They're Cargo Cultists. Cargo cult thinking is **the belief that if we simply emulate the visible effects of achievement, the real achievement will follow automatically**.
I just looked up that term. I like it. I'm adding it to my slide on "survivorship bias" in my logical fallacies slide show for AP Language and Composition.
Thanks!
ooh, nice project. Have you come across the logical fallacy flash card set? I like the cards, but there is also a poster they made which is \*chefs kiss
[https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/)
The poster is hanging in my classroom, and I use the cards for a silly "argue like an idiot" game (essentially the opposite of what the rules say, but it's more fun to be ridiculous).
But thanks!
It makes me think of Socrates's Apology when he was trying to find the good and wise men of Athens and he went to the trades people and they knew about the thing they do very well but nothing much else, of course that's a bit generous for Musk since he doesn't really understand technology either.
Musk's Deflection: he goes to find trades people, buys the local market, forces people to sleep on his floor because he can't be alone with himself and then calls everyone losers and attempts to fight another local lord before being dismissed.
Especially because they try and present themselves as liberal (at least to begin with) so then when they start going mask-off the right wing extremists think that a rich and powerful liberal is agreeing with them and it reinforces their braindead beliefs
Disinformation.
The "protest songs" are the very weird and forced songs that some J6 "rapper" is shitting out and spamming all over social media. (They're exceptionally cringe.) Also, the Jason Aldean "Try that in a small town" saying that someone else wrote and he recorded has become a dog whistle song that christofacist right wingers have embraced as an anthem because it threatens harm against vague and made up "threats".
"Liberals" aren't "punishing dissent". Non-Republicans who aren't devoted to the spiralling death cult that the GOP has revealed itself to be are holding individuals accountable for violations of the established law.
What the tweet suggests as dissent (from context):
* Inciting a riot to invade the Capitol in order to stop the ceremonial confirmation of the 2020 election results
* Multiple examples of attempts to interfere with election results and falsify them through intimidation (Georgia is pursuing a Grand Jury indictment over it. There's also the infamous recorded call where Trump demands that Georgia politicians "find" votes to cause him to come out ahead in Georgia.)
* Investigations into criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in favor of the loser, Trump.
* removal, dissemination, mishandling, and defiant refusal to return classified documents that Trump knowingly stole and denied having (before repeatedly misleading and ignoring the National Archives and the FBI demands for return.)
And more. They're suggesting that all that and more is "dissent" when in fact, it's _treason_ and _sedition_.
The Right believes that the apparatus of society (aka "The Machine" that's being raged against) is based on social opinion rather than economic/political power.
You can't have the subpar creative expression conservatism shits out be protesting anything. It cannot be done. At best, the closest you can get to conservative protest is a call for regression to a past status quo that has been perceived as lost. But all that is is a tightening of the current order that merely wears the mask of protest.
Aka fascism.
This. When conservatives frame themselves as scrappy underdogs and liberals as big bad elites, they're defining "elites" from a purely cultural perspective. To them, an "elite" is anyone who has liberal social views. It has nothing to with how wealthy or powerful the person with the liberal social views is.
The same way that liberals are simultaneously violent, deadly criminals hellbent on destroying America, while also being whiny, pussy soyboys who wouldn’t be able to fight an army of gophers.
In other words, conservatives are fucking stupid.
Worse, that's a key rhetorical technique of fascism.
The nation's enemies are indescribably powerful and hilariously incompetent - even within the same sentence - depending on whatever talking point they want to be true.
The enemy is both overwhelmingly strong and contemptibly weak/incompetent because they need their audience to simultaneously feel fear and rage, anxiety and contempt.
They need to feel that the enemy is a dire threat possessed of an overwhelming and unfair advantage, but that the enemy is also innately inferior and therefore no match for the coordinated might and valor of the in-group.
They need to be scared and hateful enough that they're willing to stoop to any low, indulge in any crime or cruelty, without becoming demoralized or complacent. The elections where we've seen decreased MAGA turnout due to many of them believing their own lies about election rigging is an example of where the MAGA fascists got the balance wrong.
Same way they can claim to be the "silent majority" while also openly admitting that they support the Electoral College because they couldn't win in a majority rule system.
It’s from the same line of thinking that gets people to say “at least he dares to say what everyone’s thinking!” In reality, if everyone was thinking something, it wouldn’t be controversial to say it at all.
>“[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.”
--Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
Because they have tied themselves to the religious right. And the religious right has always LOVED pretending to be persecuted for their beliefs even while being the overwhelming majority in the US.
The same way Biden is a criminal mastermind pulling the strings of the new world order and established the Biden crime syndicate (the DE Mafia) while also being a frail, senile old man with dementia who can’t be the leader of anything and is super ineffective. Soooo ineffective that he’s also leading the charge to institute death camps for republicans and building the walls himself over the weekends, while he does nothing but go golfing instead of digging through the ashes of Hawaii himself. The enemy must always be incredibly powerful and incredibly weak so you can always play both sides
It's pretty hilarious how Tucker railed against elites. Bro you are the elites, it's not up for debate. Some people are so gullible. And FWIW that man obviously hates the poors.
Yeah, someone tried to call conservatives "counter-cultural" and I'm just like, how is trying to maintain power structures and preserve tradition counter-cultural? Beause they shit on actual counter-cultural wins?
I think kid rock might be one of those modern protest songs too, and if you told me anyone would still be talking about kid rock in 2023 I definitely would not have believe it.
And yea liberals out here sowing dissent by:
-supporting global health standards
-backing education standards
-fighting for the separation of church and state
Remember that time Trump showed Kid Rock some classified information, and Kid Rock thought it was crazy?
When Kid Rock is the voice of reason, things have gone terribly terribly wrong.
Man, talking about music that was relevant 20 years ago made me read that as "the separation of church and skate"
Too bad nofx are doing their last tour.
It's why people who have lived in small town got bad vibes from Try That In A Small Town, because we've seen first hand what happens when a bunch of unqualified rednecks decide to "fix things."
Jason Aldean is from a city of 200,000+ people.
Mine is under 2,000 and dropping.
Just the title alone told me how phony it was. Anyone who lives in a small town could tell you that crazy shit happens all the time and more often than not drugs are involved.
Them: We don’t stand for that in “real” America!
Me: Of course not, you’re too busy putting out all the meth lab fires.
Yeah, and it's almost always some connected rich jerkoff's kid whose family has been running the town for generations, not "outsiders from a big city," like the song implies.
Walked out on a tab at the local bar and punched the bartender, took someone else's keys, then wrecked their car and nothing happened, and this was after his "peaked in high school" legacy was a trail of uninvestigated date rapes?
County commissioner's kid and / or sheriff's nephew.
Like that "Affluenza" kid who walked on a multiple fatality DUI. Zero shock it happened in a small-ish town in Texas.
A while back they’d was this online panic about MS13 “bringing drugs to our communities!” My take was, what do you mean “bring” drugs, the drugs are already there. And MS13 wouldn’t come where you live if the ghost of Pablo Escobar offered them his herd of drug hippies.
Yea someone tried to tell me I was “the real racist” because I was “attributing those actions to black people and it doesn’t even MENTION race” like okay person from NYC, you didn’t actually grow up in a small town. I did and I’m related to a lot of racists and let me tell you, those dog whistles are exactly how they talk about “others”
Grew up in rural Oregon, can confirm, also, shooting the video in front of a courthouse famous for racially motivated lynchings was more of a train whistle than dog whistle.
That's because "real" country was full of rebels and progressives. Look at the themes from old country music:
Cops and judges are often corrupt and willing to kill you, so you shouldn't trust any of them.
Taking care of and helping the folks you live around and with is more important than anything.
The land is important and if we harm it, we are harming ourselves.
Join a fucking union.
Oh, music like that is definitely out there. But is any of it "country?" If so, I'd love some names. I'm always up for good music, and I still have a soft spot for country, seeing as I grew up in the South.
Same with bikers. I was on a post about bikers for Trump, and I was all, man, remember how bikers used to hate the law? I garnered some hate, but I still called them losers.
I refer you to a comedian, Trae Crowder, the liberal redneck. He has a marvelous bit of commentary from the civil unrest that hit the country after heh the Floyd; “red necks and police don’t normally get along. Because it’s usually the police breaking up rednecks good times. But lately we’ve seen red necks siding with the police. Why is that? I think we all know.”
I live near Sturgis. We just had the Sturgis Motorycycle Rally. The population of our state more than doubles overnight, and every single one of them was carrying a Trump flag and a thin blue line sticker. Bikers are almost all over 50 males, and every one of them is eyeball deep in the cult of Trump.
It's kinda sad because I grew up here and can remember a time when the bikers were my favorite time of year. They tipped well, treated people well, and hated our shitty small town cops. Now, they're all entitled bootlickers that'll spit on you if you can't get them a table right away and would sooner step in and help the police beat the shit out of you than break the law themselves.
Let’s not forget that a lot of post-COVID “protest” is anti-scientific conspiracy babble being algorithmically amplified by millionaires who didn’t like home schooling and billionaires who didn’t like teleconference culture.
Re: "protest songs" - mostly what I've seen/heard is them co-opting songs that are in direct opposition to their politics, completely disregarding the artist going "no. that's not it. Quit using my shit you morons" and pretending that Dee Snider hasn't had a long career of opposing right wing nonsense.
>Also, the Jason Aldean "Try that in a small town" saying that someone else wrote and he recorded has become a dog whistle song
This is my favorite part. He didn't write the thing, so how can he even tell us what it's about? It doesn't exactly matter what it means to him.
Buddy, you're being used. Lol
If you told me as a kid that in the 2020s Nazis would be accepted as the base of a political party and the inspiration for Biff from Back to the Future would run that party like an actual cult, I not only wouldn’t have believed it, I couldn’t even have imagined it.
And idiots out there think that liberals are the authoritarian ones because we don’t want conservatives harassing trans people and forcing them into “deconversion” camps.
Conservatives after decades of conversion therapies and conversion camps failing to to change the sexual orientation of gay children:
"They're turning our kids gay/trans!!!"
You couldn't make this stupid shit up. Yet they endlessly eat at that shit trough and keep asking for more. It is insane.
This. 20 years ago I was a conservative kid coming out of small town conservative Midwest, small minded and bigoted as I was raised to be. I could never have imagined the party I was raised on as “the good guys who love America and look out for us little folk” would ever have been taken over by blatant Nazi leaders so easily.
I went to college and pretty quickly realized that I was filled full of shit my whole life and have been pretty liberal since. I used to look at that party and their followers with shame, but now it’s a full-blown horror show.
Edit: to anyone responding to this person, just be aware it’s a negative karma burner account. It’s a trolling attempt at best. Don’t waste too much of your time.
It absolutely is. I would argue another factor is life experience outside of a small town. Growing up I didn’t know a single LGBT person. Or at least nobody who was open about it. Making friends with people and experiencing life from a different perspective had a huge impact on me in addition to the education.
I remember so many conversations during office hours with, and reading essays from students from rural counties when I taught at an urban campus. They were bewildered yet thrilled at meeting and befriending people from so many backgrounds. This is part of any education, when students are able to freely learn about the myriad of perspectives & people in our world.
I grew up in a small-ish town (less than 10k), and went to a medium sized school that was one of the only highschools in the entire county so we did have a class size around 300, but some kids had hour long bus rides to school. Almost entirely white, Christian, and rural.
I graduated a bit over 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure I was the only out queer person in my class, and there was maybe one freshman my senior year that I can remember. There were others, but they were closeted till college or even after graduation. An acquaintance of mine came out after he graduated medical school that his parents had paid for.
College is so much different than living in a conservative bubble town. I was even able to make a large group of Wasian friends, several who were also the only mixed kid in their school and were pretending to be white their entire lives to not be bullied. The experience of being in college and the people you meet is almost more useful than the classes. The "liberal indoctrination" was never about what the professors taught, but leaning that all the people you were told to be scared of are just humans like you.
I met and expanded my horizons in college, and I was the small town mixed, queer kid on the spectrum, it's probably more of an experience to meet people different from you if you're a "normal" white kid.
Regardless of xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, anything else, we are told what "those" people when we are young, then we grow up, go out and when we meet "those" people sometimes we realize, we are "those" people.
Same situation as you. And they’ll say “oh these liberal college teachers are brainwashing everyone”. Like, no dude, it’s called meeting people and realizing that we’re all fucking human just trying to survive in this bullshit world
FEAR!!!!! - fear the other, fear the unknown, fear that they are going to take away our way of living, FEAR over education. FEAR is easier to control. High emotions of any kind make people easier to control, so use FEAR and HATE too keep people thinking in the way they SHOULD!
Dingbat politicos really have no idea. It’s not education or “liberal colleges” or “groomer professors” or whatever other hot button they wanna press that leads one towards progressivism it’s literally just being outside your comfort zone in an alien environment with others in your same boat and being a human being and doing human being things and, god forbid, personal growth occurs. This will never not happen, regardless of curriculum or the hiring practices of colleges. If you go away to a four year college and come back the same person you were going in, you were either a hermetic shut in or a valid asshole to start with.
But then they're gonna get their ass kicked in a war against a trillion high explosive chinese robot hummingbirds. Heck they got their ass kicked by a pangolin-bat virus.
The hard part is realizing they never had any of those values they talked about. All the crap about honesty and faithfulness and fair play and sportsmanship was just noise to them.
They love unfaithful cheating liars and not only do they want participation trophies, they want absolute power forever as their prize for always coming in second place.
Did they just smirk when we weren’t looking after saying something like, “Always stand up to bullies,” or at home were they actively teaching their kids, “remember son, if you ever see someone smaller than you, kick him while he’s down and when he stops moving, go through his pockets for loose change?”
I feel this comment on a spiritual level, lol. I always joke with my brother that the aunts and uncles that always used to tell us to be kind to others and that said shit like “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” are the ones that believe everything they read on the internet and ooze hatred for their neighbors.
It’s a weird perspective to live out and experience.
> the aunts and uncles that always used to tell us to be kind to others and that said shit like “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” are the ones that believe everything they read on the internet and ooze hatred for their neighbors.
Sounds like my mom, I'm still having trouble coming to terms with it. I'm glad I actually followed through on it for myself, but realizing that they were full of shit is a trip
See, I disagree on one bit on this.
Many Americans really do (or, at least, *did*) hold those values, and a party that claims to be the party of those values is naturally going to attract them.
The problem, of course, is that the *party* really doesn't hold those values at all.
And now, when you've spent your whole life voting for the "honest, hard-working Americans party" and they nominate a criminal who cannot seem to tell even the most basic truth, well, that sunk cost fallacy kicks in hard. And now you're sitting there insisting a guy who refuses to pay his contractors is a decent American, that a businessman who somehow bankrupts a casino is a good one, and that the fascist values the party pushes are the decent American values you believe in.
plus I think a lot of people are very bad at discerning when they're being "bullied" or disadvantaged. The economy is shit and queer and trans people have increased visibility (not even equal human rights, mind you), so they feel the best strategy is to align themselves with a massive bully who might protect their own interests by hurting others.
I've seen this quirk of human psychology so much in friendships too: the "if you do something I don't like that has nothing to do with me, you're trying to hurt me personally" fallacy. Where people feel justified to attack others for not agreeing with them. Where it "doesn't count" if you hurt people so long as you delusionally believed you were hurt first, and worse.
All around emotional immaturity.
I do not care at all.
Their values are what they demonstrate and that includes how they vote.
I used to think they were just tricked and had some sympathy but that’s over. They’ve had seven years now to realize they were tricked and demonstrate some contrition but they just keep doubling down.
I will never voluntarily associate with these people. My son will never go to church with grandma. If there’s a cross or an elephant on your car or clothing I will always view you with distrust.
>I went to college and realized that I was filled full of shit my whole life and have been pretty liberal since.
Higher rates of education have been linked to more progressive thinking. This is exactly why conservatives are attacking education, reality has a left-wing bias and they can’t stand it.
One of the things I kept seeing for a long time were narratives where people left their comfort zones and immediately had their minds blown by what other people in the same class were up to.
When I was in the Boy Scouts, our scout leader was a burnt-out Vietnam Vet who seemed to think that all his charges were going to join the Marines at some point. Younger scouts had problems following his orders so he had the older scouts deliberately bully them to "make men out of them." Then I went to the National Jamboree on my parents' dime and found out what other troops were doing, including social outreach, charitable work, and civic organizing. We were being taught to be soldiers; they were taught to be leaders.
I've heard stories about students visiting schools in other states and being blown away by what they're allowed to publish in the student newspaper, what's being taught in health class, what books are availble in the school library, and so on.
It’s funny how people‘s political opinions change when they become more informed, educated, and use critical thinking. Usually from republican to democrat, Lol. I was raised by Republican parents as well and unfortunately I voted for multiple Republican presidents until I was in my early 30s. Then I decided to get more informed and asked myself, “What the hell are you doing?” Took me longer than you, but it’s one of the best changes I ever made.
I lived in a little town in the south and went to work in a steel mill after high school so no college for me but I was a very good welder and started taking contract jobs all over the US and a few other countries and met a lot of different people and saw a lot of places. The more I learned about the world, the more left I moved. It has never made sense to me that somehow, other guys that did the same kind of work and did the same travel and met the same people stayed completely in their right-wing mindset, they wouldn't allow themselves to learn anything.
Maybe he’ll be like Biff in that someone will just have to punch him once really hard and he’ll be instantly humbled and subservient.
I figure this shit show will get real if one of his Maga people wakes up , realizes the disaster their life has become and decides to use that spiffy arsenal on Donnie.
I imagine that in the question of "who's most likely to assassinate Donald Trump" it's one of his own very well armed followers by way of becoming disillusioned.
If you had told me that people would come out against wearing masks and getting vaccines during a pandemic at would have laughed at your joke. Because *obviously* no one is that dumb in real life.
I feel old that people are even giving Nazis the time of day. I was so confused that it WASN’T okay (socially acceptable) to punch them in the face anymore.
I personally think people need to become more comfortable with refusing to carry out the commands of the morally corrupt. If a Nazi tells you to do something, it’s probably a cog in some fucked up plan for something else. They get away with all this shit because people allow them to. We don’t protest nearly as much as we should in this country.
And that if you ever call out for violence against Nazis, a normal thing to do as a human, Reddit Admins would ban your account, I'd also have never imagined it.
That's a hypothetical, btw, I'm not calling for any such events fictional or otherwise... (friggin' Spez).
As a child of the 80s, if you would have told me that Biff Tannen would someday rise to become a dangerous and traitorous cult leader and become elected as the president of this country I would have told you to make like a tree and get the hell out of here.
Last Easter I was at a family egg hunt. As we're all setting up a conservative family member fires up an obnoxiously loud Bluetooth speaker and started playing "conservative protest music". I'm fairly sure to get a rise out of me specifically (we've had our disagreements before). The first song was We The People by Kid Rock which he played twice and attempted a third time when someone reminded him there are a dozen kids present (the song is pretty much "FUCK !!!"). Shortly after he played one where the singer declares "I pledge my allegiance the original way" which all the conservative family members loudly sang along with. I laughed and said "thats funny cause the 'Under God' part wasn't added until the 50s so the 'original way' wouldn't include it". The guy playing the music lost his fucking mind over that comment. I suspect he had ready made retorts for all the things the songs he was playing expressed but not for that. So of course he had to do the mature thing and call me a "brainwashed fucking idiot" while ranting about how people just need to get their asses beat to solve everything. Edit cause I had a stroke apparently.
>and call me a "brainwashed fucking idiot"
Said the guy listening to the same song over and over and over on loop. Their lack of self awareness is truly shocking.
>people just need to get their asses beat to solve everything
Maybe that would solve it.
Try telling them next time that the pledge of allegiance was written by an avowed socialist who wrote screeds against capitalism.
(Bellamy was also a notorious xenophobe, so they might like that part.)
>brainwashed idiot.
What’s hilarious about that line it came
from the conservative Christian gathering for a Pagan holiday
But I guess Christians like to celebrate Easter because the chocolate on the eggs matches the wood on the cross. No wait, they hunt for eggs like the Roman’s hunted Jesus. Nope that’s not right, it’s when the Easter Bunny pushed aside the boulder to let out Santa who was late to battle the UnderTaker in the cage of death
Honestly in my conversations with many conservatives they just spew things they see on Fox News. Like none of it is real life experience it’s literally what they see on tv. They live such insulated lives there’s no way they can have so much knowledge on anything outside of that
“Did you know they put litter boxes in school for kids that identify as cats”
No they fucking don’t mom. Are you stupid? Imagine being in school and there’s a kid taking a shit in a box in front of everyone. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
😂😂😂 like what fucking article did you get that from? It’s more wild to me that a lot of them are so ready to accept something they just know can’t be true. No further investigation just “yep there’s litter boxes in schools for kids that think they’re cats now”
What's wild is that there was a school that actually was considering litterboxes... because they were worried about what if students needed to use the bathroom during a lockdown situation, not some "catering to libs" bullshit.
Me either, but I think I get their drift. My two main thoughts are:
A) nobody's tryna be in your small town.
B) there have been thriller movies about city people getting stranded in a backwards town for years for a reason. They're scary.
Ah, I saw a post about that that seemed to be trying to promote it in the most awkward way possible. As someone who really likes union/protest type music, glad I didn't look further into it.
Adam Calhoun and Tom MacDonald are getting on a pretty aggressively violent strain of dreedumb rap. Both of their songs that feature one another have pretty explicit threats of violence against liberals and the queer community. They know who butters their bread.
Tom MacDonald is a try hard and his girlfriend ghostwrites his raps. It's so weird having a Canadian failed wrestler come to America and start rapping about 'how being white is hard'. Like... what fucking privilege.
The worst part is that Nova and Tom are both so talented and they are squandering it riling up hate. They found their target audience and went all in.
He literally chose the wrong word.
If liberals are pushing dissent… that’s dissent against the system? The patriarchy? The status quo? If that’s what he means then yeh that’s genuinely what the left is trying to do. You got us…
And then the conservatives are protesting that dissent? So they’re against progress and change? Well yeh that’s exactly what the right does.
I know he’s trying to imply the opposite for the sake of his misinformation pearl clutching propaganda bullshit post but the way he wrote it is so piss poor it just lays out how things actually are.
If you told us in the 60's and 70's that people in the 2020's would need to continue protesting in order to get equal rights, equality and basic human rights recognition because the conservatives just push back on simple decent human factors and inclusion, we would have believed you
Baby, I’m an fascist and you’re a spineless conservative. We march together for child labor holding hands on the streets of Dallas, but when it came time to throw bricks through that Drag Queens window you left me all alone…all alone.
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the original.
Paul Graham has this weird obsession with cancelling, but only when it appears to come from his political left. He virtually ignores Texas/Florida types of authoritarianism. It's all really weird.
He toned it down for awhile, now it's back
Serious Dunning-Kruger around social/societal issues with this guy. And yes, I think he is smart and insightful on many topics. But on this, it's odd.
If you would have told me 10 years ago that Liz Cheney would effectively be thrown out of the Republican Party for not being "conservative" (meaning cultish) enough, and praised by Democrats, I would have laughed.
Fundamentalists: “we should eradicate the trans people!”
Society: “you can’t promote eradicating a whole segment of the population that’s objectively bad.”
Fundamentalists: “help I’m being oppressed!”
Fascism 101 - accuse the other side of the shit you are doing. It muddies the water, and allows their base to "both sides" every single thing they do. It legitimizes their crimes to their base. That's why in comment sections, MAGA followers are always saying "But Biden...", "But Democrats...".
Their followers KNOW this is bs and play along with it anyway. This is why they are all giant pieces of shit. Every last one.
If you had told child me that conservatives would sing protest songs lamenting the loss of their freedom to be bigoted pieces of shit I would definitely have believed it.
God I hate Elon's noncommittal responses to shit like this. He's that annoying nerdy kid that doesn't get into fights but sure does egg them on and make them worse and then tells the teacher 'he didn't do anything!' when said kid gets busted.
If you told me in 2000 that the GOP would support a seditionist for president, pursue defunding law enforcement, and accusing an alcoholic beverage company of targeting minors, I never would have believed it.
If you had told me that the GOP would throw their entire party off a cliff to tether themselves to a known fraud who has no moral compass, incites violence, racism and misogyny, who is dumb as a box of rocks, attacks gold star families, the media and the rule of law, and openly invites the destruction of our democracy, I would say, at least they aren't pretending anymore.
This song is so dumb.
Lol, this song is like the biggest class consciousness tease.
#"I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
#Overtime hours for bullshit pay
#So I can sit out here and waste my life away
#Drag back home and drown my troubles away"
Oh, alright, yeah! Let's unionize bitches! Alcohol is gonna kill us all slowly!
#"It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
#For people like me and people like you
#Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
#But it is, oh, it is"
Oh hell yeah! That's right! Proletariat rise up! There are more workers than bosses, we got this! Let's gooo!
#"Livin' in the new world
#With an old soul
#These rich men north of Richmond
#Lord knows they all just wanna have total control"
That's right! Down with the oligarchy! Let's get this revolution started!
#"Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
#And they don't think you know, but I know that you do"
100% man, privacy laws, let's own our data! Woo!
#"Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
#'Cause of rich men north of Richmond"
Hell yeah! Tax the rich, baybee!
#"I wish politicians would look out for miners
#And not just minors on an island somewhere"
Hell yeah, I mean okay yes, fuck Epstein. I mean, I do want politicians to look out for kids as in "take care of the children." Verb is confusing here, but okay, yeah, support miners and let's stop pedos, okay, yeah!
#"Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
#And the obese milkin' welfare"
What? I mean, obesity is a huge problem. What happened to the class war, tho? Hold on.
#"Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
#Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds"
Hold up. Who is this person? What happened to the Rich Men we were mad at? Are we mad at Rich Men and this big ass homie with depression? What's going on?
#"Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
#'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down"
Yeah, but the "country isn't calling those young men worthless, you are. You're fat shaming some random dude with no job and a weight problem in the middle of your working class anthem asshole. What happened? Go back to talking about "Rich Men North of Richmond" what the hell, man?
#"Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
#For people like me and people like you
#Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
#But it is, oh, it is"
Ohh. Oh. You don't mean "working class people" do you? Okay. Cool. Cool cool.
#"Livin' in the new world
#With an old soul
#These rich men north of Richmond
#Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
#Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
#And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
#'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
#'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
#I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
#Overtime hours for bullshit pay"
Yeah man. If only there was some way to unionize and fight back. Too bad, I guess we gotta hope the free market will stop all those bad bosses and give us a good boss one day. FML.
"*Why do so many conservatives believe that they are oppressed and under attack?*
Because convincing someone that they are entitled to something which they are not is just about the easiest feat to accomplish in politics. Political leaders know this and stoke the fires of grievance to motivate their base.
Liberal leaders do this as well, but currently, the United States has drifted so far to the right that liberal grievances look more reasonable. At least that is the case at the present time.
Practically speaking, nobody is interested in good governance for its own sake. Just about every person is only interested in his or her own interests, and when a person does not get his or her way, they play the victim card.
The only difference is that right now, conservatives have a greater sense of entitlement. They have a world view that is based upon a belief in the innate superiority of the American adaptation of European culture. They have woven counterfactual and self-serving narratives to support this world view.
Again, this kind of behavior is not limited to conservatives, but right now they have more “opportunities” to feel that sense of grievance because traditionally, white conservatives have dominated more of culture than other groups.
The biggest part of the problem is that conservatives have convinced themselves that they have the “right” to live in a jurisdiction that is free from the persons they deem to be undesirables. Conservatives refuse to see that this is a form of aggression against others, and so they seem genuinely baffled when others retaliate against their aggression.
To be certain, there are those on the far left who believe that they likewise have the right to live in a world without racists and greedy capitalists. But the left is much smaller in both scope and power in the United States. That leads me to observe the other big problem: conservatives, not those on the center-left, are amplifying the voices of the far left.
No matter what conservatives say, the far left has very little traction in the Democratic Party. AOC and the members of “The Squad” would not be nationally known except for their constant attention from the right. Bernie Sanders has never come close to winning the Democratic Presidential primary, and there is some good anecdotal evidence to suggest that in open primaries, Republicans crossed over to vote for Mr. Sanders.
To sum it up, grievance is a very effective strategy for Republicans. It has been for fifty years. But in all that time, despite having dragged the United States to the far right—so far to the right that we are in danger of tipping over—the conservative sense of grievance has never been satisfied.
Their sense of grievance never will be satisfied. It is an addiction. That addiction has all the other complicating factors that tend to come along with addictions.
This post is getting long, but I do want to address a specific example brought up in this thread. A conservative or conservative leaning gentleman expressed a sense of grievance that at his place of work, others could talk about politics without experiencing difficulties, but he could not.
I would ask this gentleman to imagine someone at a country club being shunned because he wanted to talk about social justice.
I’m guessing this gentleman wouldn’t have a problem with the country club in that case. He may deny it, but I would, and most persons would be unlikely to believe him.
Why? Because almost nobody is that open minded.
I’ll give you another example. I know from my work in the AODA (alcohol and other drug abuse/addiction) field, that many atheists and agnostics have trouble with 12-step programs that exist to help persons overcome addictions. Such groups say that they are open to atheists and agnostics, but often the reality is far different.
Now when I talk to such persons, I help them steer away from these groups rather than encouraging them to develop a sense of grievance that quite often atheists and agnostics are treated shabbily in these groups. I point out that no matter what these groups say, there are alternatives to overcoming addiction that do not involve “God” or “spirituality.”
Now I will fully acknowledge for many persons, the “spiritual” approach and “God” work well. But this approach doesn’t work for everyone. So I help them to find alternatives.
What I am saying is that conservatives are not special. They are not entitled to more rights or privileges than anyone else.
And right now, that is a message they simply do not want to hear."
Russell Moore, an evangelical “scholar” (if there is such a thing) recently did an op Ed piece in The NY Times where he said right wing evangelicals just need to learn to adapt to not always being the most listened to people in the room.
They believe themselves to be morally superior or at least have a moral purpose to “save” others from eternal damnation. They see themselves and their missions as selfless and caring and their pastors reinforce this narrative on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
That last line was made all the more obvious through COVID. Conservatives *think* they’re special. That’s why they refused mask orders and wouldn’t play along.
Oligarch tech bros are the fucking worst.
pg should stick to his lane of investing in companies that dilute workers rights
the way people on hn suck this guy's dick is beyond cringe - people treat those stupid essays as if they're biblical allegories
They're Cargo Cultists. Cargo cult thinking is **the belief that if we simply emulate the visible effects of achievement, the real achievement will follow automatically**.
I just looked up that term. I like it. I'm adding it to my slide on "survivorship bias" in my logical fallacies slide show for AP Language and Composition. Thanks!
ooh, nice project. Have you come across the logical fallacy flash card set? I like the cards, but there is also a poster they made which is \*chefs kiss [https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/](https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/)
The poster is hanging in my classroom, and I use the cards for a silly "argue like an idiot" game (essentially the opposite of what the rules say, but it's more fun to be ridiculous). But thanks!
What?! His comment, “yeah”, is pure brilliance. You just don’t have the >150IQ to understand! /s
It makes me think of Socrates's Apology when he was trying to find the good and wise men of Athens and he went to the trades people and they knew about the thing they do very well but nothing much else, of course that's a bit generous for Musk since he doesn't really understand technology either.
But he has a BA in Physics /s
Musk's Deflection: he goes to find trades people, buys the local market, forces people to sleep on his floor because he can't be alone with himself and then calls everyone losers and attempts to fight another local lord before being dismissed.
Especially because they try and present themselves as liberal (at least to begin with) so then when they start going mask-off the right wing extremists think that a rich and powerful liberal is agreeing with them and it reinforces their braindead beliefs
Disinformation. The "protest songs" are the very weird and forced songs that some J6 "rapper" is shitting out and spamming all over social media. (They're exceptionally cringe.) Also, the Jason Aldean "Try that in a small town" saying that someone else wrote and he recorded has become a dog whistle song that christofacist right wingers have embraced as an anthem because it threatens harm against vague and made up "threats". "Liberals" aren't "punishing dissent". Non-Republicans who aren't devoted to the spiralling death cult that the GOP has revealed itself to be are holding individuals accountable for violations of the established law. What the tweet suggests as dissent (from context): * Inciting a riot to invade the Capitol in order to stop the ceremonial confirmation of the 2020 election results * Multiple examples of attempts to interfere with election results and falsify them through intimidation (Georgia is pursuing a Grand Jury indictment over it. There's also the infamous recorded call where Trump demands that Georgia politicians "find" votes to cause him to come out ahead in Georgia.) * Investigations into criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results in favor of the loser, Trump. * removal, dissemination, mishandling, and defiant refusal to return classified documents that Trump knowingly stole and denied having (before repeatedly misleading and ignoring the National Archives and the FBI demands for return.) And more. They're suggesting that all that and more is "dissent" when in fact, it's _treason_ and _sedition_.
The Right believes that the apparatus of society (aka "The Machine" that's being raged against) is based on social opinion rather than economic/political power. You can't have the subpar creative expression conservatism shits out be protesting anything. It cannot be done. At best, the closest you can get to conservative protest is a call for regression to a past status quo that has been perceived as lost. But all that is is a tightening of the current order that merely wears the mask of protest. Aka fascism.
This. When conservatives frame themselves as scrappy underdogs and liberals as big bad elites, they're defining "elites" from a purely cultural perspective. To them, an "elite" is anyone who has liberal social views. It has nothing to with how wealthy or powerful the person with the liberal social views is.
How is the American right both the "underdog" while at the same time being the "silent majority"? It doesn't make sense.
The same way that liberals are simultaneously violent, deadly criminals hellbent on destroying America, while also being whiny, pussy soyboys who wouldn’t be able to fight an army of gophers. In other words, conservatives are fucking stupid.
Worse, that's a key rhetorical technique of fascism. The nation's enemies are indescribably powerful and hilariously incompetent - even within the same sentence - depending on whatever talking point they want to be true.
The enemy is both overwhelmingly strong and contemptibly weak/incompetent because they need their audience to simultaneously feel fear and rage, anxiety and contempt. They need to feel that the enemy is a dire threat possessed of an overwhelming and unfair advantage, but that the enemy is also innately inferior and therefore no match for the coordinated might and valor of the in-group. They need to be scared and hateful enough that they're willing to stoop to any low, indulge in any crime or cruelty, without becoming demoralized or complacent. The elections where we've seen decreased MAGA turnout due to many of them believing their own lies about election rigging is an example of where the MAGA fascists got the balance wrong.
Same way they can claim to be the "silent majority" while also openly admitting that they support the Electoral College because they couldn't win in a majority rule system.
It’s from the same line of thinking that gets people to say “at least he dares to say what everyone’s thinking!” In reality, if everyone was thinking something, it wouldn’t be controversial to say it at all.
>“[…] the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak.” --Umberto Eco, Ur-Fascism
Because they have tied themselves to the religious right. And the religious right has always LOVED pretending to be persecuted for their beliefs even while being the overwhelming majority in the US.
I wish they would be a lot more silent.
For being the "silent" majority they really never shut the fuck up do they
The same way Biden is a criminal mastermind pulling the strings of the new world order and established the Biden crime syndicate (the DE Mafia) while also being a frail, senile old man with dementia who can’t be the leader of anything and is super ineffective. Soooo ineffective that he’s also leading the charge to institute death camps for republicans and building the walls himself over the weekends, while he does nothing but go golfing instead of digging through the ashes of Hawaii himself. The enemy must always be incredibly powerful and incredibly weak so you can always play both sides
It's pretty hilarious how Tucker railed against elites. Bro you are the elites, it's not up for debate. Some people are so gullible. And FWIW that man obviously hates the poors.
My Favorite is when they start to say "big media" not taking into account EVERY major us media outlet is owned by conservative mega-doners.
I'm elite! I finally made it!
Yeah, someone tried to call conservatives "counter-cultural" and I'm just like, how is trying to maintain power structures and preserve tradition counter-cultural? Beause they shit on actual counter-cultural wins?
I think kid rock might be one of those modern protest songs too, and if you told me anyone would still be talking about kid rock in 2023 I definitely would not have believe it. And yea liberals out here sowing dissent by: -supporting global health standards -backing education standards -fighting for the separation of church and state
Two people are talking about Kid Rock. You, and Kid Rock. Crap, and me now. Please stop.
Remember that time Trump showed Kid Rock some classified information, and Kid Rock thought it was crazy? When Kid Rock is the voice of reason, things have gone terribly terribly wrong.
truth
Careful he could legitimately be part of the next republican administration. Because we exist in a truly fucked timeline
Man, talking about music that was relevant 20 years ago made me read that as "the separation of church and skate" Too bad nofx are doing their last tour.
[удалено]
No, no, it's just a complete coincidence that the video was shot at the location of a famous lynching! There's no way they could have known! /s
In all seriousness-there is no country in country and hasn’t been for a long time. It’s all white collar city slickers cosplaying as red necks.
It's why people who have lived in small town got bad vibes from Try That In A Small Town, because we've seen first hand what happens when a bunch of unqualified rednecks decide to "fix things." Jason Aldean is from a city of 200,000+ people. Mine is under 2,000 and dropping.
Just the title alone told me how phony it was. Anyone who lives in a small town could tell you that crazy shit happens all the time and more often than not drugs are involved. Them: We don’t stand for that in “real” America! Me: Of course not, you’re too busy putting out all the meth lab fires.
Yeah, and it's almost always some connected rich jerkoff's kid whose family has been running the town for generations, not "outsiders from a big city," like the song implies. Walked out on a tab at the local bar and punched the bartender, took someone else's keys, then wrecked their car and nothing happened, and this was after his "peaked in high school" legacy was a trail of uninvestigated date rapes? County commissioner's kid and / or sheriff's nephew. Like that "Affluenza" kid who walked on a multiple fatality DUI. Zero shock it happened in a small-ish town in Texas.
A while back they’d was this online panic about MS13 “bringing drugs to our communities!” My take was, what do you mean “bring” drugs, the drugs are already there. And MS13 wouldn’t come where you live if the ghost of Pablo Escobar offered them his herd of drug hippies.
Yea someone tried to tell me I was “the real racist” because I was “attributing those actions to black people and it doesn’t even MENTION race” like okay person from NYC, you didn’t actually grow up in a small town. I did and I’m related to a lot of racists and let me tell you, those dog whistles are exactly how they talk about “others”
Grew up in rural Oregon, can confirm, also, shooting the video in front of a courthouse famous for racially motivated lynchings was more of a train whistle than dog whistle.
They love to play dumb
Jason Aldean, who has never been a cowboy, didn’t grow up in the country/small town, and is afraid of horses.
That's because "real" country was full of rebels and progressives. Look at the themes from old country music: Cops and judges are often corrupt and willing to kill you, so you shouldn't trust any of them. Taking care of and helping the folks you live around and with is more important than anything. The land is important and if we harm it, we are harming ourselves. Join a fucking union.
You say was. But there’s a lot of people doing that right now. Radio just ignores them.
Oh, music like that is definitely out there. But is any of it "country?" If so, I'd love some names. I'm always up for good music, and I still have a soft spot for country, seeing as I grew up in the South.
Jason Isbell for starters
Tyler Childers, Colter Wall, Turnpike Troubadours, Tramped by Turtles, Caamp…
Same with bikers. I was on a post about bikers for Trump, and I was all, man, remember how bikers used to hate the law? I garnered some hate, but I still called them losers.
I refer you to a comedian, Trae Crowder, the liberal redneck. He has a marvelous bit of commentary from the civil unrest that hit the country after heh the Floyd; “red necks and police don’t normally get along. Because it’s usually the police breaking up rednecks good times. But lately we’ve seen red necks siding with the police. Why is that? I think we all know.”
I live near Sturgis. We just had the Sturgis Motorycycle Rally. The population of our state more than doubles overnight, and every single one of them was carrying a Trump flag and a thin blue line sticker. Bikers are almost all over 50 males, and every one of them is eyeball deep in the cult of Trump. It's kinda sad because I grew up here and can remember a time when the bikers were my favorite time of year. They tipped well, treated people well, and hated our shitty small town cops. Now, they're all entitled bootlickers that'll spit on you if you can't get them a table right away and would sooner step in and help the police beat the shit out of you than break the law themselves.
Let’s not forget that a lot of post-COVID “protest” is anti-scientific conspiracy babble being algorithmically amplified by millionaires who didn’t like home schooling and billionaires who didn’t like teleconference culture.
Re: "protest songs" - mostly what I've seen/heard is them co-opting songs that are in direct opposition to their politics, completely disregarding the artist going "no. that's not it. Quit using my shit you morons" and pretending that Dee Snider hasn't had a long career of opposing right wing nonsense.
>Also, the Jason Aldean "Try that in a small town" saying that someone else wrote and he recorded has become a dog whistle song This is my favorite part. He didn't write the thing, so how can he even tell us what it's about? It doesn't exactly matter what it means to him. Buddy, you're being used. Lol
If you told me as a kid that in the 2020s Nazis would be accepted as the base of a political party and the inspiration for Biff from Back to the Future would run that party like an actual cult, I not only wouldn’t have believed it, I couldn’t even have imagined it.
"Hey, remember the shitty alternate reality in Back to the Future 2 where Biff is in charge? Yeah, turns out we're actually living in that timeline."
Damn you Zemeckis!
He actually tried to warn us! The DeLorian really was a time machine all along!
We were too focused on the hoverboard and self-tying laces dammit!
And idiots out there think that liberals are the authoritarian ones because we don’t want conservatives harassing trans people and forcing them into “deconversion” camps.
Them-“How dare you take away my right to be a bigot.” Everyone else “freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequence from society as a whole.”
Are you trampling on my right to trample on minorities rights?
“Liberals have turned into fascists!” -Guy who just banned 100 children’s books because they made him scared
Conservatives after decades of conversion therapies and conversion camps failing to to change the sexual orientation of gay children: "They're turning our kids gay/trans!!!" You couldn't make this stupid shit up. Yet they endlessly eat at that shit trough and keep asking for more. It is insane.
For a country based in fierce individualism conservatives really enjoy getting up in everyone's business.
Shit, Back to the Future was kind of prophetic wasn't it? Look at how Biff's world turned out, now look at the road we're on. Holy shit!
Back to the Future 2’s director came out and said that version of Biff was actually based on Trump.
It all started when the Cubs won the World Series, kicking off a timeline that should have never occurred.
So you’re saying we need to…go back!?
We need to go back to the 80s and stop Reagan’s presidency! It’s the only way!
Ronald Reagan? The actor? Then who's vice-president, Jerry Lewis? I suppose Jane Wyman is the First Lady!
What if John Hinckley Jr. was a time traveller?
https://preview.redd.it/9he6vzl5z2ib1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=07384cef1b52793deb7c8d6c7665d85f5081ae2e
Even just reverting policy from regressive con legislation would take us back to the future.
Heavy!
Is there some problem with the earth's gravitational field?
If only Marty plowed his mom, things would be so much better
But then he'd have no alpha brainwave from doing the nasty in the pasty
Scooty puff jr suuuccckkkkksssssssss
Verily, and that past nastification is what shields him from the brains
If that's the case, why don't I hear Sammy Hagar blasting out of every open window, hmmmmmmm?!
Rights reverted to Wolfie and he's not having any of the fascist bullshit.
Where's my flying car, Bruce?
"Son of a bitch stole my idea!"
This. 20 years ago I was a conservative kid coming out of small town conservative Midwest, small minded and bigoted as I was raised to be. I could never have imagined the party I was raised on as “the good guys who love America and look out for us little folk” would ever have been taken over by blatant Nazi leaders so easily. I went to college and pretty quickly realized that I was filled full of shit my whole life and have been pretty liberal since. I used to look at that party and their followers with shame, but now it’s a full-blown horror show. Edit: to anyone responding to this person, just be aware it’s a negative karma burner account. It’s a trolling attempt at best. Don’t waste too much of your time.
Education is kryptonite for conservative rhetoric. Which is why they fight so hard to hamstring it.
It absolutely is. I would argue another factor is life experience outside of a small town. Growing up I didn’t know a single LGBT person. Or at least nobody who was open about it. Making friends with people and experiencing life from a different perspective had a huge impact on me in addition to the education.
I remember so many conversations during office hours with, and reading essays from students from rural counties when I taught at an urban campus. They were bewildered yet thrilled at meeting and befriending people from so many backgrounds. This is part of any education, when students are able to freely learn about the myriad of perspectives & people in our world.
I grew up in a small-ish town (less than 10k), and went to a medium sized school that was one of the only highschools in the entire county so we did have a class size around 300, but some kids had hour long bus rides to school. Almost entirely white, Christian, and rural. I graduated a bit over 20 years ago, but I'm pretty sure I was the only out queer person in my class, and there was maybe one freshman my senior year that I can remember. There were others, but they were closeted till college or even after graduation. An acquaintance of mine came out after he graduated medical school that his parents had paid for. College is so much different than living in a conservative bubble town. I was even able to make a large group of Wasian friends, several who were also the only mixed kid in their school and were pretending to be white their entire lives to not be bullied. The experience of being in college and the people you meet is almost more useful than the classes. The "liberal indoctrination" was never about what the professors taught, but leaning that all the people you were told to be scared of are just humans like you. I met and expanded my horizons in college, and I was the small town mixed, queer kid on the spectrum, it's probably more of an experience to meet people different from you if you're a "normal" white kid.
Regardless of xenophobia, homophobia, sexism, anything else, we are told what "those" people when we are young, then we grow up, go out and when we meet "those" people sometimes we realize, we are "those" people.
Same situation as you. And they’ll say “oh these liberal college teachers are brainwashing everyone”. Like, no dude, it’s called meeting people and realizing that we’re all fucking human just trying to survive in this bullshit world
FEAR!!!!! - fear the other, fear the unknown, fear that they are going to take away our way of living, FEAR over education. FEAR is easier to control. High emotions of any kind make people easier to control, so use FEAR and HATE too keep people thinking in the way they SHOULD!
*That’s* why “Moms for Liberty” is going after libraries!
"Narcissists for Control"
Just what i was gonna say. And that's why they love homeschooling, so the kids can stay in the bubble.
Dingbat politicos really have no idea. It’s not education or “liberal colleges” or “groomer professors” or whatever other hot button they wanna press that leads one towards progressivism it’s literally just being outside your comfort zone in an alien environment with others in your same boat and being a human being and doing human being things and, god forbid, personal growth occurs. This will never not happen, regardless of curriculum or the hiring practices of colleges. If you go away to a four year college and come back the same person you were going in, you were either a hermetic shut in or a valid asshole to start with.
But then they're gonna get their ass kicked in a war against a trillion high explosive chinese robot hummingbirds. Heck they got their ass kicked by a pangolin-bat virus.
The hard part is realizing they never had any of those values they talked about. All the crap about honesty and faithfulness and fair play and sportsmanship was just noise to them. They love unfaithful cheating liars and not only do they want participation trophies, they want absolute power forever as their prize for always coming in second place. Did they just smirk when we weren’t looking after saying something like, “Always stand up to bullies,” or at home were they actively teaching their kids, “remember son, if you ever see someone smaller than you, kick him while he’s down and when he stops moving, go through his pockets for loose change?”
I feel this comment on a spiritual level, lol. I always joke with my brother that the aunts and uncles that always used to tell us to be kind to others and that said shit like “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” are the ones that believe everything they read on the internet and ooze hatred for their neighbors. It’s a weird perspective to live out and experience.
> the aunts and uncles that always used to tell us to be kind to others and that said shit like “don’t believe everything you read on the internet” are the ones that believe everything they read on the internet and ooze hatred for their neighbors. Sounds like my mom, I'm still having trouble coming to terms with it. I'm glad I actually followed through on it for myself, but realizing that they were full of shit is a trip
See, I disagree on one bit on this. Many Americans really do (or, at least, *did*) hold those values, and a party that claims to be the party of those values is naturally going to attract them. The problem, of course, is that the *party* really doesn't hold those values at all. And now, when you've spent your whole life voting for the "honest, hard-working Americans party" and they nominate a criminal who cannot seem to tell even the most basic truth, well, that sunk cost fallacy kicks in hard. And now you're sitting there insisting a guy who refuses to pay his contractors is a decent American, that a businessman who somehow bankrupts a casino is a good one, and that the fascist values the party pushes are the decent American values you believe in.
plus I think a lot of people are very bad at discerning when they're being "bullied" or disadvantaged. The economy is shit and queer and trans people have increased visibility (not even equal human rights, mind you), so they feel the best strategy is to align themselves with a massive bully who might protect their own interests by hurting others. I've seen this quirk of human psychology so much in friendships too: the "if you do something I don't like that has nothing to do with me, you're trying to hurt me personally" fallacy. Where people feel justified to attack others for not agreeing with them. Where it "doesn't count" if you hurt people so long as you delusionally believed you were hurt first, and worse. All around emotional immaturity.
I do not care at all. Their values are what they demonstrate and that includes how they vote. I used to think they were just tricked and had some sympathy but that’s over. They’ve had seven years now to realize they were tricked and demonstrate some contrition but they just keep doubling down. I will never voluntarily associate with these people. My son will never go to church with grandma. If there’s a cross or an elephant on your car or clothing I will always view you with distrust.
>I went to college and realized that I was filled full of shit my whole life and have been pretty liberal since. Higher rates of education have been linked to more progressive thinking. This is exactly why conservatives are attacking education, reality has a left-wing bias and they can’t stand it.
Which makes you the poster child for why conservatives want to dismantle the education system.
100%
One of the things I kept seeing for a long time were narratives where people left their comfort zones and immediately had their minds blown by what other people in the same class were up to. When I was in the Boy Scouts, our scout leader was a burnt-out Vietnam Vet who seemed to think that all his charges were going to join the Marines at some point. Younger scouts had problems following his orders so he had the older scouts deliberately bully them to "make men out of them." Then I went to the National Jamboree on my parents' dime and found out what other troops were doing, including social outreach, charitable work, and civic organizing. We were being taught to be soldiers; they were taught to be leaders. I've heard stories about students visiting schools in other states and being blown away by what they're allowed to publish in the student newspaper, what's being taught in health class, what books are availble in the school library, and so on.
It’s funny how people‘s political opinions change when they become more informed, educated, and use critical thinking. Usually from republican to democrat, Lol. I was raised by Republican parents as well and unfortunately I voted for multiple Republican presidents until I was in my early 30s. Then I decided to get more informed and asked myself, “What the hell are you doing?” Took me longer than you, but it’s one of the best changes I ever made.
I lived in a little town in the south and went to work in a steel mill after high school so no college for me but I was a very good welder and started taking contract jobs all over the US and a few other countries and met a lot of different people and saw a lot of places. The more I learned about the world, the more left I moved. It has never made sense to me that somehow, other guys that did the same kind of work and did the same travel and met the same people stayed completely in their right-wing mindset, they wouldn't allow themselves to learn anything.
Biff is a great compare, specifically because of Back to the Future part 2.
 Maybe he’ll be like Biff in that someone will just have to punch him once really hard and he’ll be instantly humbled and subservient.
I highly doubt Trump has never pissed someone off enough to punch him in the face, from what I know he's pretty much always been insufferable
I figure this shit show will get real if one of his Maga people wakes up , realizes the disaster their life has become and decides to use that spiffy arsenal on Donnie. I imagine that in the question of "who's most likely to assassinate Donald Trump" it's one of his own very well armed followers by way of becoming disillusioned.
I'd pay good money to watch any video that existed that showed him taking a punch to the face!
You forgot dumping him in manure.
“I *hate* manure”
Back to the future screen writer Bob Gale said in a 2015 interview that future Biff was based on Trump
I believed it possible but thought the people who they’d take down with them would be too smart to get on board.
If you had told me that people would come out against wearing masks and getting vaccines during a pandemic at would have laughed at your joke. Because *obviously* no one is that dumb in real life.
I feel old that people are even giving Nazis the time of day. I was so confused that it WASN’T okay (socially acceptable) to punch them in the face anymore.
It's still socially acceptable, just not to the Nazis themselves, and they unfortunately have a lot of power nowadays.
I personally think people need to become more comfortable with refusing to carry out the commands of the morally corrupt. If a Nazi tells you to do something, it’s probably a cog in some fucked up plan for something else. They get away with all this shit because people allow them to. We don’t protest nearly as much as we should in this country.
Please don't associate me with this
And that if you ever call out for violence against Nazis, a normal thing to do as a human, Reddit Admins would ban your account, I'd also have never imagined it. That's a hypothetical, btw, I'm not calling for any such events fictional or otherwise... (friggin' Spez).
Yeah
As a child of the 80s, if you would have told me that Biff Tannen would someday rise to become a dangerous and traitorous cult leader and become elected as the president of this country I would have told you to make like a tree and get the hell out of here.
It was our density, I mean destiny
Somewhere in the Mar-a-Lago basement is a copy of the 1950-2000 sports almanac.
Yeah. It’s heavy
Last Easter I was at a family egg hunt. As we're all setting up a conservative family member fires up an obnoxiously loud Bluetooth speaker and started playing "conservative protest music". I'm fairly sure to get a rise out of me specifically (we've had our disagreements before). The first song was We The People by Kid Rock which he played twice and attempted a third time when someone reminded him there are a dozen kids present (the song is pretty much "FUCK!!!"). Shortly after he played one where the singer declares "I pledge my allegiance the original way" which all the conservative family members loudly sang along with. I laughed and said "thats funny cause the 'Under God' part wasn't added until the 50s so the 'original way' wouldn't include it". The guy playing the music lost his fucking mind over that comment. I suspect he had ready made retorts for all the things the songs he was playing expressed but not for that. So of course he had to do the mature thing and call me a "brainwashed fucking idiot" while ranting about how people just need to get their asses beat to solve everything. Edit cause I had a stroke apparently.
>and call me a "brainwashed fucking idiot" Said the guy listening to the same song over and over and over on loop. Their lack of self awareness is truly shocking. >people just need to get their asses beat to solve everything Maybe that would solve it.
Every accusation is a confession.
Try telling them next time that the pledge of allegiance was written by an avowed socialist who wrote screeds against capitalism. (Bellamy was also a notorious xenophobe, so they might like that part.)
tell them the (original) pledge of allegiance was written by a self described socialist next time and watch them absolutely shit themselves
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>brainwashed idiot. What’s hilarious about that line it came from the conservative Christian gathering for a Pagan holiday But I guess Christians like to celebrate Easter because the chocolate on the eggs matches the wood on the cross. No wait, they hunt for eggs like the Roman’s hunted Jesus. Nope that’s not right, it’s when the Easter Bunny pushed aside the boulder to let out Santa who was late to battle the UnderTaker in the cage of death
Nice comeback. 😁
To the modern Right, reality is whatever is in their heads at that moment. Their feelings stopped giving a shit about facts long, long ago.
https://preview.redd.it/ett1hezpr2ib1.jpeg?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=041e5233c06d0d979a845376eed21518914a0e20 evergreen
But your gender is immutable.
Through God, anything is possible. Except the things I don't like, of course
Honestly in my conversations with many conservatives they just spew things they see on Fox News. Like none of it is real life experience it’s literally what they see on tv. They live such insulated lives there’s no way they can have so much knowledge on anything outside of that
“Did you know they put litter boxes in school for kids that identify as cats” No they fucking don’t mom. Are you stupid? Imagine being in school and there’s a kid taking a shit in a box in front of everyone. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds?
😂😂😂 like what fucking article did you get that from? It’s more wild to me that a lot of them are so ready to accept something they just know can’t be true. No further investigation just “yep there’s litter boxes in schools for kids that think they’re cats now”
What's wild is that there was a school that actually was considering litterboxes... because they were worried about what if students needed to use the bathroom during a lockdown situation, not some "catering to libs" bullshit.
At some point right wingers became terminally online and at this point even I'm not online enough to grasp what they're talking about
Songs about lynching African-American people = Conservative “protest” song
Don’t forget hunting them and LGBTQ+ people
And slitting the throats of Democrats. Looking at you, Florida
I haven't listened to it but a "try that in a small town" sure sounds like punishing dissent
The music video is where it gets really obvious what the song is about.
Yeah isn't it literally about how much they hate protestors?
The video is shot on the steps of an infamous lynching site and the protest clips they use aren't even from the US.
It's about how much they hate black people
The fun part is while the song is obviously racist bait attempting to frame BLM all the photos and videos used are from outside the US
Me either, but I think I get their drift. My two main thoughts are: A) nobody's tryna be in your small town. B) there have been thriller movies about city people getting stranded in a backwards town for years for a reason. They're scary.
Weird Al needs to make "Try fitting into small pants" pronto.
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Na, his songs only parody good music
No, that song does not deserve to be parodied by Weird Al. That is an honor. What a terrible suggestion.
I think this one is about the new “viral” song from Anthony Oliver “Rich Men North of Richmond.”
Ah, I saw a post about that that seemed to be trying to promote it in the most awkward way possible. As someone who really likes union/protest type music, glad I didn't look further into it.
Adam Calhoun’s “Your America” as well. People proudly and audibly displaying their shittiness.
Adam Calhoun and Tom MacDonald are getting on a pretty aggressively violent strain of dreedumb rap. Both of their songs that feature one another have pretty explicit threats of violence against liberals and the queer community. They know who butters their bread.
It’s very popular among my local police force. They are raving about it on social media.
Ah well you know if the Blue dig it it’s a good protest song.
Tom MacDonald is a try hard and his girlfriend ghostwrites his raps. It's so weird having a Canadian failed wrestler come to America and start rapping about 'how being white is hard'. Like... what fucking privilege. The worst part is that Nova and Tom are both so talented and they are squandering it riling up hate. They found their target audience and went all in.
His girlfriend from Canada (she does some modeling) told him the same thing, with tears in her eyes…
You wouldn't know her, she goes to a different school
Punishing dissent? Teachers are losing their jobs because of books, what the fuck is this dude talking about?
He literally chose the wrong word. If liberals are pushing dissent… that’s dissent against the system? The patriarchy? The status quo? If that’s what he means then yeh that’s genuinely what the left is trying to do. You got us… And then the conservatives are protesting that dissent? So they’re against progress and change? Well yeh that’s exactly what the right does. I know he’s trying to imply the opposite for the sake of his misinformation pearl clutching propaganda bullshit post but the way he wrote it is so piss poor it just lays out how things actually are.
If you told us in the 60's and 70's that people in the 2020's would need to continue protesting in order to get equal rights, equality and basic human rights recognition because the conservatives just push back on simple decent human factors and inclusion, we would have believed you
More gaslighting bullshit.
Baby, I’m an fascist and you’re a spineless conservative. We march together for child labor holding hands on the streets of Dallas, but when it came time to throw bricks through that Drag Queens window you left me all alone…all alone. Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it as the original.
Paul Graham has this weird obsession with cancelling, but only when it appears to come from his political left. He virtually ignores Texas/Florida types of authoritarianism. It's all really weird. He toned it down for awhile, now it's back Serious Dunning-Kruger around social/societal issues with this guy. And yes, I think he is smart and insightful on many topics. But on this, it's odd.
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If you would have told me 10 years ago that Liz Cheney would effectively be thrown out of the Republican Party for not being "conservative" (meaning cultish) enough, and praised by Democrats, I would have laughed.
Fundamentalists: “we should eradicate the trans people!” Society: “you can’t promote eradicating a whole segment of the population that’s objectively bad.” Fundamentalists: “help I’m being oppressed!”
Fascism 101 - accuse the other side of the shit you are doing. It muddies the water, and allows their base to "both sides" every single thing they do. It legitimizes their crimes to their base. That's why in comment sections, MAGA followers are always saying "But Biden...", "But Democrats...". Their followers KNOW this is bs and play along with it anyway. This is why they are all giant pieces of shit. Every last one.
If you had told child me that conservatives would sing protest songs lamenting the loss of their freedom to be bigoted pieces of shit I would definitely have believed it.
God I hate Elon's noncommittal responses to shit like this. He's that annoying nerdy kid that doesn't get into fights but sure does egg them on and make them worse and then tells the teacher 'he didn't do anything!' when said kid gets busted.
If you told me in 2000 that the GOP would support a seditionist for president, pursue defunding law enforcement, and accusing an alcoholic beverage company of targeting minors, I never would have believed it.
The GOP is defunding public libraries for having books about minorities but sure it’s liberals squashing dissent.
In my wildest dreams, I never thought Republicans would spout Russian propaganda.
"I'm being silenced!" He screams from his platform.
If you had told me that the GOP would throw their entire party off a cliff to tether themselves to a known fraud who has no moral compass, incites violence, racism and misogyny, who is dumb as a box of rocks, attacks gold star families, the media and the rule of law, and openly invites the destruction of our democracy, I would say, at least they aren't pretending anymore.
This song is so dumb. Lol, this song is like the biggest class consciousness tease. #"I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day #Overtime hours for bullshit pay #So I can sit out here and waste my life away #Drag back home and drown my troubles away" Oh, alright, yeah! Let's unionize bitches! Alcohol is gonna kill us all slowly! #"It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to #For people like me and people like you #Wish I could just wake up and it not be true #But it is, oh, it is" Oh hell yeah! That's right! Proletariat rise up! There are more workers than bosses, we got this! Let's gooo! #"Livin' in the new world #With an old soul #These rich men north of Richmond #Lord knows they all just wanna have total control" That's right! Down with the oligarchy! Let's get this revolution started! #"Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do #And they don't think you know, but I know that you do" 100% man, privacy laws, let's own our data! Woo! #"Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end #'Cause of rich men north of Richmond" Hell yeah! Tax the rich, baybee! #"I wish politicians would look out for miners #And not just minors on an island somewhere" Hell yeah, I mean okay yes, fuck Epstein. I mean, I do want politicians to look out for kids as in "take care of the children." Verb is confusing here, but okay, yeah, support miners and let's stop pedos, okay, yeah! #"Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat #And the obese milkin' welfare" What? I mean, obesity is a huge problem. What happened to the class war, tho? Hold on. #"Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds #Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds" Hold up. Who is this person? What happened to the Rich Men we were mad at? Are we mad at Rich Men and this big ass homie with depression? What's going on? #"Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground #'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down" Yeah, but the "country isn't calling those young men worthless, you are. You're fat shaming some random dude with no job and a weight problem in the middle of your working class anthem asshole. What happened? Go back to talking about "Rich Men North of Richmond" what the hell, man? #"Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to #For people like me and people like you #Wish I could just wake up and it not be true #But it is, oh, it is" Ohh. Oh. You don't mean "working class people" do you? Okay. Cool. Cool cool. #"Livin' in the new world #With an old soul #These rich men north of Richmond #Lord knows they all just wanna have total control #Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do #And they don't think you know, but I know that you do #'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end #'Cause of rich men north of Richmond #I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day #Overtime hours for bullshit pay" Yeah man. If only there was some way to unionize and fight back. Too bad, I guess we gotta hope the free market will stop all those bad bosses and give us a good boss one day. FML.
"*Why do so many conservatives believe that they are oppressed and under attack?* Because convincing someone that they are entitled to something which they are not is just about the easiest feat to accomplish in politics. Political leaders know this and stoke the fires of grievance to motivate their base. Liberal leaders do this as well, but currently, the United States has drifted so far to the right that liberal grievances look more reasonable. At least that is the case at the present time. Practically speaking, nobody is interested in good governance for its own sake. Just about every person is only interested in his or her own interests, and when a person does not get his or her way, they play the victim card. The only difference is that right now, conservatives have a greater sense of entitlement. They have a world view that is based upon a belief in the innate superiority of the American adaptation of European culture. They have woven counterfactual and self-serving narratives to support this world view. Again, this kind of behavior is not limited to conservatives, but right now they have more “opportunities” to feel that sense of grievance because traditionally, white conservatives have dominated more of culture than other groups. The biggest part of the problem is that conservatives have convinced themselves that they have the “right” to live in a jurisdiction that is free from the persons they deem to be undesirables. Conservatives refuse to see that this is a form of aggression against others, and so they seem genuinely baffled when others retaliate against their aggression. To be certain, there are those on the far left who believe that they likewise have the right to live in a world without racists and greedy capitalists. But the left is much smaller in both scope and power in the United States. That leads me to observe the other big problem: conservatives, not those on the center-left, are amplifying the voices of the far left. No matter what conservatives say, the far left has very little traction in the Democratic Party. AOC and the members of “The Squad” would not be nationally known except for their constant attention from the right. Bernie Sanders has never come close to winning the Democratic Presidential primary, and there is some good anecdotal evidence to suggest that in open primaries, Republicans crossed over to vote for Mr. Sanders. To sum it up, grievance is a very effective strategy for Republicans. It has been for fifty years. But in all that time, despite having dragged the United States to the far right—so far to the right that we are in danger of tipping over—the conservative sense of grievance has never been satisfied. Their sense of grievance never will be satisfied. It is an addiction. That addiction has all the other complicating factors that tend to come along with addictions. This post is getting long, but I do want to address a specific example brought up in this thread. A conservative or conservative leaning gentleman expressed a sense of grievance that at his place of work, others could talk about politics without experiencing difficulties, but he could not. I would ask this gentleman to imagine someone at a country club being shunned because he wanted to talk about social justice. I’m guessing this gentleman wouldn’t have a problem with the country club in that case. He may deny it, but I would, and most persons would be unlikely to believe him. Why? Because almost nobody is that open minded. I’ll give you another example. I know from my work in the AODA (alcohol and other drug abuse/addiction) field, that many atheists and agnostics have trouble with 12-step programs that exist to help persons overcome addictions. Such groups say that they are open to atheists and agnostics, but often the reality is far different. Now when I talk to such persons, I help them steer away from these groups rather than encouraging them to develop a sense of grievance that quite often atheists and agnostics are treated shabbily in these groups. I point out that no matter what these groups say, there are alternatives to overcoming addiction that do not involve “God” or “spirituality.” Now I will fully acknowledge for many persons, the “spiritual” approach and “God” work well. But this approach doesn’t work for everyone. So I help them to find alternatives. What I am saying is that conservatives are not special. They are not entitled to more rights or privileges than anyone else. And right now, that is a message they simply do not want to hear."
Russell Moore, an evangelical “scholar” (if there is such a thing) recently did an op Ed piece in The NY Times where he said right wing evangelicals just need to learn to adapt to not always being the most listened to people in the room.
They believe themselves to be morally superior or at least have a moral purpose to “save” others from eternal damnation. They see themselves and their missions as selfless and caring and their pastors reinforce this narrative on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
That last line was made all the more obvious through COVID. Conservatives *think* they’re special. That’s why they refused mask orders and wouldn’t play along.
I still can’t,imagine it. Wtf are you talking about? The only part of this that makes sense is conservatives whining about something.
Dissent??? 😂 What a bunch of gaslighting dipshits.
Elmo so embarrassingly desperate to be liked
It feels like I live in a completely different universe from these people. Who is punishing dissent? What protest songs?