Conservatives are great at marketing. The thing they’re marketing may be absolute crap, but they sure know how to market it. Remember “Mission Accomplished”?
Nothing was accomplished — except that a banner was successfully hung from the bridge of an aircraft carrier. That mission was accomplished just fine.
The real mission every conservative is on is to — as their name says — “conserve”. Ah, but conserve what?
Since it’s impossible to conserve the future — since it doesn’t exist — that must mean they want to conserve the present and the past. Change is anathema to conservatives. It makes them crazy and hostile and willing to do anything to prevent change from happening. In America, conservatives dream of returning America to the 50’s: the 1850’s — back when no one questioned a white man’s superiority to a black man or to a woman of any color.
Consequently, Republicans routinely support efforts to limit voting to white men wherever possible. Voter suppression in America is strictly a one-way street. It’s only ever Republicans trying to limit the number of Democrats who can vote.
Democrats and Progressives, by contrast, want every single eligible voter to vote — regardless of how they vote. That’s because Democrats don’t fear the majority of American voters — or Americans the way Republicans do. Trump himself said out loud the GOP’s dirtiest little secret — that when more Americans vote, it ends badly for Republicans because, frankly, very few Americans want to live in pre-Civil War America.
Progressives embrace the future with two hands. We know that’s coming at us regardless of what we do or tell ourselves; therefore we might as well tell ourselves the truth right off the bat and deal with it like adults.
A big part of what makes conservatism so dangerous is its open hostility toward information that contradicts how it wishes the world was. It both infantalizes everyone by thinking of them as children and infantalizes itself by thinking it can hold its breath until it gets its way.
Trump epitomizes that Republican mind set. He thinks he can negotiate with a pathogen because it’s interfering with his re-election. He wants America back the way it was pre-coronavirus — as if that was a great thing all by itself.
This morning, Trump re-tweeted something an ignorant game show host had to say about the coronavirus pandemic.
Chuck Woolery knows nothing about anything — a fact he’s happy to share with all of his Twitter followers. Want to know what Chuck’s really sick of? The idea of his white privilege going away.
Conservatives like Chuck (& the Kochs & the Mercers & Mitch McConnell & Lindsey Graham & Bill Barr & everyone else in the GOP) have no desire to live in the dynamic, diverse America of the Future. They’re going to try and drag America back to a past that was good for them and only them.
Just like their name says they want.