A Tiny Circle
I may be slow, but just recently it dawned on my why so many Americans fall into the “conservative” worldview trap.
It’s easy. It requires little of them.
Today’s Conservatism doesn’t require you to change any of your beliefs or habits. It doesn’t ask you to consider anything different than what you already know. It doesn’t trust that you’ll think beyond the little circle you stand in. It doesn’t encourage you to care about the commons or your fellow human beings. Conservatism says it’s okay, no it’s preferable if you are exclusionary. It allows you to draw the tiniest circle possible around you so that you only have to care about your family and yourself.
Today’s Conservatism panders to our ugliest and most base emotions. In fact, it revels in those feelings of hate and fear. Those parts of us that adults try to squelch and deny are encouraged. That’s the tool behind the power. And Americans find it far easier to give in to those ugly emotions than to try to understand another culture, religion, sexual orientation or economic status.
We Americans like to congratulate ourselves on our superiority as a people and a nation. And since we’re so much better than the rest of the world, why should we change? We’ll just go on polluting and exploiting and interfering where we don’t belong. Today’s Conservatism says that’s what we’re supposed to do. Paleo-conservatives like Pat Buchanan aren’t so down with that, but he’ll be damned before he’ll vote for a Democrat. Conservatism says that’s okay, too.
Conservatism is all about personal responsibility, unless you’re a corporation. It denies the need for any responsibility to others. We are all on our own.
Today’s Conservatism essentially says it’s okay to be selfish, to want it all for yourself and to hell with everyone else. It promotes the very idea that everyone should only get what they can afford and it happily denies any exploitation of people or natural resources. According to today’s Conservatism, the rich are rich because they are superior, smarter and harder working than the rest of us. It denies that the rich rig the system in their favor, take government handouts not called welfare and buys up all the media so that the average American is kept in the dark.
The corporate media likes to repeat the lie that this is a Conservative nation. If by Conservative, they mean lazy, hateful and selfish, then yes, yes it is.
July 16th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Speaking in a gross generalization, I will say that the majority of Americans are paralyzed by fear. Paralyzed. And so that majority abdicates responsibility to those “high authoritarians” who prey on that fear, nurture it, tend it like a garden. Those “high authoritarians” (I refuse to call them Conservatives, because I think they’ve hijacked the word) spin the language of compassion into something dark and frightening, so that the meanings become contradictory. And we become ambivalent, and ambivalence breeds more emotional paralysis. It’s ugly what we’ve become.
July 16th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
i have just finished reading OIL! by Upton Sinclair, published in 1927, a few years before i was born, and it is the same old story hardly dated at all / it’s greed, rich getting richer, rigging the system / your post here is so right on
July 16th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
This is a center-right nation in orientation when one takes into account the beliefs we hold true. You are right, though, somewhere along the line service to fellow man and kind of interdependence with all living beings has fallen by the wayside and replaced by “what’s in it for me?”
July 16th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
You got to add the word “resentful” to the list.
July 16th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
Tat also explains why so many hate actual knowledge. Knowledge and reason threaten biases and distorted or perverse ethics.
“I got what I want, never mind how, and stay away from my stuff with charity for none” is the basic mindset. Bigotry, fear, selfishness and class division make up its elements.
Except when the neighbor’s house burns down; then firefighters become an essential government service, but the burnt out neighbors are on their own still.
July 16th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
[…] 16, 2008 · No Comments DCup at The American Street has figured out conservatives. She wonders if she’s a little late tothe party (she is) but nevertheless has an interesting insight: Americans are conservative because it’s easy. […]
July 17th, 2008 at 4:59 am
This is a brilliant post DCup. Fear, insecurity, tiny circles of hate and despair.