Political Memes

That's just what a woke gay muslim atheist commie would say!

Yep, which this is not DEI, for the reason you describe. DEI just means you need to ensure you aren't discriminating against certain segments of society. It doesn't mean you have to hire or accept equal percentages, only that you aren't dismissing some due to discriminatory factors.

Living up to your username there!

“You don’t need a university degree to xyz!” Okay but you need one to teach university.

They will teach the subjects of FREEDOM and FAMILY VALUES.

What, are you telling me my doctorate from Prager U isn't real?

They already exist. They're usually found in law, business, or theology departments (though not all professors in those departments are conservatives). They also exist in departments that don't require you to apply your critical thinking skills to social issues, such as maths, IT or engineering. You wouldn't know whether your professors in those subjects are rightists, conservatives, liberals or leftists though, because politics doesn't actually ever come up in classes that aren't related to societal issues. The only way you'd find out is if a professor is obviously biased against women and/or minorities, which does happen sometimes. The people in the original post don't care about any of this though, the outrage is the entire point and the truth doesn't matter.

They're too stupid to be presidents too, yet there's a long line of them.

I'm just upset that God told me that I can't eat owls.

Their worldview doesn't really allow for systemic analysis. Every bad thing has to have a singular individual cause. Status quo bias personified.

I think it helps to understand conservatism as a bias in the way people solve problems. In a vacuum where tribalism is absent, conservatism comes from being more risk averse and preferring older societal systems, real or perceived.

Capitalism was successful for the visible society until inequality grew so bad that economic development started going backwards. This perceived golden age also disenfranchised queers, jews, and blacks. So the appealing solution to many problems is to go back to the culture of the 50s where these things happened.

This risk aversion also presents itself in the rural/urban divide. People living in the suburbs who are risk adverse prefer the sheltered, familiar environment of rural areas/suburbs, instead of moving to cities, where they have to face the possibility of strangers, or foreign cultures/ideas. So the appealing solution is to stay in rural areas.

Conservatism also has a preference for stratified social structures. There is a core tenet that is very common among American conservatives that says "some people are more important than others". This also causes conservatives to lean towards economic stratification, bigotry, and authoritarism.

Of course these are just their biases, i.e. the preferences that conservatives are likely to lean on when first presented with a decision. Similarly, progressives have different biases stemming from underestimating risk. Other factors can also have a lot of impact in political decisions such as context, tribalism, personal experience, etc.

I think the big issue corrupting American conservatism and preventing it from being a healthy stabilizing debate partner, like you see with European conservatives, is that the entrenched ideas and tribalism have gotten so extreme and detached from reality that American conservatives are just openly fascist. American Republicans hate European conservatives like Macron, Merz, and Rutte. The cause of that goes far beyond just personal biases and into serious structural problems in the US, and powerful corrupting interests.

Even then, why an educated person like JD Vance thinks he needs to end Liberalism worldwide and attack European culture is beyond me. My best explanation is either selfish opportunism or corruption.

But yeah, if you talk to the average Trump voter and get to know them, there is a lot you can probably agree on, and there are a lot of bubbles, tribalism, and misinformation you can debunk and come to reasonable conclusions on. We're all logical humans somewhere.

Left wing: I don't think we should have boots on our faces.

Right wing: If only my boot was on somebody else's face, I'd be OK with the boot on my face!

They think boots are a zero sum game, but the reality is there's as many boots as you allow.

Best summarized by SMBC in “Both Sides”.

Imagine being drunk and hungry all the time. For weeks. Years. Go on. Next time you're drunk (or sleep deprived, if you don't drink), try to read a complicated wikipedia article. Did you understand any of it? Or are the authors assholes who don't understand shit?

It's kind of sad. Like they're trapped in a quagmire of feelings and slop, with no way to sober up. Except they suck, so it's more dangerous than sad.

No. This is part of there war against hight education. And that goes down more easily by othering.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition... There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect".

I have yet to meet a conservative with a half-basic understanding of reality

Which is a requirement for being conservative, but in a civilized society, you need at least a FULL basic understanding of reality