It's almost illegal to have conservative opinions in theWest

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ASPartOfMe
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07 Aug 2020, 5:06 pm

ComteRenoir wrote:

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A However, it didn't exist until the phrase "black lives matter" came about, as an explicit deflection of the movement. "Black Lives Matter? Actually, All Lives Matter". That's why people are criticized for saying it. It is not a neutral statement.

Black Lives Matter does not imply that ONLY black lives matter. It implies that black lives in America have often been treated as though they DIDN'T matter, so we should work to ensure they are treated as well as other lives, which also matter. So, "all lives matter" is an unnecessary catchphrase. It's like if your friend said that they're having an asthma attack, and you went, "hey, everyone's ability to breathe matters".

The OP and the person I replied to were vague and didn't say which "socially conservative beliefs" they were talking about. The beliefs that I see conservatives usually getting "cancelled" for tend to lean towards racism, xenophobia, anti-LGBT, that sorta thing. If they're not talking about that, then they should make it clear what exactly they think they're not allowed to say.

Imply is the problem here. It seems not only autistic people take things literally. As proposed in another thread “Black Lives Matter, Also” would leave less room for confusion.

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ComteRenoir
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07 Aug 2020, 6:13 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:

Imply is the problem here. It seems not only autistic people take things literally. As proposed in another thread “Black Lives Matter, Also” would leave less room for confusion.

Eh. I mean I'm all for evenly toned education that can elucidate for those who aren't familiar with the issues, but I don't feel like this is a reasonable ask. If Black Lives Matter was called something like, "Black is King" or "Black above all else" I could see why you'd wanna tack on an explanation; but the phrase "Black Lives Matter" doesn't imply, state, logically conclude, or signify in any way that other lives don't matter. At all.

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08 Aug 2020, 12:12 am

Neah, not even close. You won't go to jail for your beliefs and for saying them. Don't confuse illegal with consequences. There are consequences to what you say.

I think it's good people are no longer tolerating them because what happens is if you just tolerate them and do nothing, it normalizes it and they will just keep doing it because of no consequences.

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goldfish21
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08 Aug 2020, 1:29 pm

Not if you’re all about conserving the natural environment, biodiversity, forests, rivers, and oceans! The West coast <3’s conservationists!

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roronoa79
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08 Aug 2020, 2:24 pm

Word of advice: conservatives really need to not keep citing the 60's/70's as being better times for political discourse. Socially conservative views were more respected in those days bc Civil Rights movements were just gaining steam. Segregation was still a matter of respectful disagreement for those whom it did not affect. Economically conservative/capitalist views were more respected bc of being artificially buoyed by the capitalist government--not to mention leftists had the McCarthy era fresh in their minds. And how many leftist activists were intimidated or killed by the government in those days.

It seems to me (tho this is a generalization) that the tide turned in the culture wars after '69. Conservatism became poisoned by reactionary southern Dixiecrats who wanted to undermine civil rights movements at every turn. It also became associated with imperialism and anti-democracy as they would try to uphold the colonial order (Dutch Indonesia, French Indochina, etc) and they would support American-supportrd coups against foreign democratic government's (Pinochet, etc).

What I'm wondering is when the capital class decided conservatism was bad for business? Corporations and the media have become notably left-leaning centrist or liberal capitalists for the last couple decades. (Well, more like they pay lip service to left social causes bc they have broader demographic appeal.) It's been very gradual imo but I feel like it picked up more during George W Bush's administration.

ComteRenoir wrote:

Quote:

Black is white. Truth is falsehood. 2+2=5.

Maybe you should find another justification for your reactionary ideology than a book written by a socialist who fought with anarchists in Spain.

THANK YOU. I want to pull my hair out any time I see a conservative invoke Orwell to try to shoot down socialist arguments. Orwell was an ardent, self-identifying socialist until the day he died.

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Conservatism discourages thought, discussion, consensus, empathy, and hope.

funeralxempire
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08 Aug 2020, 2:53 pm

Fnord wrote:

ASPartOfMe wrote:

... Nowadays conservatism is conflated with Trumpism and the alt right...

Call it what it is: the "Alt Right" is a sub-class of "White Supremacist".

Nowadays Conservatism is being identified with White Supremacism: the belief that white people are superior to all other races and should therefore dominate every facet of society -- education, employment, housing, and the media. Their goal is a white-ruled ethno-state where each race lives in a separate nation -- separate, but not necessarily equal.

White supremacists also see racial diversity as a direct threat to the very existence of the white race.

This, among other things, is what has been conflated with Conservatism in the minds of non-Conservatives.

Conservatives did this to themselves by pandering to unmotivated and unlikely voters with racist attitudes and some conservative leanings. By treating social justice movements and anti-colonial causes as 'the enemy' they made themselves the bloc that those who embrace soft white supremacist views will be drawn in. Which ever party is the party of 'immigrants are scary' and 'we need to crack down on the criminals, you know who we mean *winkwink*' will be the party that appeals to people with those sympathies.

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08 Aug 2020, 6:35 pm

Hollywood_Guy wrote:

Romofan wrote:

I agree...except what passes as the Left these days is actually tightly controlled by corporations and foundations.

BLM, for example, is 100% astroturf.

They are still all the "useful idiots" of the neo-Marxist/Socialist agenda.

So, the left is controlled by corporations, and the corporations are useful idiots of a socialist agenda.

Wait.
Corporations are following a socialist agenda? Tax dodgers like facebook or the richest man in the history of mankind, who's famously exploiting warehouse-workers and building a giant, global monopoly, are secretely socialists? Do you realize that socialism is the opposite of a giant corporation owned by jeff bezos or mark zuckerberg? These are the people to be executed first and very publicly in a hypothetical revolution.

Also: yeah... Left wing terror has created zero deadly attacks in decades, while right wingers shot at jewish people or people with darker than white skin on a monthly basis.

The left wing is of course, by definition, more dangerous to what really counts in this world: they want to change the wealth distribution; while the right wingers just want to kill people who are not in their in-group.
People die everyday, it's part of human life, but giving more money than absolutely necessary to workers??? That really would be a catastrophe, now, wouldn't it?

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techstepgenr8tion
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08 Aug 2020, 6:41 pm

So there are a couple different angles to this:

1) You say 'I am x' at which point you've tethered yourself to some herd of cats that you have no control over, have to answer for your tribe when they're under attack from their opposing tribe, and the whole thing will either get miserable enough for you to want to get out of politics altogether or, alternately, you might get axed by your own tribe for not being pure enough.

2) Dining a la carte, in which case you don't have a tribe but then you're in a situation where either a) no one listens to you or b) both opposing tribes are trying to claim that you belong to the other based on what beliefs you might share with them.

This whole thing isn't supposed to make sense. It's some combination ape melee, LARPing, and witch burning:
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2020/01/16/t ... -of-beefs/

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ASPartOfMe
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08 Aug 2020, 6:48 pm

ComteRenoir wrote:

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A lot of people are not complaining about not be be allowed to say n****r in public. What we are bitching about is the automatic assumption of racism and that racism should not be the only factor when judging things. Saying “All lives matter” is not automatically racist, sometimes it means the person interprets language literally, saying “colored people” sometimes means the person is out of touch with current usage and thinking. And all “socially conservative views” are not about racism. Of course racists hide behind these expressions and views. So what one does by trying and succeeding in canceling them is to help the bigots define what these terms mean.

I was admittedly being hyperbolic, because political correctness usually just boils down to "be considerate to minorities". Which isn't censorship, it's just basic decency/functioning in society.

If it was divorced of all context, "all lives matter" would be a perfectly fine thing to say. However, it didn't exist until the phrase "black lives matter" came about, as an explicit deflection of the movement. "Black Lives Matter? Actually, All Lives Matter". That's why people are criticized for saying it. It is not a neutral statement.

Black Lives Matter does not imply that ONLY black lives matter. It implies that black lives in America have often been treated as though they DIDN'T matter, so we should work to ensure they are treated as well as other lives, which also matter. So, "all lives matter" is an unnecessary catchphrase. It's like if your friend said that they're having an asthma attack, and you went, "hey, everyone's ability to breathe matters".

The OP and the person I replied to were vague and didn't say which "socially conservative beliefs" they were talking about. The beliefs that I see conservatives usually getting "cancelled" for tend to lean towards racism, xenophobia, anti-LGBT, that sorta thing. If they're not talking about that, then they should make it clear what exactly they think they're not allowed to say.

Political success is not a matter of what the sender of the political messages meant to say or not say, it is a matter of how it is taken.

kraftiekortie
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08 Aug 2020, 6:54 pm

Yep....I’m definitely the “a la carte” type—not a good way to be in this time of relative extremism.

Hollywood_Guy
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08 Aug 2020, 6:56 pm

DeepHour wrote:

The only sort of 'Conservative' opinions that seem safe to hold (or to express, perhaps) are those pertaining to the sphere of economics, ie support for 'free markets', consumerism and the pursuit of wealth. In the UK those ideals (essentially what became known as 'Thatcherism' in the 1980s) were embraced by the New Labour governments of Blair and Brown (1997-2010) and have been upheld by successive Conservative administrations since 2010. I think the same applied to the Clinton administration in the USA, which was nominally 'left of centre', but whose repeal of the Glass-Steagall law unleashed the free for all in investment banking which led to the 2008 crash. These sorts of policies have been the only game in town for the last 40 years, as far as economics goes.

In social and cultural matters on the other hand, it has been the case for at least the last 15-20 years (certainly in the UK) that social liberalism (and its increasingly illiberal offsprings identity politics and 'political correctness') have been taking root amongst the political classes, the media, and now in the business world. Socially conservative opinions have been marginalized, and the very expression of them has become so difficult (verging on illegal in some cases) that I think it's becoming necessary to question whether we still live in a fully democratic society.

This is depressing. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, a time when it was possible to hold (and express) a far more diverse range of opinions. The ironic thing is that one of the clarion calls of those who have managed to roll back such diversity is the word 'diversity' itself.

Black is white. Truth is falsehood. 2+2=5.

You get the picture.

Even "conservative" economics idea are dying away.

roronoa79
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08 Aug 2020, 7:10 pm

Hollywood_Guy wrote:

Even "conservative" economics idea are dying away.

I think it's going a bit far to say they're dying. I would more say they are losing ground. People are just challenging the capitalist consensus in ways it hasn't been for decades. Capitalists have just been resting on their rhetorical laurels because the media and government have explicitly endorsed them for over a century.
Left economics have been incredibly stifled since the Red Scares of the 20's and 50's. Even Keynesian economics suffered major setbacks with the bipartisan acceptance of Reagan and Thatcher-brand neoliberalism.
I am glad to see socialism begin to make a comeback in this country. Organized labor has been in decline for far too long and working Americans have suffered for it.

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08 Aug 2020, 7:12 pm

Conservatives or the right wing believe they are the silent majority.

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Oh_no_its_Ferris
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08 Aug 2020, 7:14 pm

@techstepgenr8tion I just noticed you are not listed as a mod anymore

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Hollywood_Guy
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08 Aug 2020, 7:16 pm

League_Girl wrote:

I think consequences have been on a one-way street lately. Try looking at the social acceptability of those who advocate violence toward conservatives (mainly Trump supporters in the US) compared to those who advocate same for the left or nasty criticizing of Democrat/left figures like Obama.

kraftiekortie
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08 Aug 2020, 7:17 pm

In the 1968 Presidential campaign Nixon alluded to a “silent majority.” They were conservatives, too. It’s quite possible that this allusion lead to his victory over Democrat Hubert Humphrey.

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