Have you ever noticed that there’s nothing that sucks the air out of the room faster than a group of conservative, religious, gun Klingons holding a political conversation?
The amount of hate, greed, and fear emanating from their mouths is astonishing.
Dinner with Conservatives always starts out okay. They can hide their hate, greed, and fear long enough to utter greetings and salutations. After that, however, everything they see, hear, taste, smell, or feel reminds them of how the Democrats and ‘Osama’ are out to get them.
And then, rather than being sophisticated in any way, they start blurting things out about Osama taking their money and giving it to poor people, and how Osama wants all of us to become ‘white slaves’, and pass laws to let terrorists into the country, and set a maximum wage, and all manner of nonsense.
Well, to me it’s nonsense because I’m capable of independent thought and I have developed a decision-making process based in reality, rather than a faith-based decision making process based on Sean Hannity.
It’s strange to me that they can’t seem to understand that they *are* the poor people they’re so afraid of. That’s the self-loathing that characterizes the conservative point of view.
I hate poor people even though I am one.
I hate welfare even though I live on government handouts.
I want to privatize Social Security even though I don’t have money to invest and wouldn’t have the first clue how to do it even if I did have the money.
I cling to guns and religion even though I haven’t been hunting in 25 years, and I haven’t been to church except for weddings and funerals since 1977.
So, yeah, basically conservatives seem to know only what Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Karl Rove, and George W. Bush want them to know. Repeat simple, ‘patriotic’ talking points to a captive audience until they buy every word of it.
Fox ‘News’ is a major culprit in creating the low-information Republican voters. 24/7, Fox ‘News’ repeats Republican talking points, with it’s flag-waving, bible-thumping stories piling up one behind the other. Then, when the poor saps who watch Fox ‘News’ are exposed to something else, they freak out because the real world and actual information doesn’t look anything like what Fox ‘News’ is presenting.
In a country in which the scale is sliding ever leftward, it’s acceptable for people to continue to call themselves conservatives. They just lag behind, staying to the right of a center that’s moving to the left.
That’s really the situation the United States is now in, and it’s probably the best case scenario. The United States will drift cautiously leftward, and the conservatives won’t have to panic because they’ll remain more conservative than the center while becoming less conservative over time, as year after year the scale slides toward a more equitable, egalitarian, and modern society.
Conservatives rarely change their minds. Conservatism is a fear-based philosophy based on rabid resistance to change. What will happen is that old conservatives will shed the mortal coil, and fewer will be created.
Youth, diversity, and technology are enemies of conservatism, breaking down barriers and opening doors.
Youth is fearless; youth embraces change. Youth cannot be conservative.
Diversity brings exposure to difference; exposure quells fear.
Technology brings information to everyone. Informed people are liberal.
The conservatives whine a lot–about everything–but particularly about liberal professors and academics. Academia, unfortunately, is not as overwhelmingly liberal as it should be, but it trends somewhat more liberal than the population at large.
Curious people, those who love to learn, are predisposed to become professors and academics. On the way to attaining their advanced degrees, those curious sorts have access to vast amounts of information, unfiltered by the conservative corporations which own every major media outlet in the United States.
People aren’t born liberal, but put into an environment which values information and the free exchange of ideas, people become liberal.
Give people very limited information and a data set approved by Fox ‘News’, and they’ll become conservatives. If your entire world view is shaped by Sean Hannity and Fox ‘News’ telling you that Mexicans are taking your jobs, African-Americans are taking your money, teacher’s unions are ruining your child’s education, and only the second coming of Jesus (like there was ever even a first coming!) can save you from Obama the Antichrist, then yeah, you’re going to have the hate, greed, and fear thing going pretty good.
A well-educated, well-informed, open society is a liberal society. Hence the conservative disdain for academics, professors, educators, philosophers, and writers.
Anti-intellectualism is a trademark of conservative ‘thought’.
But, the food was good.
Tags: academics, conservative, diversity, Fox News, information, intellectual, liberal, philosophy, professors, technology, youth
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