Discussing lib takes on conservatism

 So yeah, there's a reason I wanted to do both of these. First we focused on the far left, now we're going to the right. And this one is particularly interesting as I actually tend to disagree with the definitions of a lot of these people.

So yeah. 

Original question:

What’s your opinion on the beliefs and values of conservatives? What do you think of conservatives overall?

I’d like to know what you think about the values and beliefs of the other side of the aisle; I’d like to know how you feel about conservatives. Are they well-meaning? Misguided? Comically evil? Etc? I’d like to hear what you think.

Moreover:

Why do you suppose they believe the things they do?

How do their beliefs relate to what you believe in? What are some key differences?

These questions are being asked with the sole purpose of gaining insight into how liberals perceive conservatives.

As for my own views, I think I'd like to offer a few blog articles I've written on conservatism before, as I think they're better than me giving my own answer.

 Conservatism is an intellectually bankrupt philosophy

Why I embraced conservatism when I was younger, but no longer do

 Do conservatives actually want to make the world a better place? (Here's a hint: no)

I'm starting to think that for conservatives, the cruelty is the point...

So yeah, you can tell I'm not very positive on them, and actually kind of have gotten to the point I literally view their worldview as full on evil.

To answer their specific questions:

 Why do you suppose they believe the things they do? 

 They have outdated and regressive worldviews that tend to stem from things like fundamentalist christianity, which distorts their moral thinking away from a metric toward preventing harm to others and bettering their lives, to one based on authoritarianism with their god being the ultimate authoritarian. Most of their views ultimately stem from this. It's a literal worldview issue. I did an analysis on that worldview here. 

Much of their belief system stems from that, at least in America.

How do their beliefs relate to what you believe in? What are some key differences?

 My worldview is literally the foil to theirs. If conservatism ultimately comes from things like religion, tradition, and a status quo bias, mine comes from secularism, free thought, and applying logic, reason, and evidence to situations to figure out how the world actually is. I also shifted my ethics from religious authoritarianism to being based on actual well being of people, both in theory, and in practice.

 With all of that said, I'd like to move on to actually discussing others' views.

I honestly don't even know what they believe in anymore. There's no coherent ideology at this point except, "stick it to the people I hate" or "burn it all to the ground."

 I mean...that's kinda where we're at. In the past 15 years or so, the conservative movement has gotten far more extreme, insane, and burn it all down. I tend to believe it's because they came close to losing everything during the obama years so like a cornered animal on the verge of losing their own culture war they're lashing out. That and there really is a reactive "own the libs" mindset sometimes. 

I see those people as people who perceive themselves as having been wronged by the system through the economy, and they are at the point where they just want to stick it to the people they hate. In a clouded delusional way they believe they are doing whats right, and they justify it through mental gymnastics.

 In a sense. Conservatism does have a strain of economic populism that has arisen in response to neoliberalism and its failures. And because the right is unable to provide decent answers to actually solve the problem, they just go all in on being anti immigrant.

Right, because that's what they voted for... Trump's & co gave them the guns and the ability to control women (i.e. things that cost nothing to Trump & co) in exchange for screwing them when it comes to the money and the economy.

 They did go with the social stuff, but the "controlling women" narrative is actually explicitly a leftist, postmodernist narrative. There's a lot of this in this thread, and I'll get to it later.

I think trump is a manifestation of them feeling wronged, ever since then they have attached themselves to him due to feeling as if he is actually fighting for him. I feel bad for these people for being bamboozled by trump and his rhetoric.

 I did at first, but at this point, I'm increasingly not feeling bad for them. As the saying goes: fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. These people live for being fooled it seems, and now they're actively dangerous and going for #3.

I don't. Conmen frequently go after terrible people because most cons involve making the mark think they're conning someone else or getting something over the system. Conservatives aren't little lambs who were taken in by the bad man. They have voted their entire life for people who implicitly told them that they'd end up on top if they supported their authoritarian politics. They voted to screw other people over because they thought it would benefit them socially, culturally, and monetarily. They did it for decades.

They're just mad that only the people at top reaped the benefits.

 I want people to pay close attention to this. I'm not actually making this just to rip on conservatives, but also to rip on liberals.

Again, it seems like the modern left has a form of postmodernism and social justice worldview that my worldview explicitly lacks. We'll go into this more as we look at more responses. but yes, it really does appear that this social justice ideology is the binding force of the left these days, which is why despite on the topic of being too left for liberals and being too liberal for leftists, in some ways im also too conservative myself for these guys too. But yes, when they're talking about how they'd screw others over they're basically saying women/minorities/LGBT+. It doesnt matter if the driving force is religion, a lot of these libs actually have some leftist ideas related to social hierachies and a fixation on them. And I'm not denying they exist, my own take is a bit different.

Ultimately we are all humans who didn’t choose to be born, since kids these ideologies have been instilled into people. I feel bad because they have been misled. They are not “horrible” by choice they were made that way. You give off a superior complex when you talk like that.

 This one got downvoted. Because how dare you break the SJW circlejerk.

What would a conservative say? Stop blaming mommy and daddy. I was raised that way too, and I grew up. These people most definitely are making choices to stay that way. They're choosing Fox News. No one is forcing them to watch that bile. They're choosing to plug their ears to facts. They're choosing to ignore the people they hurt.

They're grown adults who can take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

 I would dispute this. if youre too stupid to know better you're too stupid, but yeah they are kinda brainwashed and willfully ignorant at this point.

Right but you just so happened to come across stuff that led you in a different direction. Im not absolving them of anything. You just give a superior complex that is not useful when attempting to bridge the polarization in this country.

 Because part of being an SJW literally IS just trying to feel morally superior to these people. And that's just as offputting as the offending behavior is to me. This guy is right.

I think Maga have been brainwashed to think a secret cabal and foreigners queer’s and city liberals are tying to ruin their lives. So whatever they need to do is justified; putting in an authoritarian like Trump to ” get the country back” ( notice how they don’t say get democracy back) since this is an existential war to them. The right wing will use the demagogue, and any push back by the left or any form of law stopping right wing extremism is proof of the secret cabal ( projection of the extreme; they say they are fighting a captured system that they are trying to capture) After power is taken powerful interests will treat this country like Saudi Arabia. There will be a ruling elite everyone will be kept in line by a hardline authoritarian government, and “libs and secret commies and foreigners” will remain the scapegoat instead of the Maga elite who have drained the country’s resources. The right wing stand for nihilistic Christo fascist power.

 In a way but once again the SJWism is kinda missing the point. The reason these guys feel like they're losing the country is because it's no longer governed by their extremist conservative values. The culture war, to the right, is A LITERAL CULTURE WAR, its a war over the culture of this country, and to them, it's a matter of the godly vs the godless. That's the primary dividing line. All the authoritarianism comes from then wanting to force their religion on everyone else.

The social justice crap is secondary. 

Elevate the in groups and preserve privileges, suppress the out groups and hinder their progress.

 Yep, these guys are interpret it through privilege and conflict theory. They're social justice warriors. 

I think its pretty much that they want a hierarchy that puts their group at the top. Which means enforcement of that hierarchy

Basically critical theory.

The whole philosophy is about wiping up the hate of stupid people in order to get a set of corrupt trash into power so that they can enrich their cronies…

Like I’m sympathetic to the idea that maybe we should progress with caution so that we don’t cause more harm than indented, but… That’s not what modern conservatives are. They’re like “let’s hate on gays because… let’s just hate on gays!” Or “Let’s hate on women because… women suck, dude!” Or “Let’s blame immigrants for shit because… We just love hating on people!”

 First part, pretty accurate. Conservatism is primarily an ignorance problem IMO. 

The second part, well, yeah, it's just more social justice drivel. Let me really go back and discuss the three primary groups discussed here.

1) Hatred of gays isn't necessarily fully accurate, it's a hatred of homosexuality, because they see it as a sin. Because that's what God said in the Bible apparently.

2) On women. Conservatives support traditional family values. This involves the nuclear family, traditional gender roles, with a man in charge and the women being subservient to them. THis is how it was in the bible and through their functionalist perspective based on how things were 2000+ years ago, men are strong and do the heavy physical work, women pump out kids, and that's what "works." They opposed womens liberation because it confused the gender roles which to them led to a form of natural division of labor in society, women have their place in the home, men have their place at work and as the head of the household. You can crap on that if you want, I ain't a fan of it and find that mindset to be completely outdated in modern society for the most part, but that's what is proposed. Conservatives are very unlikely to change their ideas as times change, thats what makes them conservative, but yeah, they kinda have this bronze age brain persisting into the modern era.

And on abortion, they just see that as killing babies because God had a plan for them and blah blah blah souls. 

3) on immigrants. While conservatives are ignorant on immigrants, it really does take a total retraining of your brain to get out of the conservative mindset. Conservatives are about preserving culture and values, they wanna keep america as it is. They tend to not like immigration because people from different societies tend to think differently, and they just want us to be this weird american circlejerk. They tend to think immigrants cause problems like crime, due to lack of proper integration (false narrative, but that's what they think), and drain resources that could go to them, be it jobs or welfare. While I get it, conservatives are mostly wrong on these issues by the stats, conservatives also dont go by stats but by feels. So they just view immigrants as more of a problem than they do. 

I really wish the social justice people would chill on this. Their lens isnt actually helpful at understanding conservatives, just demonizing them, and while yes, I do think that conservative ideas tend to border on comic book evil sometimes, their primary sin is ignorance IMO. It is a bit of a willful ignorance but a lot of it comes from lots of ideological brainwashing.

Values:
POWER & ABSOLUTE CONTROL
TRADITION
PURITY
AUTHORITY / HIERARCHY

Beliefs:

Some people are just better than others, and I happen to be one of the better ones.
Gender roles / Hierarchy is natural and normal
Tradition is vitally important because change is threatening to my place in the hierarchy.
Purity must be maintained, or terrible things will happen -especially to women and children.
Children are the property of parents, to be molded and forged into exactly what I want them to be.

 

 The values thing is somewhat accurate, but i do think it overlaps that most of that stuff literally comes from their religion. You leave religion and need to come up with a separate set of values, and you end up with a lot different and more liberal outcomes. 

On the beliefs. Yeah I would say a lot of them seem to think they're among the better/more chosen ones. Kind of a hard lesson in my case as i realized that yeah, i wasn't. 

Gender roles, yeah discussed that above.

While people can be for tradition because it threatens the hierarchy, i think libs WAAAAY overemphasize this stuff as part of the whole weird "woke" obsession of theirs. 

It's more, tradition is important because of we dont do things a certain way society falls apart. But yes, they also wanna protect themselves in the hierarchy too. but that's getting more into weird post modernist sociological takes rather than how conservatives actually think.

Purity comes from a disgust mechanism. In fundie christian school, they compared women who have sex before marriage to candy that someone unwrapped, put in their mouth, and then spit out. Ya know, kinda gross, right? Who wants used candy? Who wants used women, is the lesson they're teaching.

This has SOME practical implications like "do you wanna date a single mom and raise someone else's kids?" as well as "this can spread STDs."

But it actually comes back to the Bible. You see, in the Bible, they had this very male dominated society. Women and children were property of the man. You mess with a man's wife and/or kids and you mess with his property. In the old days, young men used to pay the parents to some extent to marry a woman, showing that they have the material resources to take care of her. Heck, the whole idea of the father walking the woman down the aisle and "giving her away" is symbolic of this property transfer.

Obviously if someone's daughter has sex before marriage, their effective market value drops, and that's why it was seen as sinful.

Again, you gotta understand the culture in which these values arose to understand them today. We live in a very different world today. And yes, we shouldnt be governed by these values of the past. I wanna make that clear, BUT....yeah. Again, just trying to explain where these ideas come from.

Children property of parents, again, just mentioned this. Again, literal bronze age biblical thing that kinda lives on into modern times thanks to biblical literalism.

I have no problem with conservatism. Conservatives have a different world view and a different moral philosophy. I simply disagree with them on some policy views. But I definitely respect conservatives who live by their principals. 

But the Trump cult is some weird shit. It’s hard to respect “conservatives” when Trump is so obviously not conservative. They support him even when he calls our military “suckers and losers”, even when he steals from his contractors or sets up a fake university. There is literally nothing he can do to lose their support. I have no respect for that level of debasement.  

 I mean based on what im writing about explaining conservative views, I have NO LOVE for conservatism. I wanna make that clear. I do think it's an intellectually backrupt, backwards, and even EVIL ideology. I am NO FAN of it. 

And yeah trump is fleecing these people hard. I dont understand the love for the guy. I can only hope at best the smarter ones are only using him to get what THEY want (whackjob conservative supreme court justices). 

The military issue is one that I just can't wrap my head around. Okay, I can't wrap my head around any of it, but the way he's spoken about folks like John McCain and faced no pushback from a base that worships the military, at least loudly on the surface, is quite maddening.

Like, I'm not shocked that they disregard his making fun of the disabled and abuse of women, and his theft and fake charities. They certainly love his misogyny and racism. But to absolutely trash someone for being a PoW? I almost thought that would be the end of this never-ending nightmare. Silly me.

 

 Yeah this is where my family diverges from the trump cult. There are members of my family who have conservative beliefs at times. They were never as crazy as a lot of the people im talking about, but the trashing of john mccain and calling vets losers and suckers have TOTALLY turned them off. Keep in mind what i said about my dad. My dad was a vietnam vet. In the 1970s, when he came home from vietnam, he was spat on in port authority by one of those anti war whackjobs and called a baby killer. It kinda pissed him off and drove him to the right.

Trump calling vets losers and suckers has a similar effect and drives him to support Biden.He will never forgive trump for that, and is really turning his back on the conservative movement over this and other stuff.

As for the open 'racism and misogyny", ya wanna know why the right loves that stuff? because the left wants to censor it. The left wants to make that stuff verboten and bad and punish people for it and it just makes conservatives wanna do it more out of spite. The entire trump phenomenon is based on spite and triggering the libs. Stop being so offended by it and they'll stop as it loses its power. The more shrill you get over it, the more it just drives those people to do it more.

Again, the left has a lot of issues too that I'm uncovering in this thread in how they approach the right. 

The only suckers and losers are the trump supporters. They are not conservatives, they are followers of a lunatic who has let them down a path of insanity.

 This is kind of true. Trump represents a level of insanity not previously seen by conservatives. And they are kinda losers and suckers even by my standards too.

I'm sick of the "not true conservatives" line. Where the fuck are all these "true conservatives?" Are they all just taking a restroom break for the last decade? I think you need to accept that this is what conservatives are. It's what they've always been. They've just dropped the facade of respectability.

 Uh, MIke Johnson, Mike Pence, those kinds of people. They still exist. But yeah once you break them, anyone can ride them. And thats a problem here too. Fox news, rush limbaugh, and conservatism in general has been driving people in a direction of extremism over the past several decades, and a lot of this came from the fact that their worldview isnt the liberal worldview. So they kinda started checking out of our shared reality some time around 1990 and it's just gotten increasingly worse with every passing decade. Some more principled conservatives exist, but they're a minority. And I do think the trump base is more varied and nuanced than given credit for. A lot of them dont necessarily love trump, but they are conservatives who believe they are fighting the culture war and that they gotta support the guy to win. That's all there is to it. Given how many people hold their nose for biden do you really think there arent people holding their nose for trump?

Where the fuck are all these "true conservatives?"

In the Democratic Party. The Democrats are only "liberal" by comparison to the fascist GQP. The DNC's positions today are pretty damn similar to the "far right" positions from the Carter era.

 

 And this is what's scaring me, because those guys fleeing to the democrats creates brain drain on the right, making them worse, but it also makes OUR party more conservative. It's a core reason why ive been opposed to the sun belt suburban strategy dems have been gunning for. I dont wanna be in the same party as those guys. AT ALL. 

 I legitimately don't know what Republicans believe any more. Like, there's no coherent belief system there. They oppose half the things they supported 20 years ago. They hate the people they used to like and like the people they used to hate. It's honestly just a 24/7 conspiracy at this point.

 Yeah Trump did break these guys' brains.

And 40 years ago, Ronald Reagan signed an amnesty bill for undocumented immigrants. And he ballooned the national debt. He is still revered by conservatives sometimes as one of their guiding lights, but if he were running today he wouldn't get the GOP nomination.

Conservatives today are much more conservative than the conservatives of yesterday. Decades ago they used put their ideological differences aside and compromise to get something done, for the benefit of the country. But conservatives no longer believe in compromise for any reason. They'd rather watch the country burn than work with their counterparts to save it.

 Reagan was the start (well technically nixon was) but these guys have gotten more ideologically extreme with each passing decade. They have ideology and culture, but post 2016 in particular (tea party was still "principled" conservatism and why i left conservatism in general, i realized i disagree with the principles it was based on), they've gotten like a cornered rabid animal and are just attacking to preserve their way of life. Extremely dangerous, but yeah, they see themselves on the verge of losing the country as a whole to the left (and they were, until 2016 screwed everything up), so rather than have that happen they become extremist authoritarian nut jobs.

It's all about the cruelty.

"He's not hurting the people he needs to be." -Actual Trump Voter

Why are they so cruel? Because they are angry, frightened people who don't understand the actual causes of their troubles because they were never taught to understand anything more complicated then Lego instructions. Plus they have no sense of compassion or shared humanity, and as a result are extremely happy to lash out at the scapegoats that Fox News deposits in their living rooms.

 As I said I discussed this myself, but it goes back to worldview. THeir ideology is based on religious extremism. Their morals come from an authoritarian sky daddy, they're not based on actually making the world better, and if anything, they see suffering as building character and forcing people to adopt the virtues they believe makes people "good" in the eyes of their god. Their whole fricking worldview is skewed from top to bottom. 

Heck keep in mind, my obsession with worldviews comes from literally being one of these basket cases at one point.

Politics is just a manifestation of worldview. Worldview is more complicated but is a mix of life experience, upbringing, information diet, and personality.

Conservatives are, largely, normal people with a worldview that prioritizes and values different things than people on the Left do.

From what I can tell, there's really 2 particular major, fundamental differences between Conservatives and Liberals (or more broadly, Right and Left) that inform most everything else that differentiates them.

One is the question of egalitarianism versus hierarchies. The other is tradition versus new ideas. It's hard to come up with a unified theory of politics, but from my own observations, most everything can be explained somehow by one of these 2.

In more straightforward terms, I think the Right cares about things that the Left simply just doesn't consider at all and that leads to a lot of difficulty finding consensus.

I do also think that those things lead to Conservatives believing, supporting, and doing things I find quite abhorrent, simply because I don't share the same worldview and thus see the same justifications for things that they do.

 While this guy is right it is worldview, this analysis is also the product of this guy's worldview. It's not primarily about hierarchies. It's about religion vs secularism, and about tradition vs new ideas. The hierarchy thing comes from their religious zealotry.

If you're talking about people who like traditional values and institutions, then I'm fine with it as long as those values and institutions are liberal ones. If they're authoritarian then I'm having none of it.

 

Thats mostly fair. Im still fairly conservative on keeping liberal values in line. because that's the driving force behind my secular humanist worldview, or perhaps the other way around, with liberalism being a manifestation of my secular worldview.

I think it’s best given by an example of an interaction I’ve had with a Trump voter years ago.

I knew this old lady, mother to a friend of mine. She said on social media she was so happy Trump was going to do away with political correctness, as he promised in his 2016 campaign. I asked why, political correctness isn’t a real problem and even if it was, it’s not like the president can do anything about it. She said that she was upset because she could no longer call her mentally disabled brother [censored]ed in polite company like she used to when she was younger. I said she kind of proved my point, because that’s not a real problem. And even if it was, there’s nothing the president could do about it anyway. Then her alcoholic daughter chimed in “FOUND THE LIB MOM LOL!”

 I mean, have libs considered maybe backing off of the stupid language and political correctness stuff? I dont like that crap either. And I keep saying it, social justice ideology is alienating AF. As we can see when I actually get into actual conservative thinking as an ex conservative, that stuff oversimplifies the right to insane levels just boiling it down to "they're bad people", and again its complicated. I would honestly agree conservatism is "evil" in my worldview, but again, the core issue is ignorance and being brainwashed into extremist religion. The stuff these guys go on about are just manifestations of it. 

I live in a R+12 district. So I am in a deep red district. And for the most part, although they support Trump and the Republican Party, a lot of them for the most part are just good people just trying to live their lives. Yes, they live under the delusion that the Republican Party is the good party for economic growth and job creation, but a lot of their beliefs just stem from the fact that that is how they were taught and raised. And since I live in South Carolina, one of the worst states for education, a lot of those beliefs don't go unchecked and they're not taught otherwise in the public school system. So they are well-meaning, but misguided.

A lot of the comically evil conservatives that you see amplified on social media (think the likes of Laura Loomer, Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh (not the guy from Veep, the other Matt Walsh), etc.) those people are the minority. They're a very vocal minority amongst the right, amplified on social media because it drives up engagement, but a minority amongst conservatives nonetheless.

And as a side note: I've found that if I don't talk about politics amongst my more conservative friends and coworkers, and talk about anything else (movies, hiking, work, etc.) then they are very friendly and genial. And they're friendly if we talk about politics, but it does get heated.

 I think this is one of the more sane takes. Again, not demonizing your political opponents and acting like they're literal nazis out of the gate is typically a good thing. Now let's look at the responses.

I've observed the same. But we do need to remember how easy it is for violence, bigotry and hatred to become normalized- it happens because people who are otherwise normal and nice believe in these things without talking about them all day, every day. And they may not consciously be racist or fascist, but they still support leaders who are, for whatever reason. And this is what history will judge them for.

“Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed.

That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore.” - A.R. Moxon

 I mean kinda splitting it half way here, kinda agreeing with me but also going into nazism, anyway, on that, again, my honest belief is that if people want nazis to not exist in large numbers, you need alternatives for those people. Going into wokeism just drives that urge head on. Approaching it as religion vs secularism tends to create a divide more similar to what existed pre 2016. We're heading toward the reawakening of fascism in part because the alternative if obsessed with social justice crap. 

Last time we were here, FDR derailed the coalition from forming with the new deal. And thus, so do liberals have to do that today. You cant beat human nature, and I know i aint like a "human nature is evil" kind of person, that IS the right, but i do think that impulse IS in our nature, and I do think that to avoid it, we need to go around it. 

That's a devastatingly accurate quote. Opposing Trump and all of that noxious ideology is not popular, especially not where I live. But, I try to think of how history will someday judge me, and what my daughters will think of their dad with the passage of time.

I'm sure Oscar Schindler wasn't popular in his day, either. But look at how history remembers him, as opposed to the many everyday Germans who went along with that evil because they didn't want to hurt their bottom line.

 I think people focus way too much on this stuff, although i do think not contributing to the rise of that kind of right is probably helpful to some extent. But i see this with free palestine whackos being obsessed with "how history will remember them". Just live your life the best you can. Stop focusing on these weird overarching narratives, especially from a social justice perspective.

I honestly hope the social justice perspective goes down in history as being a huge mistake of the left and just the cultural zeitgeist of the time. 

Disagree. I often hear “conservatives are just trying to live their lives like everyone else!” And then those same conservatives vote for policies that purposely hurt people. Even if you’re not shouting the n word all day, voting for policies like that make you a bad person. A vote is a reflection of a persons beliefs, morals, and wants.

And the “well that’s how they were educated/ were raised” argument is a cop out, too. People generations ago were raised when racism was much more acceptable we don’t give them a pass.

 And this is where i get pissed off with libs. Like, F off with your stupid performative morality. It is a matter of their upbringing and environment.

Also, maybe you should give the people of the past a pass. The fact that we go DAE THINK FDR IS RACIST?! Is one of the biggest condemnations of wokeism out there IMO. Because it's such an obnoxious impulse. Stop trying to confuse YOUR weirdo ideology with some greater arc of history here. Really I hate these guys and their ideology. Not as much as actual conservatism, but if you cant tell, i literally think they make conservatism worse and actually make the left come off badly.

I’m sorry but this is just my personal experience dealing with conservatives on a day to day basis, of which it happens every day. I’m not sure how you’re going to disagree with that when it’s my experiences and my observations. You may have different experiences with conservatives, sure, but this is just my observations that I shared.

 Above person doesn't care, he's an obnoxious SJW craphead.

I grew up in the American south where conservatives were just “living their lives.” Face to face, they were nice. They’d be friendly and maybe help you out even if you needed help. But then they’d vote to take rights away from gay people.

 Christians have this idea of love the sinner, hate the sin. I dont agree with much they are for these days, but i think the SJW left seriously needs to adopt some variation of this logic rather than just demonizing people for not agreeing with them. I despise conservative ideas but dont see any good in just being a morally self righteous ###hat whose entire perspective comes down to "people who don't think like me are evil." 

If well-meaning people consistently vote for elected representatives who then fight to hurt people, I feel like at some point in time they need to be held to account for that fact. The reason why they do it is less important than the fact that they do it.

 Getting in their face and screaming at them that they're bad people for not agreeing with you isn't the way to do it.

And how exactly do you plan on “holding them to account” It’s not illegal to vote for candidates whose views are fascist. Yes, I would very much prefer if they didn’t vote for the Republican Party. But it’s not illegal, and they don’t need to explain their vote to anyone

 Ok yeah let's see this guy's answer.

He didn't answer but heres probably the best answer that wasnt just "hurr durr lets not pretend they're good people."

Part of holding them accountable is not letting them get away with pretending like they're "good people" just because they were nice to you personally. Hitler was nice to his dog. There are mafia hitmen who loved their families and were nice to their neighbors. You just don't want to have to do something about it because calling these people out on their behavior would make it uncomfortable for you. Suddenly, they wouldn't be as friendly.

 Did it ever occur to you that maybe things arent always black and white? That you can be good in one environment and bad in another? And maybe we shouldnt just write off the good with the bad? 

I hate how social justice ideology oversimplifies this crap so much. 

Anyway. I think that's all I wanna cover. More responses, but only so many hours in the day and dont wanna spend any more on this. 

Honestly, my takeaways are this.

1) Yes, conservatism is evil. It's a backwards regressive perspective unconcerned with human suffering and moored to the morality of past eras and fundamentalist religions. Most problems stem from this.

2) Liberals have a "wokeism" issue. I really despise how this stuff has become the core underlying zeitgeist of the left. It's actually toxic, it's overly simplistic, and it just tends to write off conservatism as bad while making the person feel morally superior, while not actually understanding why conservatives think as they do at all. 

Honestly, i hate the whole political spectrum these days. Theres a reason im basically politically homeless. I'm in some ways too liberal for leftists, too leftist for liberals, and simultaneously too conservative for both socially. My ideology is custom, it arose due to a certain specific set of circumstances, and yeah. I just dont fit anywhere, and between this and the other article, we're seeing how that works. 

It's frustrating. I didnt leave conservatism for this, but I also cant in good faith support it either. I just hate just about everyone in terms of worldview when you come down to it these days.