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MershedPerturders
2013 Oct 4, 5:06am
it boils down to religious beliefs. They refuse to update their belief system. What can you possibly do about it?
freak80
2013 Oct 4, 5:16am
it boils down to religious beliefs. They refuse to update their belief system. What can you possibly do about it?
Exactly correct.
I grew up the far-right evangelical world and know the psychology all too well. I was raised in a bubble. My parents "protected" me from the mainstream of American society. When I was younger, I actually thought that everyone else in America had pretty much the same beliefs. Encountering the outside world for the first time (in college) was a very painful experience. My recent de-conversion from any kind of Christianity was even more painful.
I don't even like to visit my parents because they are still hard-core far-right Christians, especially my father (who is a far-right Lutheran pastor). I'm now in league with The Devil, after all.
I'm going to have to disagree with you. As someone who grew up in the rural south, to me conservatives are similar to liberals in that the majority of them are fairly level-headed, reasonable people who might not share the same ideas or agree on certain things but in most cases are closer together on issues than further apart.
But what has happened with the GOP is that there is a small, but very loud minority of the constituency and also congress whom express the absolute fringe of the right and its their voices that get heard the most and thus used to characterize them all.
Actually my best friend is rather conservative. But he is educated and thinks the right wing shows are hosted by morons. He listens to NPR or BBC just like I do. We both disagree with one another, but in his case he has rational, honest, and well thought out reasons for why he takes the stances he does. While I might disagree, he has my respect and he is the same in regards to my thoughts. I'd like to think most people are like this.
freak80
2013 Oct 4, 6:18am
APOCALYPSEFUCK is Comptroller says
We have to if we're not to go mad with despair.
Theocracies can be fun sometimes. Remember, some people are into BSDM...
HydroCabron
2013 Oct 4, 7:00am
Bronze, the invention of the axle, and candles lead inevitably to homosexuality.
hat intransigence will alienate them them even further from the future mainstream. Their next big issue: denying climate change. Right now, I see no way to integrate these groups and people into the broader body politic or conversation. Their alienation is so deep it is close to unbridgeable. And further defeats will make their isolation worse, not better, their anger more, not less, intense.
Many are also racists, who are only going to get more upset as they become aware that soon there is no longer a white majority.
Soon the takers will be a majority. Especially after the democrats get them all on Obamacare. You see what's happening there right ? Those evil liberals are only interested in getting more votes in the future.
Shaman
2013 Oct 4, 9:14am
Bronze, the invention of the axle, and candles lead inevitably to homosexuality.
I think I saw that movie. It had Brad Pitt and a lot of swords and spears. I think some Greek wrote the thing, and you know how Greeks are.
You have to see the bigger cultural and religious picture when analyzing what has happened to American conservatism these past two decades or so.
The bewildering economic and social and demographic changes have created a cultural and existential panic among those most heavily concentrated in those districts whose members are threatening to tear down the global economy as revenge for losing two presidential elections in a row. They feel they have already lost and have nothing to gain from any constructive engagement with a president they regard as pretty close to the anti-Christ of parasitic minorities. They feel isolated in a more multi-cultural country. They feel spied upon and condescended to. They have shut out any news sources apart from Fox. It does not occur to them, for example, that Obamacare might actually help them. And you get no actual specifics on policies they like or dislike. It is all abstractions based on impressions.
More to the point, the bulk of these Republicans no longer believe in the Republican party. They identify more strongly with the Tea Party or Evangelical groups or Fox News than the GOP. On social issues, the defining issue is homosexuality – not abortion. That intransigence will alienate them them even further from the future mainstream. Their next big issue: denying climate change. Right now, I see no way to integrate these groups and people into the broader body politic or conversation. Their alienation is so deep it is close to unbridgeable. And further defeats will make their isolation worse, not better, their anger more, not less, intense.
This is the deeper crisis we face – and without strong economic growth, it is hard to see how it can be ameliorated in the near future. Perhaps if moderate Republicans – a mere quarter of the whole – jumped ship to the Democrats, then the electoral losses would be so great as to demand some kind of reform. But the center is not holding. And I fear it will get even worse than this until it gets better.
Except it’s hard to imagine political dysfunction getting worse than risking the first ever default by the Treasury of the United States because a key minority feels “disrespected.â€
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/04/why-theyll-die-on-this-hill/
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