Step 1: Before it happens, you're asked to publicly dream about what an extra $4000 will do for you on social media.
Step 2: Once it passes, you get a 0.1% tax cut. Enough for one extra pizza. Per year. The bill will also includes 3 tax raises only for the poor, one every 4 years that follow.
Step 3: The corporation you work for, meanwhile, gets a 16% tax cut. With it, they'll announce a $2000 one-time payment to all workers. Which will be rescinded as soon as it's been reported about on local news. The bill also includes 3 further, even bigger tax cuts for the rich, one every 4 years.
End result: taxes raised on the poor, taxes lowered for the rich, but lots of social media euphoria from the working class, lots of newspaper clippings of bosses giving their workers generous one-time payments (that never materialized). And next election cycle, Fox News can dig up all the happy reports and the truth of the matter has never even entered the attention span of the royally-effed-over working class voters.
If you were to try to argue their view, I think they would say that their only problem is when you exhibit immortal behavior. Their definition of immoral behavior isn't the only historic definition but is certainly a prominent one.
To be conservative in 2024, you have to dismiss that some people in our community are miserable and every day we leave them to their fate is heinous.
In the US, a failure to vote [against] any given Republican (by voting [for] an opposing democrat) is another step towards autocracy and genocide. Every Republican in office is a force towards the Heritage Foundation's 2025 project, by which they will unmake the meager democratic features and civil rights that remain in the US.
Conservatives believe, by the natural extrapolation of their positions and behavior, I have no right to exist. (Curiously, this includes my own father, who simultaneously facilitates political efforts seeking out my extinction while expressing a dissonant interest in my well-being. He doesn't dare connect the two in his mind.)
The social contract solution is pretty solid. If you are intolerant of other people first, you lose protection of the contract and others will be intolerant of you without penalty.
The problem on Lemmy is that this gets combined with overgeneralized binary thinking, and all loosely "conservative" people get strawmanned as the intolerant outgroup, which, when this happens, actually does make you the guilty party.
If I go hey black guy I’ll tolerate you if you tolerate me
We agree
Hey gay person I’ll tolerate your differences if you tolerate my differences
Hey nazi-
He doesn’t tolerate us so he is not protected by the social contract and then we don’t have to tolerate Mr Nazi
I wouldn't say "preach" but I do have conservative friends that openly tell me that being gay or trans is wrong. (I'm trans, and they know this). I'd love it if they kept that shit in the privacy of their own homes
Or maybe realize that the human race is on a collision course with a hot, chaotic destiny in the form of climate change coupled with economic collapse. Maybe it's time to solidify our networks instead of silently praying the 'other' changes or dies?
You know, there's so many people I have tried this with. They just won't stop bringing it up even when it is completely unrelated to what we're doing. One of them told me he feels smart because when that comes up I usually walk away to avoid the endless drama and he took that to mean that his position and opinions had so confounded me that leaving was my only way to respond.
Stuff like "yeah I think religion should be enshrined in the Constitution and everyone should have to live by our rules" and "if women don't want to have kids they should keep their legs closed".
Like, even if I thought engaging had any chance of working it's just such braindead regurgitated Fox talking points that I wouldn't engage anyway. Just waiting for these people to get everything they want and suffer for it.
A distressing number of people seem to have inhibition problems.
A further distressing number are narcissists.
We shouldn't be surprised though, that's exactly how they were programmed. The more it became acceptable to pander to our baser instincts, the more profitable it became and the more profit driven concerns did it. The more screen time we had in our upbringing (back when we called it 'tv') the more likely we are to have taken on the programming of exceptionalism and decide that what's good for everyone isn't what's good for us.
I don't necessarily think it was planned that way, but the people who thought that it might be the result were relegated to the fringe.
Every conservative I know or knew is walking around with pent-up anger, seemingly ready explode over whatever their handlers in the media have railed them up against that day. I guess that is what keeps them active at the ballot box and prevents them from taking a step back, calming down, thinking and questioning the narrative. Either way, it became pretty much impossible to have any kind of outing with these people present.
It's gotten really tiresome to even look for common ground anymore. Things that were fine just yesterday suddenly make them foam at the mouth. And lately, the persecution complex, too.
Hmm part of it might be that I'm in eastern Canada where there are still 'progessive conservatives' and people don't seem to care so much about politics anyway.
A world away from the USA in terms of media influence.
So, you're saying you are okay with hanging out with people who are completely okay with the oppression and marginalization of minorities. You choose to keep people around who want other people to loose thier rights. You keep people in your life that support book banning and information suppression.
I mean, I'm sorry, but if they believe that abortion is baby murder, black people are predisposed to being criminals, poor people don't deserve to have healthcare, and trans kids should have to live in a miserable hell that makes them want to commit suicide, I'm not going to just "not talk about it" and stay friends with them. If your morals are that fucked, I can't in good conscience call you a friend.
The primary difference is, I can throw a party, I can have my trans friends gay friends Muslim friends black friends, and Latino friends All in the same room. Then I can leave the room to go take care of something and not have to worry that any one person in the room is going to say "you people".
To be very honest I do have some somewhat conservative friends, They mostly worry that legislation will even the playing field and all their lifelong hard work will be for nothing. Which is still a pretty shitty outlook but I can understand it. They spent 10 years of their life putting our kids through college and all of a sudden colleges free.
Depends really heavily on how fundamentalist that Muslim friend is, comrade.
If they are Muslim in the same way that Joe Biden is a Christian, then yeah.
If they are a Wahhabist, then may Allah help the gays, because the Wahhabist sure as hell won't.
I have 4 Muslim friends, 3 of them would never say a bad word about anyone even in confidence. The forth one would in fact say something about someone, but never to their face. I'm sure there are extremists out there, but by the numbers, 6/10 Christians can't help but preach to people.
Ehhh. I understand their logic at this point. It makes sense to them.
That being said, the basis for that logic is rather insane, so take that as you will.
Look, I don't agree with them either, but if you understand them, then you can pre-empt their arguments. This doesn't seem to be something that politicians on "the left" can do.... So they put forward these very sensible and logical motions, and get torn to shreds by the opposition.
Nope! I know what conservatives want and what they stand for, when I tell them to fuck off it's with pride and volume. Conservative isn't a race, a color, a religion or a sexuality. It's not beyond your control. It's a series of moral decisions made by a fully competent adult who can absolutely be held responsible for what they believe and what they try to do with their power in the world.
From persnoal experience, not really. Only some are, just like how some Christians are too and not all of them. Humans will always human, no matter the label.
Religion should be opposed via education, culture, and general science, not via the state. Religion is conservative, but there are good religious people.
There's nothing a conservative hates more than being judged by who they are as people. They think that tolerance means being a complete moral vacuum and accepting any sort of malevolence and violence. This is because they see people being tolerant of PoC, queer people and non-Christians and they also see membership in those categories as moral failings.