Comment on Trump literally referred to himself as "King". Surely conservatives are against a monarchy forming?
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
In a very real sense, those people do not have beliefs. They think reasons are things you make up based on what you’ve already concluded. Business snubs their outgroup? ‘Well it’s their right to blah blah blah vote with your wallet yay capitalism.’ Business snubs their ingroup? ‘How dare they violate my right to blah blah blah political correctness gone mad.’ They decide what they want today and pick plausible justifications.
And in their minds, that’s what everyone else is doing.
Nothing they do makes sense without that context. You’re never really arguing with them because they don’t agree on how arguments work. Their conclusions do not follow a chain of logic from factual claims. You can completely dismantle their arguments, and then… they’ll pick new arguments. They’re just working backwards from the answer they want. And they think you are, too. Everyone’s just shuffling cards. No matter the evidence or the rationale, they’re not about to switch sides, because that’s what they think hypocrisy is.
Reminding them of their own arguments has no impact, because they don’t understand the concept. Neither the concept of saying something without meaning it, nor the concept of logical consistency. They think you’re suddenly choosing that argument - because that’s all they did.
AmalgamatedIllusions@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
The card says “moops”.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
The whole Alt-Right Playbook series is incredible and necessary, but the more relevant video is arguably Always A Bigger Fish. Specifically for one point:
Conservatives are not failed liberals.
They don’t want what liberals want. That’s why they don’t do what liberals do. We keep assuming we must agree on certain topics - often because they say they believe in things we believe in - but if that were true then their actions would make sense. We wouldn’t be constantly baffled by their hypocrisy, asking over and over, ‘how can they say X when they do Y?’
The default approach is to point out these contradictions… as if they haven’t noticed. As if it will force them to reconcile their rhetoric with their behavior (or vice-versa). That never happens. They don’t fucking care. All of their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications.
Everything for conservatives is in service to hierarchy. Words don’t mean anything except to signal loyalty or disloyalty to that hierarchy. They are shibboleths. Ducktalk. They cheer when Their Guy says the sky is blue and boo when Our Guy says the exact same thing. They proclaim themselves “rational” because obviously someone rational would want what they already want, and being smart just means working backwards for clever excuses. This is how reality works, for these people. All of their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications.
And they think we’re the same way.
That’s what really connects us, across the aisle. We think they’re like us, and when they say they support democracy, we think they mean it. It’s why we’d say that. They think we’re like them, and when we say we want fair elections, they think we’re lying. It’s why they’d say that. All of their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. They say things we like to hear because it works. It has no predictive value.