Can we stop miscategorizing reactionary regressivism as "conservatism" ? There is nothing conservative about it. They're essentially trying to drag us back at least a few decades and destroy longstanding institutions, including things like separation of church and state and the right to access medical care.
>...Can we stop miscategorizing reactionary regressivism as "conservatism"
But that is conservatism though. I can't help but see the whole attempt at renaming it "regressivism" is to avoid "conservatism" from taking the fall when people look at it's outcomes. No one that would be "regressive" today was not a conservative yesterday.
That is not my intent, but I see where you're coming from. Today's reactionaries were conservatives yesterday because that is what the politicians constrained their viewpoint into. To me, the only peacefully-resolving course is to hope there are enough actual conservatives (ie people who respect institutions and want to slow change, and would therefore be against the recent bans on fundamental medical care, the Republican party's disruption of the pandemic response, etc) that will distance themselves from the reactionaries and not continue to blindly vote Republican.
No. Because as much as your absolute moral certitude might feel good to express you aren’t changing anyone’s mind with it. On the contrary.
There’s tens if not hundreds of millions of them and same for you guys. We are all stuck together in one polity.
If we are ever going to achieve a synthesis and get back to a healthier place it’s not going to involve the kind of rhetoric you are indulging in here.
Rhetoric? I'm making an objective point about the political spectrum. Moldbug labeled his own philosophy as the Reaction, and condemned conservatism as being doomed to perpetual failure because some progressivism inevitably occurs regardless. And it's just plainly nonsensical to label a movement aimed at undermining longstanding institutions as "conservative".
As far as synthesis and reconciliation, for a long time I viewed the answer as that of respecting individual liberty. Each party seems to get its constituents excited about a desire for individual freedoms on topics that matter to them, and then transmutes that energy into enacting authoritarian regulations that benefit their commercial sponsors. I had hoped that over time the liberty would be an attractor that gained ever more ground. But the flare up of grassroots authoritarianism, specifically in the Republican party where it has gone mainstream, has shown this was too optimistic. So I'm left hoping that there are enough actual conservatives horrified by these developments that will end up voting for the actually conservative options (which now seems to be mostly in the Democratic party) to keep the off the rails reactionary populism from causing too much damage.
>But the flare up of grassroots authoritarianism, specifically in the Republican party where it has gone mainstream
Wow that took a turn to a hot take really fast. You don't find the rise of the green left, the authoritarian self-described socialists like "The Squad", etc to be the equivalent on the left? Or do you only view things through the lens of the party you like? Yes, the green energy, banning ICE, defunding police, anti-liberty left is just as bad as the deep right wing that wants to ban abortion and all the other things they do. There's no question and there is no ambiguity. Both want control of what you do in nearly every aspect of your life. Waking up involves realizing both of the extremes (left and right) would happily put you against the wall.
Extremism begets extremism. Authoritarianism begets authoritarianism. The horseshoe theory of politics has reached its peak in the last 6 years and opinions like this are part of the reason why. It's always "Them". Never "Us". If only "They" could wake up they'd finally love "Our" version of big brother.
How exhausting it must be to constantly find a way to simplify a vast group of people down into the absolute edge cases and judge them entirely on that edge case.
> self-described socialists like "The Squad" ... banning ICE, defunding police
These are not positions of the mainstream Democratic party. The Democratic party is still basically constrained to its traditional function of channeling constituents frustration into boring status-quo corporate-first policies, much to the chagrin of people who do support the things you've listed.
> green energy
I don't know how you're saying green energy is authoritarian. If it's the economic meddling with subsidies, I'd say it's disingenuous to focus on that when fossil fuels, and overproduction in general, have been so heavily subsidized. I'd much rather the government did not print trillions of dollars and give it away as corporate welfare, but if it's going to, I'd rather it go to forward thinking technologies rather than just lining the pockets of existing industries.
> It's always "Them". Never "Us". If only "They" could wake up they'd finally love "Our" version of big brother.
I'm not an "our". I routinely get into arguments with Democratic friends advocating bureaucracy-centric corporate-first policies that their politicians have convinced them are genuine attempts at reform. I've read plenty of reactionary writing and think it has fantastic critiques about the Cathedral and the deep state. I think those structures are ultimately at odds with personal liberty and enlightenment. However this does not mean that I view every attempt to attack those structures as a good thing.
Some Republican movements have been authoritarian, but an effort to prevent people from saying that which is undesirable is definition authoritarian just as much if not more so. I don't know what example of authoritarianism you would offer as characteristic of the Republican party, but I'm sure you could offer more than one or two. That's because both political parties must push authoritarianism because both must accumulate authoritarian power to stay in the game, lest they be overpowered by the opposing party.
While constituents, we the people, agree on most points like personal freedom, individuality, respect of human life, and liberty etc., politicians of both parties, out of necessity, must paint their opponents as the authoritarian regime, set on revoking personal freedom and individuality, and devaluing human life.
If you dislike either party, it's not because one is more authoritarian than the other. It's because we lack the mental capacity to retain all the information that makes up the world around us, and must therefore make easier to process, generalizations to survive; Republican, Democrat, grassroots, mainstream, Black, Hispanic, White, etc. And it's obviously no secret that this necessity to generalize is very much exploitable.
What you don't like about the Republican party is all the things that are also the Democratic party, but only in a generalized view that the opposing parties' electorate has succeeded to exploit in your mind.
This is simply not true. You're trying to do a 'both sides are bad it's only your perception coloring your things' deal, but I live in a red state where Republicans encouraged bounty hunters to go after and harass women while also trying to control them if they leave to other states.
The only 'generalized view' is the one being created by Republicans, which I see pushed by Republicans and supported by Republicans. You don't have to look far to see some of the dreadful things they're pushing, and trying to pretend both sides are equally bad is not only intellectually dishonest but it's also argumentally lazy.
You've given me anecdotes and then proceeded to generalize. And called me lazy, which taken together is hilarious. Let's investigate that philosophy, shall we?
Generalizing by nature requires the ignorance of certain truths or anecdotes, in favor of others in order to simplify and conceptualize complex ideas about the world around us.
Read that again. Generalizing requires ignorance.
When you generalize, which you just did, you are, if only by definition, wrong. You must be, logically. If you need help gaining some understanding of logic systems, I'm happy to oblige, because I'm not "argumentally" lazy. (That's not a real word by the way.)
Not all Democrats make up words.
Not all Republicans hire bounty hunters.
In summary, when you generalize people as a group to be of a particular belief or characteristic, you must by definition ignore the vast majority of ideas that are intrinsic to the humanity and individuality within the group. That is dehumanizing; it's factually wrong, and it's frankly immoral.
The whole bounty hunter thing is something that was championed by the Republican party. Both locally here in Texas as well as by the party as a whole. I'm not sure how you can call that generalizing when the party directly supports that position. If someone calls themselves a Republican and votes for them knowing that this is their position, then they tacitly support it.
You're effectively taking the stance that you cannot ever criticize a political party for its actions because some small portion of its constituents may disagree which is like I mentioned before, the easy way out. It's avoiding arguing against the actual critique in favor of moving the argument somewhere entirely different.
That's not what I'm saying. But suit yourself. Let's run with your line of thinking and see how that plays out for you. Let's generalize the other way for the sake of debate.
Let's assume you voted Democrat sometime before 2018.
SC Justice Kennedy, a Republican made it illegal to prosecute gays for sodomy.
Kennedy was on the bench so if you voted Democrat, I guess you're anti-gay, you sick bastard! (Me too apparently! Since I did.)
Sure, Democrats are fighting for civil liberties, right? Unless you want to talk about how they are actually anti-gay, and opposed Trump's rules that federally prevent discriminating cross dressers at work. Didn't hear about that one? Well, that might be because you're busy listening to Democrat politicians YELLING SO LOUD about how they are pro gay rights. Pro civil rights. While they go sit in Congress and vote, just like everyone else, for the corporation who gave them the biggest campaign contribution. Check for yourself at Congress.gov what your Democrat politicians are voting for. Should we brand you with all of those horrible things they voted for like Intuit's grip on the complexities of the tax system? It's your fault taxes are hard to file, I guess! Surely that's a Democratic ideal! I blame you! I should, right? Isn't that what you're saying? That we blame you for your politicians?
And if anything I just said about you isn't true, well, it's just a generalization, isn't it? So by your philosophy, I'm right. Whether you're anti gay or not, you aren't an individual so you don't actually have any opinion except what the Democratic party says your opinion is when they vote in Congress. You are anti-gay now and I don't care how much you want to defend yourself you can't because you voted Democrat. You're a gay hater bro. That's that. That's just who you are.
> SC Justice Kennedy, a Republican made it illegal to prosecute gays for sodomy ... Kennedy was on the bench so if you voted Democrat, I guess you're anti-gay
Politics is so full of contradictions, that you can't simply take an inversion and use it to argue much of anything. I'm sure you could come up with a good example to illustrate the individual-vs-collective distinction, but this isn't it.
Also at a certain point the policies of the collective do matter, especially when people choose to label themselves as being members of a specific party/movement/etc, rather than merely voting for a politician carrying those labels as a least worst option.
I consider myself a libertarian. I might have written your comment several years ago, and I echoed its sentiment above when I described the parties' traditional dynamic. However, the Republican party of ~2020 onwards is a drastic qualitative departure from that symmetric status quo.
You've thrown out "effort to prevent people from saying that which is undesirable" as an example of Democratic authoritarianism. However, this is not a mainstream grassroots view. Rather it's the status quo agglomeration of power by politicians, the government grabbing power while entrenching the big tech oligopoly. Democratic voters in general don't seem to be sitting around going "Biden is going to shut those deplorables up", rather it's more like lament and resignation when the topic of social media censorship does come up.
We can of course point to authoritarian policies enacted by politicians from both parties, because politicians are inherently authoritarian, and enacting authoritarian policies that enrich their sponsors is their bread and butter.
However, the cults of personalities around Republican politicians, the rejection of intellectualism, overtly excepting politicians from the rule of law. These all indicate an authoritarian-flavored organizational structure, supported by the grassroots. If fronting as a strongman and pulling stupid stunts didn't work to get votes and donations, Republican politicians wouldn't do it. And the recent state level pushes to prohibit fundamental medical care (ie straight up individual liberty-destroying dark ages authoritarianism) is policy that doesn't enrich any corporate sponsors (as legislation usually must), but rather seems to be completely at the behest of their perceived constituents.
And so, I no longer consider the two parties symmetric. The Republicans have seemingly made their mainstream platform to dismantle our institutions in favor of regressing to some sort of good-old-days theocracy, while the Democrats still basically represent the corporate/bureaucratic status quo. And while I find that status quo repugnant from a position of wanting to reform it in favor of individual liberty, I'd much rather have the imperfect institutions we've come to take for granted, like the rule of law, than have them destroyed from the top down.
The only difference between us is that I'm aware that we're both victims of marketing. You seem to imagine that it's just me, which suggests to me that it's just you. And that only further makes my point. If you're the egoist, then I'm right. If I'm the egoist, then I'm even more right. At least you acknowledge that you can't sum up someone's opinions based on which party they vote for. The reality is simply that you only get one blanket vote for probably one issue you read about, and thousands you didn't but apparently should be held accountable for.
I dispute that, having myself passed through the perspective you're arguing. It's easy to dismiss things with relativism, and it is in fact necessary for dealing with the media's endless stream of tempests in teapots, but significant differences can still exist and you need to keep your mind open to them.
For me, the off ramp for my benefit of the doubt was the Republican's Covid response, where political nonsense came up against cold hard non-mediated reality. Let's hamstring federal departments precisely when we need them, 2+2=5, don't bother wearing a respirator to protect your family it's all made up anyhow, all merely to feed egos large and small. The fact the party and its constituents continue to double down on an a President that overtly damaged our country are at least two pillars of fascism - party over country, and cult of personality.
And sure, we can apply similar judgements to help us critique the Democratic party. But there is a stark difference in degree and effect, and it's utterly foolish to ignore that.
It sounds to me like you're talking about the Republican party that you saw on Democrat TV. Literally a fabricated cliche marketed to the average viewer that describes exactly zero real human beings but has a nice ring to it and allows you to simplify "them" into a nice box that you can label "not me" and feel good about yourself.
You're posting in a thread about a topic where they're literally trying to do exactly what the GP is saying. I don't know what you view as a 'middle road' given that their starting negotiating point is 'users cannot be banned for any reason ever'.
