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There is not always a long arc of morality.
So this article is interesting, but the pessimist in me cant help but think that this is "wrong" in the long run.
Im not a fan of progressives by any means. I'm sure many here are not either but i also think that we must look reality straight in the face: Most conservative positions (Id argue at least 65% ) lose in the long run. Primarily due to demographic shifts. Primarily in age cohorts, but we cant be naive that race is likely playing a factor as well.
One example he takes that is in my opinion, quite poor, is Abortion. First and foremost, there have only been 3 states that have been to defend the pro-life position successfully at the ballot box recently, Florida (only be a 60% technicality), South Dakota, and Nebraska respectively. Many deeply red states have voted for the practice (Kansas, Kentucky, etc). And lets not forget the fact that there are 5 states in the union including DC, that have 0 gestational limits, and attempts to add limits failed in Colorado and New Mexico. This an extremist position by western standards, in is not law in the majority of the world.
This one particularly bothers me, because of how fucking disgusting and twisted many of these doctors who do these later terminations are, the fact that states protect them, and the fact that the mainstream media & democrats lie about them taking place on healthy children and mothers.
The pew research link ive sighted above also reveals that many among Gen Z support some level of gender ideology (well, surprisingly, most still think that gender is determined at birth) But id probably bet money that this could be shifted as well.
Lets all face the music, Conservative America is simply going the way of the dinosaurs. We have a declining birth rate, religiosity is going down the toilet, marriage rates are going down toilet. Same thing with "patriotism". I would love to optimistic here, but i simply don't see it. America is becoming a more progressive society, like it or not. While i don't think this is "Inevitable"... I also see no way it could be practically prevented. It just seems like historically and currently, winning the public over and tilting the overton window rightward is just really difficult.
But hey, who knows, maybe im wrong, and 50 years from now, we will be laughing at the idea of multiple genders, mass immigration, or secularism.
Despite the people in the comments (if a gentle white boy may lib out for a moment) refusing to looking up, this is the way it is and has been since Bush 2: The conservative message is premised on traditional morality, which is a powerful thing. I was actually a Mccain guy for that very reason, before I actually interacted with conservatives who had any power and realized that it useful idiots for tax reduction.
Because that is what they put out from the pulpit and the podium, people who aren't radicalized expect them to follow up on it, and what do they get?
Open lies, adultery, greed out in the open, blatant and contemptuous corruption. They get a vulgar populist grifter who is more concerned with his golden toilets and neuvorich tasteless architectural trash fires than the stupid wars he starts, a cowardly bully who punches and then cries, a dude who fucked a hooker on his third mail order bride, who has catastrophically anihilited our budget to the greatest degree since the last republican, which was also him, or the last guy before that, who was also a republican, or the last guy before that, who was also a republican.
This after the moral catastrophe that was the bush 2 presidency; which didn't need to be the case! Bush 2 was actually responsible for an incredible amount of charity, world historic amounts of suffering alievieted! Unfortunately, this suffering was not the right type of suffering because it was in sub-Saharan africa and the brown parts of asia. To be on the right side of the movement, you need to cheer it on. You need to withdraw your open and hand from the railing and watch them drown.
This shit is not conducive to a long term movement! It's like everyone forgot the reaction to Bush 1 and Bush 2!
I really wonder whether a Patrick Buchanan in 1992 victory would have actually accomplished some paleoconservative goals. He was very big on restricting immigration to Europeans only, and was a committed Catholic; a true isolationist too, which you hardly ever see in national-level politicians these days. RationalWiki calls him a xenophobe (as if that was a bad thing. Heh.)
Buchanan could never have won after Bush 1, so let's move him back in time: I think the conservative movement would be in kinda the same place; the party would have done the same dumb shit with the economy regardless: Increase entitlements and expenditures without raising taxes. If you are gonna cut taxes, the DOD and the olds need to take a trillion dollar haircut, not get an even bigger check.
That said, I imagine it wouldn't have the same moral rot it does now; the only reasons R's can even think about winning an election is because the D's are a combination of bought, incompetent, and too prideful to learn a lesson that has been taught to them twice now.
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I wonder if you are significantly older or younger than I am, because I take the historical context very differently. I've laid it out at length elsewhere, but I perceive the acceptance of Trump as a discontinuity in response to the behavior of previous conservative politicians, not a continuation of the same.
Politicians in the Reagan tradition claimed to embody conservative principles; some got closer than others. But they were pretty consistently willing to sacrifice everything in exchange for an extra 0.2% GDP growth. After years of that, and the experience of a resurgent progressivism seeking to impose its social mores, the conservative right had to choose between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would fight – hence Trump.
I'd hoped that Pence would evolve into a leader who could do both, but that's not how things played out.
I agree with the diagnosis, I just don't respect the participants.
They had a choice between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would drag their name through the mud while not actually accomplishing any of their goals while wasting 20 years of organizing, fundraising, and a unique cultural moment.
It would be one thing if it was a Machiavellian type who carefully hid his true nature but it was in fact the opposite of that, and everyone else was screaming about it at the top of their lungs. Unfortunately, noticing is woke and half the point of electing trump is to cut off your nose to spite someone elses face, so it is what it is.
Basically: "I'm easily fooled and refuse to learn from things that just happened to me" isn't a reasonable defense.
Reversing Roe v. Wade is a real win. Rooting out gender theory and DEI is a real win. Gutting much of the permanent bureaucracy, which drags society left regardless of the president, is costly but also a real win.
The folks who called even Mitt Romney a Nazi were going to throw mud at anyone who vaguely looked like he might try these things. Some of the criticism (not all) is genuinely deserved in Trump's case – but, deserved or not, it was already priced in.
He didn't do any of those things, and also they are impossible to do!
Roe V Wade is gone, and abortion rights are +- 90% as available as before, and the issue is more popular than ever.
Gender theory is not rooted out even a little, the rightists landed a plane on the Lincoln and declared victory without checking if they actually won anything.
The permanent bureaucracy is still there! It is reduced in some places, strengthened in others, and still present throughout all the areas where it is actually providing motion: every private company.
DEI is the biggest joke. DEI as it pertains to race is a fake and gay sop thrown out to the poor browns of the US as a symbolic gesture, it is a free way to get buy in from that part of the population, a little tiny minstrel dance the huhwiaghts can do to win some easy points. They place where it actually makes a difference is with White Women, who are exactly as likely to benefit from it now is they were 10 years ago.
He accomplished not a god damn thing, he is going to run the movement into the ground and his lickspitles will deserve the humilation that they will never feel "Because the deep state stopped him bro, it was the deep state, the demons and the ghosts did it, imaterial spirits make my retarded ideas fail to work bro!"
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What good is a leader that's personally conservative, if he'll let your kids get transed, and import 7 zillion immigrants?
For all is faults, Trump did do more than any "conservative" leader I watched over my lifetime. The 180 on the war with Iran is a disaster, but that idea seems to be coming from the faction of the conservative movement you're actually praising, so I have no idea what your issue is.
I didn't mean to mislead: I think conservatives are all wrong or gritting. There are no conservative politicians or intellectuals that are worth a damn anymore, they all became centrists or libertarians when Trump became the golden calf that at which the popular right offers sacrifice.
I just think it's funny that they blew their shot so hard; this was possibly the best time in US history to get everything they want, and instead they are going to get less than nothing.
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