No Conservative Has Ever Earned My Respect
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Yesterday I saw a video of Wisconsin Gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong discussing how we need to “democratize discomfort.” This is a clever way of expressing a concept that’s been slowly growing within our collective psyche.
As we look around the irrefutable disaster of a failing nation that’s been completely dominated by conservative ideology, it’s become impossible to overlook certain injustices. Even today I made a comment about how Republicans never practice accountability, and somebody chirped in with, “That’s because Republicans never make any mistakes.”
I couldn’t tell if the comment was meant sarcastically or seriously, but either way it underscores our underlying issue.
Conservatives are never held accountable. Conservatives are never compelled to endure accountability for their failed beliefs.
Instead, people twist themselves into knots to defend conservative ideology. Every debate in the United States starts with the basic assumption that conservative thinking is the “default,” and that to find any flaw in that belief set is to disparage our nation, our ancestors, and our fundamental self-identity.
I’m here to tell you that assumption is nonsense.
This is a nation that was founded on progressive aspirations. The original concept that we shouldn’t have kings was so radical that the people who proposed it put their lives at risk. The same could be said about the idea that there should be separation of church and state. Even two hundred and fifty years ago, the scholars of the age were well aware that Christianity has often served as a camouflage for atrocities.
This is because religion is an appeal to an indominable authority, and malicious actors have taken that as a right to commit crimes against humanity with impunity.
This is history. But we don’t teach this history. The reason we don’t teach this history is because discomfort has not been democratized.
There are a number of ways we could discuss the consequence of this default mechanism. For one thing, conservatives have a distinct advantage in that they can always default to the river of culture.
Most people are quite content to sit back and go where the current takes them. The malicious men who seek to profit on the collective labor of our nation, have weaponized this inclination. That’s why we see that those which have done nothing to contribute to the advancement of humanity themselves, are somehow allowed to harvest the profits of our collective work.
But discomfort is not democratized, so they’ve carved out an exemption for themselves. That’s what has to end.
Even now, I get so many people who are critical of my displeasure with conservative ideology. I recently wrote an article denouncing the failings of the mindset that “conserves” nothing but the mindset of white supremacy.
A reader blasted me by saying, “It’s absurd to claim one party is to blame.”
I thought his comment was revealing, because I never mentioned party. One of the great difficulties we must face in these challenging political times, is that too many people assume that because the Republicans are unapologetically conservative, the Democrats must not ascribe to that worldview. But that’s not the case.
The underlying source of most of the obstacles we encounter becomes clear once it’s recognized that Democrats, too, are a conservative party. This is what it means when people say, “two wings of the same bird.”
This is also why it’s incorrect when people say crimes like racism and child rape “cross the political spectrum.” They don’t. Those are crimes of conservatives. The confusion lies in the failure to recognize we don’t have any progressive representation in this country.
Even our most “extreme” representatives are only calling for reform that would be considered common sense for conservatives in other parts of the world.
Again, the general public is incapable of perceiving any of this because we all live beneath this cultural umbrella that insists conservatives must never be blamed for any of the consequences of their shortsighted actions.
Until we change that worldview and hold conservatives to a standard of accountability, we will not make progress as a society.
Ask yourself why it’s so hard to abandon conservative beliefs? What have they truly done that warrants such admiration? They erode education. They erode healthcare. They’re blatantly and openly misogynistic. They’re rude, uncouth, and uncultured.
These are the type of people who stomp through a newly cleaned house with muddy boots and become offended when you point out their error.
Why do we keep deferring to this mindset? This isn’t a naturally occurring state. It’s a learned response that leads only to suffering, injustice, and misery. Like racism and hate, conservative beliefs are learned.
We can and must unlearn them.
The simple fact is that much of what drives the psyche of the modern American citizen is a deeply rooted sense of self-loathing. The people we elevate to the highest positions of the land have been corrupted by self-hatred.
A man who hates himself can never show love to anyone else. His entire focus will be forever turned inward. He’ll aspire to acquire all the power and accolades of the world, but even having possessed them they will bring him no comfort. You simply cannot derive any joy in life until you learn to love yourself.
The entire conservative ideology is built on the assumption that self-loathing is an acceptable inevitability.
It is not.
But the most pitiful part of this worldview is that conservatives, because they fundamentally grasp on to the need for self-hatred, feel they have been loaded with an unfair burden. That’s like smashing yourself in the hand with a hammer, and then demanding the world shower you with pity for the hardship you’ve endured.
How about if you learn to stop hitting yourself with the hammer instead?
Life is challenging enough without the expectation that we must capitulate to the constant toddler tantrums of entitled conservatives. We have to banish this cultural assumption that there’s some nobility in maintaining a worldview of self-hatred.
There isn’t. That leads only to our collective misery. It makes people incapable of growing, achieving, or engaging in personal responsibility. Nobody indulges in the act of self-hatred willingly. They always do it to please some distant authoritarian patriarch who will never be happy because he has also been corrupted by self-hatred.
This is why conservatives are so fixated on receiving respect, even though they are so openly and defiantly unwilling to give it. They have a dim recognition of their own pain and the injustices they’ve subjected themselves to, but they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge they hold the key to escape their self-inflicted prison.
All of that would seem to be sufficient punishment enough. The problem is that when people who have become corrupted by this mindset get into a position of power, they become fixated on rape, torture, murder, and genocide. It’s as if they view human life as torment, and that they believe they’re doing everyone a favor by eradicating the human race.
So, we have to stop deferring to their beliefs. Sadly, they’ve managed to weave the toxic mind virus of their assumptions into the very fabric of our culture. It has to be carefully, systematically, and deliberately removed.
The time has come to democratize discomfort. We shouldn’t have to look upon the appalling visage of a conservative in angst and retreat in deference to his self-inflicted agony. They’ve earned nothing. They’ve done nothing. Their choices aren’t noble. They’re self-inflicted and absurd.
Conservative ideology is a worldview that celebrates stubborn ignorance, self-loathing, and pain. They can only survive by insisting that they must never be held accountable for the consequences of their misguided beliefs. But people die because of what conservatives do. Our children are very close to being deprived of their future. Conservatives are to blame, but conservatives, in order to protect themselves, would point the finger at our kids instead.
Don’t let them.
Democratize discomfort.
It’s time for conservatives to be made to model accountability. Judgment day isn’t coming. It’s here.
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