To be fair to the morons, the elitists are paying the weak and the thugs to do their Big Bad Communist Bidding, according to your average flyover uncle. “Fage CEO is paying the Clinton’s to import refugees to steal our jobs and vote in our elections”, something my dad suggested in 2019 or so.
Even common Lemmy/reddit talking points are that rich corporate interests pay stooges like DeSantis and McConnell to keep the rubes voting for oligarchy.
Any political party is going to be a coalition, to a degree.
But yes I do agree to an extent with the meme that the average conservative armchair theorist doesn’t really see how their theories fit together.
This avatar is a self portrait in woodcut by Erich Heckel, an artist who was declared degenerate by Nazi Germany, and whose entire catalog up to the 1940s was destroyed by Nazis. He survived and taught art after the war, when these pieces were created.
To be fair, as a democrat, I generally view conservative voters as easily-misled people - essentially “dumb,” I view conservative leaders as thugs trying to overthrow America, and I view conservative corporate heads as ruling class elites. When you’re using such an overarching term as “Conservative” or “Left” it comes with the unsaid caveat that there are many subgroups that can differ greatly from one another.
I don’t know how anyone wants to self identify as a conservative whose platform is currently:
The dumbest with Donald Trump slurring and stumbling over his speeches
The thugs trying to overthrow America with “Project 2025”, war on WOKENESS, book burning and being anti-choice
The constant meddling of oil companies, cable companies, news companies into what information we get - along with dark money getting funneled to politicians to suddenly say moronic shit like “we can’t take gov money to feed school children”
A Self-made Business Man™ is miles better than Bumbling Biden the fascist communist.
WOKENESS IS KILLING AMERICA. Books brainwash you into being woke. Project 2025 will save us from woke.
Thats the liberal media, “my guys” are normal working men, they wear plaid shirts sometimes and pose for pictures in a workshop.
No I don’t actually believe any of that, but that’s your list in conservative language served to the masses by your friendly thousands of miles away neighborhood newscaster propagandist.
The conservative voters I know all stand for one thing: stubbornness. They make a decision to do something, they do it until they die, and they take great pride in doing so.
It’s essentially vikings if, instead of needing to die in battle to get to Valhalla, you needed to die of an easily-preventable disease because you never got that weird lump checked out, because if you’d admitted you had a problem you’d be weak, which is worse than death.
Now you’re reminding me of my uncle and his multiple hernias. He waited for years to get them taken care of because he didn’t want to have to deal with the recovery time.
I live in a very conservative neighborhood and can say that stubbornness seems to play a huge, huge part of it. But I also wouldn’t discount the insecurity that plays into a lot of conservative men as well. The kind that buys huge trucks, just to commute to an office job. The kind that tries overly hard to impress you in weird “manly” ways, like always having a beer in their hand when they know you’re coming over for something.
Basically half the guys around here are either stubborn dickheads who do things like refuse to tell their wives when they’re going out of town for work - and the other half are dudes constantly trying to validate their manhood by projecting a flimsy aura of toughness. Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Sorry, that was a very personal reference to a neighbor of mine. He does it all the time, so she’ll do stuff like make dinner and then he just doesn’t come home. When she texts him to find out if he’s working late, he’ll be like “I had to fly to Montana for work.”
He’s the most stereotypical stubborn Republican that I can imagine. He considers himself a libertarian because he doesn’t want to pay taxes for pesky things like roads and schools. But he also has very strong feelings that women shouldn’t be able to get abortions, which shouldn’t really jive with the small government thing. He’s a solid red voter down ballot every election.
This reminds me of a coworker I had who used to call the Department of natural resources and try to convince the poor clerk that he shouldn’t have to pay for a fishing license for him and his wife because gay people have the right to get married. I still don’t understand the logic on that but that’s what I overheard.
He then went on to attempt to abduct the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer.
Nah. I have friends that are alcoholics and this guy ain’t one. But a beer in his hand and a giant truck in the driveway might make you think he’s a blue collar bad ass instead of a skinny nerdy engineer.
There's nothing imaginary about Russia's invasion and attempted annexation of Ukraine. Nothing imaginary about China's wish to take all of Taiwan against the wishes of the Taiwanese. Nothing imaginary about belligerent threats by North Korea against South Korea and Japan. Nothing imaginary about Iran's conduct either. North Korea and Iran ship arms to Russia in support of Ukraine's annexation. As does China trade with Russia for the same purpose.
Nothing imaginary about belligerent threats by North Korea against South Korea and Japan.
The US conducts the largest invasion exercise in the world in South Korea, every single year. WTF are you talking about, calling the DPRK the aggressor? They’re literally demonstrating that they can strike back if they’re invaded.
What's your alternative when Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea actively seek their own colonialism?
Why does the existence of multiple evils make you want to defend one particular evil? Why not mention our brutal, murderous or genocidal allies like Saudi or Israel?
Our empire created the problem that is iran, our invasion of iraq showed putin that empires can still destroy foreign countries with no comeuppance, our lack of imperial interests in africa gives russia room to stoke violence and war unchallenged, our antagonism to china encourages them to prop-up NK as a buffer state against our client state on the korean penisula and that same antagonism is driving china to a more belligerent position.
I'm not trying to say that everything is our fault - obviously all those countries are responsible for their fair share of vile behaviour - but our empire has actively contributed to how bad those situations are. All countries are vermin, the more powerful the greater the capacity for evil - and we're the most powerful.
Of course I don't have a step-by-step program to a better world, but it's pretty obvious that we're a big part of the problem and an alternative is needed.
The point is, that rules based system - as flawed as it may be - represents a check against those countries I list currently trying to annex new lands by force.
The point is, there is no rules based order. The rules only apply to the global south, the US has explicitly stated they will bomb or invade The Netherlands if the ICC ever prosecutes a US citizen. It’s just another cynical tool of power projection.
Loling at calling China, Iran, or North Korea colonialist.
Taking the most extreme example, how l the fuck could North Korea be colonialist? They also literally changed their foreign policy to abandoned the project of reunification with the Southern puppet regime.
Anyway, they appear interested in war with South Korea again. And they're shipping arms and ammunition to Russia, which has wound up usef in both Ukraine and by Hamas.
Yes, the regime that was a military dictatorship all the way into the 80s, whose military is literally under command of US pacific command during war time, who need US permission to fly their imported fighters in peacetime, and who don’t have free speech when it comes to talking about the DPRK
Anyway, they appear interested in war with South Korea again.
Ahahahahah. Source? One that isnt funded by a billionaire or a government in service to billionaires please.
And they’re shipping arms and ammunition to Russia, which has wound up usef in both Ukraine and by Hamas.
Hmm, sounds like they sell weapons to groups that oppose the US empire, whether they are regional imperial powers or they’re liberation groups.
Do you prefer the old fuedal regime which often treated serfs as slaves to the current autonomous region that a China helped to liberate after a local uprising by Tibetans?
Oh, they invaded and annexed a country because they were backwards and needed civilizing, thank you for the clarification. “Better off under us than before” is probably the #1 imperialism cope bud
The people there didn’t “need civilizing” the government needed overthrowing, and Tibetans literally started the process and asked for Chinese assistance.
Next you’ll tell me saying that the Confederacy being destroyed and integrated back into the union at the end of the Civil War was “imperialist”
I’m begging you to actually understand what imperialism is. Imperialism is not integrating another country by itself, it involves specific financially extractive structures which are absent in the relationship you describe.
lemmy.ml
Oldest