Want to rant about rightwings and conservatives? This is your thread.

**Dismounted Feudal Knight** · May 07, 2021, 08:18 AM

Originally Posted by alhoon

What the hell... is that guy crazy? Is there a reason while he spews such crap? You can tempt old people to die for Trump without presenting very-easy-to-deny crap. I mean the people that heard that probably know of people dying from CoVID. Their states probably report over 30 people dead/day.

Let me appeal to observation. When you can have the simplest facts dismissed because the source is 'left', because they weren't personally witnessed corroboration ergo automatically wrong, and the widespread prevalence of taking words for it because the individual has no interest in the five minutes of research to confirm, what more reason do you need? The majority clientele will never check nor even be interested enough to consider the dispute. Thus regular

can be peddled and maintained as core to someone's beliefs simply because they heard it way back when, remember it now and it's effectively gospel that is ten times harder to uproot because it is now what they know.

Even the most rational are prone to the factors above, leading to horrifically skewed views that are never willing to self assess for lack of interest yet have impact in collective. If it serves your purposes, it is the most reasonable thing to do to perpetuate it without consequence.

**~~enoch~~** · May 07, 2021, 09:30 AM

Originally Posted by Iskar

No disagreement there, but would you expect the average Trumpist to be capable or willing to employ such nuance?

No. But I don’t expect that of most people period. C’est la vie.

**EmperorBatman999** · May 07, 2021, 05:22 PM

I used to be an supporter of capitalism, almost in a borderline Rand sense of it. I used to believe that capitalism was a guarantee on both economic and social freedom.

My recent inability to get a job has made me realize how inefficient and impersonal this system is. It was never about getting the best workers or allowing people to discover (and live up to) their truest potential. "Networking" is just a fancy term used to institutionalize nepotism and the Old Boys Club system; if you are an outsider and you have nothing to offer the other party, you cannot network. Capitalism has become feudalism reimagined and rebranded.

And to think that there are hundreds of thousands, millions of people, sputtering around without anything to do, wasting their talents and energies on CVs and Cover Letters, rather than being put to work to make society just a little more pleasant for everyone.

**~~enoch~~** · May 07, 2021, 10:16 PM

This is why the world is best burned. Anarchists get it. Hardcore Libertarians almost do.

**alhoon** · May 08, 2021, 03:01 AM

Originally Posted by Iskar

No disagreement there, but would you expect the average Trumpist to be capable or willing to employ such nuance?

Would I be frequenting this thread if I did?

That said, let's talk about Moscow Mitch.
According to conservatives, McConnel is fighting people's right vote for things he doesn't like with fervor.

But "what's different, conservatives say, is his personal level of commitment behind-the-scenes to educate activists on just how damaging the legislation would be to the future electoral prospects of Republicans,"

So... conservatives admit candily that McCain puts party above democratic institutions and fights tooth and nail to prevent people from voting what he wants instead of trying to change to something more people would vote for.

Let this sink for a moment: Moscow Mitch is not trying to win votes for his party, he's trying to take them away from the other side. Instead of trying to change the party, even with small steps, to something that would entice more people to vote for them (you know, what democracy is supposed to be like) he wants to exclude people that veer away from what he wants.
Apparently, for McConnel elections are more or less questions of who in the electorate is right or wrong, not which of the political sides is right or wrong.

And then, the cherry on top, from the other side:

"some progressives have warned that McConnell is taking the legislation more seriously than even Democrats are,

Oh, how nice to know that the many democrat congressmen and senators take democratic institutions and threats to democracy itself seriously.
What a bunch of complacent morons! Just because the democrats won by a slight margin 2020 doesn't mean they will win in 2022!

But I don't care much of whether they will win or lose in 2022. Frankly, as a conservative, I want them to lose.
But also, as a real conservative I want to conserve the democratic institutions of one of the most powerful pillars of Western civilization, the USA. Like it or not, USA is a big player. For the demotards to be complacent while Moscow Mitch is trying to suppress the vote of people he doesn't agree with is a problem for us all.

**alhoon** · May 08, 2021, 03:08 AM

Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999

My recent inability to get a job has made me realize how inefficient and impersonal this system is. It was never about getting the best workers or allowing people to discover (and live up to) their truest potential.

Not to be an ass but... you should have figured that out waaaay earlier. Capitalism is the system where you try to make profits. That is most easily done by squeezing your employees like lemons till you discard the empty shell. For a billionaire to make billions, tens of thousands of people have to NOT be paid what they are truly worth. The boss' profits come in some part (large or small part) from the over-value you put in the work. If everyone was paid fairly then the boss would not be making x50 what the clerk makes as the boss is not x50 better than the clerk.

That said: Imperfect as it is, capitalism is still the best system around. It has some flaws but it allows more personal growth than other systems. Furthermore, unless the far-right have their day, the government has some control over things like minimum wage and treating your employees etc.

Originally Posted by EmperorBatman999

"Networking" is just a fancy term used to institutionalize nepotism and the Old Boys Club system; if you are an outsider and you have nothing to offer the other party, you cannot network. Capitalism has become feudalism reimagined and rebranded.

That's capitalism that doesn't work well. You can have such forms of capitalism but then you soon become decadent; the owner's son that is a moron without a financial sense would sooner or later ruin the company. You can veneer away from the Free Market to give that guy a golden parachute but the company would still go down sooner or later.

Originally Posted by enoch

This is why the world is best burned. Anarchists get it. Hardcore Libertarians almost do.

This opinion is simplistic, anachronistic, disproven in the post 1918 world (and post Capitol Hill of Seattle world) and wrong.

**Coughdrop addict** · May 08, 2021, 03:49 AM

Originally Posted by alhoon

That said, let's talk about Moscow Mitch.
According to conservatives, McConnel is fighting people's right vote for things he doesn't like with fervor.

So... conservatives admit candily that McCain puts party above democratic institutions and fights tooth and nail to prevent people from voting what he wants instead of trying to change to something more people would vote for.

Let this sink for a moment: Moscow Mitch is not trying to win votes for his party, he's trying to take them away from the other side. Instead of trying to change the party, even with small steps, to something that would entice more people to vote for them (you know, what democracy is supposed to be like) he wants to exclude people that veer away from what he wants.
Apparently, for McConnel elections are more or less questions of who in the electorate is right or wrong, not which of the political sides is right or wrong.

The Republicans have outright given up on attracting new voters. Their sole strategy now is appealing to racism and paranoid delusions to keep their base while suppressing Black voting. If they get back in in 2022 I half expect them to drop any pretense of concern over voter fraud and openly try to bring back segregation and Jim Crow laws.

**~~enoch~~** · May 08, 2021, 10:19 AM

Originally Posted by alhoon

This opinion is simplistic, anachronistic, disproven in the post 1918 world (and post Capitol Hill of Seattle world) and wrong.

You misunderstand. I want it all to burn. The complete and total destruction of global society (or really the mechanisms of violence that uphold it). I am not concerned with what comes after. Breaking the current systems is my sole goal.

But I am a monster. Ideally Posthumanism gets something like humans onto multiple planets/moons through bio and mech tech beforehand.

My views are unrealistic but so are most others narratives so yeah. And I’ll stress the common layman’s misunderstanding that ideology has something to do with political rule. Ideology is for elections and NOTHING more.

**EmperorBatman999** · May 08, 2021, 09:01 PM

Originally Posted by alhoon

Not to be an ass but... you should have figured that out waaaay earlier. Capitalism is the system where you try to make profits. That is most easily done by squeezing your employees like lemons till you discard the empty shell. For a billionaire to make billions, tens of thousands of people have to NOT be paid what they are truly worth. The boss' profits come in some part (large or small part) from the over-value you put in the work. If everyone was paid fairly then the boss would not be making x50 what the clerk makes as the boss is not x50 better than the clerk.

That said: Imperfect as it is, capitalism is still the best system around. It has some flaws but it allows more personal growth than other systems. Furthermore, unless the far-right have their day, the government has some control over things like minimum wage and treating your employees etc.

That's capitalism that doesn't work well. You can have such forms of capitalism but then you soon become decadent; the owner's son that is a moron without a financial sense would sooner or later ruin the company. You can veneer away from the Free Market to give that guy a golden parachute but the company would still go down sooner or later.

This opinion is simplistic, anachronistic, disproven in the post 1918 world (and post Capitol Hill of Seattle world) and wrong.

Sometimes it requires time and experience to make realizations like that, but I don't appreciate that phrasing about me. I was brought up around conservative values, and I still hold at least a lot of the social values (except climate change and gay marriage, those I accept), but I realize that many of the economic values are hollow. For example, my girlfriend's situation: why can she not afford even a car or her own apartment while her boss gets to go smoke cigars at a club after work? And her company is relatively generous when it comes to pay and benefits in her region!

And I'm not just speaking about the lousy playboy son which blows all the money and ruins the kingdom. I'm talking the fact that parents obsess over placing their kids into the right environments (schools, clubs, sports, community groups, etc.) which will guarantee them networks, just on the virtue of placing them alongside kids from the correct families. This forms an alternative social class, separate from general society, which rewards its own members while pushing away very capable, but not connected, people. Essentially, the formation of aristocracy. Now, John Adams and Edmund Burke together said in the 18th century that the formation of an aristocracy is inevitable in any society, and we see this today and across history, whether it's the King and his knights and courtiers, the 1%, or the Communist Nomenklatura.

I can see the allure of the idea of total revolution. Revolutions can prove to be initially exciting and empowering, but more than often than not lead to disaster and human tragedy, unless executed with precise perfection, as what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1989. However, we see constantly that revolutions do not destroy power, but merely rearranges it. Portland even was an example: although the people aimed for an anarchist commune, that Raz guy established himself as a warlord and created his own police, a police force not obligated to the Rule of Law, and created a true dystopia.

I think the real means of changing of society is to make the elites feel uncomfortable, but going short of outright revolution: America's greatest socio-economic progress happened in the late-40s and early-50s when the Soviet Union proved to be a formidable ideological alternative to capitalism; Business and Government had to bargain with the Working Class in order to placate the workers' discontents and thus dissuade revolutionary feelings. Capitalism went off the rails when we lost the USSR, and without a viable existing political alternative, felt that it could now retake "lost" ground and again strip workers of rights and wages because they had no other alternative of which to dream. Nevermind the fact that the dream of the Soviet's Workers' Paradise was only a façade, the fact that people could think of an alternative was enough to pressure Western leaders.

**alhoon** · May 08, 2021, 11:09 PM

I am not sure about what phrasing you are talking about of mine. That said, I didn't want to make you annoyed.
Now, on what you said: I find it perfectly reasonable for the parents to want the absolute best for their kids. Actually I find it the right attitude and a positive.
What starts becoming an issue is when the "class stratification" starts to block upwards mobility. The "system" should be more fair towards underprivileged people. Even hardcore conservatives would agree with that. Most guys in the 0.1% would also agree with that.

However, the way to make the system more fair is not to 'take away' the ability of parents to provide the best for their kids. I live in a country that we do not allow private universities because the electorate strongly feels that this would ruin the public universities as the 'good' professors would move to the well-paying and well-funded private institutions.
It is also harder for some professions to inherit the business of their parents. It does not work, because there are ways to bypass the few hurdles in the way but it is a hold-out of a system of class envy: "That evil rich guy! We should try to stop him from ensuring his kids would continue his success. We want to see them swimming with the sharks!"
This is an example of the system not working well. You take options away from those that can afford it.
It is IMO morally empty to sabotage the poor, talented kid in order to make it much harder for him to move up. It is also morally empty IMO to sabotage the rich kid in order to make it harder for him to stay at the top.

It may indeed sound unfair that your GF cannot afford a car and a house (near-necessities) while her boss can enjoy cigars practically paid by her work. But it would be similarly unfair to the daughter of your boss if the system was stacked in a way to make it harder for her to succeed for the crime of being born rich. And there are such systems. Not less than 50 years ago, there were well known societies that practically criminalized being rich.

**EmperorBatman999** · May 09, 2021, 11:53 AM

I think we are talking past each other on some of these points here, as I do agree with a lot of what you say here.

What I think is happening is that now these super-elite institutions are blocking social mobility because the children who don't attend these schools (i.e. public school students) end up getting excluded from opportunities because they didn't go to the correct school or weren't networked with the correct people because their parents didn't send them to one of these elite institutions. To give you another anecdote from my life: I went to public school, and I still think my education was generally pretty top-notch. The valedictorian of my class wanted to go to our state's Ivy League university, but she was rejected -- she was our valedictorian, the best of the best of our class, highly involved as the class VP, played sports, led clubs, everything. But she was turned down all because her school was a public school. Meanwhile, many of these private schools get guaranteed quotas from the Ivy League schools, where the universities give a number of guaranteed slots to graduating students from specific elite private schools. When these sorts of pipelines to success form, they also tend to block access to the general public who also want to ascend the social hierarchy.

In terms of wages: I'm not saying that her boss should be made to suffer for his wealth, or that his children should be screwed over because their dad. Indeed, I know his and his wife's story: they started their business after they had an unexpected teenage pregnancy and found themselves struggling in borderline poverty, so they began making clothing and home decorations to make extra money on the side for their new child. It soon exploded into a full-fledged, very profitable business. In a word, the boss of this company has known want to a degree most Americans wouldn't.

But what I do think should be the case, however, is that the boss's wages should be marginally more precarious, so to speak, where he sacrifices a part of his high wage to pay his bottom employees more money, enough to actually afford living expenses. So maybe he can't go to the cigar lounge and steakhouse as much as he is doing now, but he would definitely still be living comfortably enough to live a good and full life.

**alhoon** · May 09, 2021, 12:52 PM

I think we are in agreement.

**~~enoch~~** · May 11, 2021, 10:22 AM

Of all the conservative actions being taken the world over, the Israeli settlers aka land thieves have to be the most wtf.

**Hobbes** · May 12, 2021, 06:07 AM

It is truly infuriating that they act as if they have a natural right to all the lands there as if there haven't been generations of Arabs who have been living there. Seeing how Arab presence in the area predates the emergence of Zionism, maybe they should be more humble about the whole thing.