the Right hates, because they put making money about persecuting other people. They violate right wing morality by hiring people or selling to them, regardless of skin tone, gender or religion.
Given that it’s the older religious “conservatives” who have been demonstrating a complete disregard for morality and a profound selfishness of late , I’m not buying the “kids today” argument.
Meanwhile the kids are the ones out protesting against injustice and discrimination.
Thing is, for at least the last decade I’ve been hearing about the younger cohort abandoning churches because the churches preach hatred and selfishness; not that they are leaving churches because the churches teach morality and compassion. There’s never been any evidence that religion makes people more moral, and it’s especially implausible in regards to right wing churches which literally exist to spread hatred and tyranny. That’s like claiming that abandoning Sauron would make orcs act less moral and compassionate.
No, that’s classic Republicanism, not something new.
I live in a very liberal city. In December had a conversation with a coworker who was irked that someone had erased “Christmas activities” from her classroom board and replaced it with “Winter activities.” And I was initially somewhat sympathetic, until she went off about how if she had to respect all these sexualities that people were pushing on children, and demonic holidays like Halloween, then everyone should have to respect her faith. When I suggested those weren’t the same thing at all, she started talking about how many Satanists and atheists were out there, as though they were the same thing, and I had to walk away.
It was not what I was expecting. But absolutely that sort of intolerance is out there.
Okay, that’s two people defending the neo-Nazis vs the conservative Christians. Have I not explained the distinction well, or do you really think there is no different between people who agree racism is bad, and at most say mildly racist things, and other people who say extremely racist things, and when you call them on it, say ‘yes, I’m racist, and racism is good’?
Well, yeah. For example, I think people who say the N-word to sound edgy are not as bad as the people who took part in lynching. Do you typically see no gradations in bad things?
