Modern conservatism

The Chicken or the Egg

There is this weird chicken or the egg situation with conservatives where you can't really tell if they're actually dumb or if they're just playing dumb. In other words, are they genuinely stupid and uneducated or just ignorant and refusing to be educated? Here's another way to think about it: stupidity is considering something in a very flawed way while ignorance is refusing to consider it in any other way. I'll be going into more detail about both stupidity and ignorance below, but wanted to clarify the distinction between the two and identify how frustrating that chicken or the egg "dumb or playing dumb" thing is.

Acting Like Children

From my perspective, a lot of conservative behavior is very similar to how a child acts. 

• Just like a child selfishly wants their way regardless of how much it inconveniences their parents, inconveniences other people, will negatively affect them, will negatively affect their parents, or will negatively affect others and don't want to be told otherwise, conservatives what their way regardless of if it's unconstitutional, not supported by any evidence, will be harmful to others, etc... and don't want to be told otherwise.

• Just like a child who wants candy for dinner will throw a fit when they don't get their way and won't listen to any of the reasons why they can't, conservatives will throw a fit whenever they don't get their way and have no interest in understanding why things can't or shouldn't be the way they want them to be. 

• Just as a child who wants candy for dinner will do or say anything to get their way, like throwing a tantrum or accusing their parents of not loving them, conservatives will do or say anything to get their way.  

• Just as a child will throw a tantrum because they hate going into time out for breaking a house rule or doing something bad, conservatives hate facing consequences for their actions. 

• Just as a child hates being told what to do by their parents but wants to boss other kids around, conservatives hate being told what to do and having to "comply" but don't care when others are told what to do and want to be the ones forcing others to comply to them. 

Stupidity, Ignorance, and Fear

Stupidity, ignorance, and fear are the three main qualities that I would use to describe modern conservatives. While the most obvious result of this combination of qualities is a lack of critical thinking skills or "higher-level" thinking, I would argue that they also result in a general lack of critical self-awareness. Also called critical self-reflection, critical self-awareness is essentially becoming aware of our presuppositions and challenging our established patterns of thinking. 

It can be argued that apathy should be included alongside these three qualities but I think it just misses the cut because, as I discuss below under the "Apathy" section, it's very similar to ignorance if not a direct result of it. Bigotry is another quality one could argue, but I think bigotry results from stupidity, ignorance, and fear rather than being an individual quality in itself. 

Combined, these three qualities make conservatives very easily influenced by those who seek to gain money, power, and notoriety by manipulating them and telling them what they want to hear. They are also easy targets for actual bigots who have to disguise their hate to make it seem more socially acceptable. 

Other Influences 

Conservative beliefs and values also benefit from the fact that some casual observers of political and social issues will just assume that the left and the right both make arguments that are just as reasoned, rational, and cogent with just as much evidence behind them. However, this isn't the case, as this website makes very clear. Rather than it being something like an Xbox vs Playstation or Ford vs Chevy thing where each has its own pros and cons, the modern political divide is more like a choice between dirt between two pieces of bread and straight dirt, with Democrats being the dirt and bread. The most stupidly American thing you can do is notice that Democrats can fail to meet the needs of the people and (wrongly) assume Republicans are the people to put your faith in because they seem like the only other option. 

• Casual observers of politics can also get incredibly overwhelmed with all the different rhetoric, arguments, ideas, beliefs, and stuff out there, and this benefits conservatism as well because these casual observers will revert to whatever the easiest course of action is since they're being so overwhelmed. The easiest course of action is typically to not engage in critical thinking or consider different perspectives and go with whatever is simplest to understand. This has become especially pronounced with the rise of social media and the internet in general since it makes so much information available. It's hard for some people to cut through all that noise - maybe they don't have the time, don't want to put forth the effort, or maybe they don't have the mental capacity/cognitive ability - and conservative media capitalizes on this. Conservative media doesn't have to make good arguments, they just have to make arguments so that doubt is created in enough people's minds that they get overwhelmed by the conflicting information, become exhausted, and disengaged from the subject so they fall back on the easiest course of action.

I also think a lot of younger people also find a home in the right alongside modern conservative "Trumpers" because when you don't have a lot of world experience, education, perspective, or critical thinking skills then the right can feel like a safe space from those looking to instigate social change and the people on the left who could be rudely critical of them for being stupid online. It can also feel like a safe space because of how much stupid shit and conspiracy theories there are already floating around there so there's a good chance that stupid stuff will be accepted or unchallenged rather than called out or criticized. These young people then just never grow out of their edgy phase and exist in a mentally and intellectually stagnated state where they never learn or grow as people. 

Study from the Social Psychological and Personality Science Journal - "Attitudes Toward Presidential Candidates in the 2012 and 2016 American Elections: Cognitive Ability and Support for Trump"

• This study used data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) to investigate whatever relationship or connection there may be between cognitive ability and attitudes towards candidates in the 2012 and 2016 US presidential election, ultimately finding that "analyses revealed the nature of support for Trump, including that support for Trump was better predicted by lower verbal ability than education or income." The study used the Wordsum vocabulary test to asses cognitive ability and skill.

  • The 2016 study "included 4,271 participants, of which 1181 were interviewed face to face and 3090 answered an online survey," and were random samples. 

• There was a strong negative relationship between verbal ability and support for the Republican candidates, with Trump having a stronger negative relationship than Romney: "Verbal ability was associated negatively with support for the Republican candidate in both elections. However, its association with support for Trump was stronger than its association with support for Romney"

  • Negative relationship here meaning that as support for Trump increases, verbal ability decreases. 

  • The study also identifies that there is generally a strong negative relationship between verbal ability and the Republican party but Trump was a special case, as his negative relationship with verbal ability persisted even after controlling for party affiliation: "the negative association between verbal ability and support for Romney is largely due to the negative association between verbal ability and support for the Republican Party: When party affiliation is controlled, the negative association between verbal ability and support for Romney, but not for Trump, disappears."

    • "For Trump, there was a negative association between verbal ability and attitude. For the other three candidates, the association with verbal ability was either positive (for Obama and Clinton) or negligible (for Romney)."

• Also associated negatively for Trump? - education. 

  • "Education was associated negatively with support for Trump, but not for Romney."

• Overall, the study concludes that "We believe that the present work suggests that cognitive ability may be a most basic explanatory variable underlying the apparent effects of socioeconomic variables on support for Trump." It also recognizes that certain left-wing and right-wing attitudes which are associated with higher cognitive ability are a "sharp contrast" to Trump's platform.

Study/Article from the New Political Science Journal - "The Cognitive and Emotional Sources of Trump Support: The Case of Low-Information Voters"

• This article opens with this statement: "This article provides empirical evidence for the hypothesis that Donald Trump distinctively attracted unprecedented levels of support from 'low-information voters.' The findings suggest that his campaign exploited a void of facts and reasoning among these voters that made them more vulnerable to relying on emotions, fear, anxiety, hate and rage, about Mexican immigrants, Muslims refugees, African American citizens and their disdain for the first African-American president Barack Obama."

• The data this article analyzes comes from the American National Election Studies 2016 Pilot Study. 

• The article identifies that Trump voters "were more vulnerable to responding to emotional appeals that exploited their fears and anxieties"

• Even more so than Mitt Romney in 2012, Trump was able to attract a large number of low-information voters who were swayed by emotional appeals: "among whites something distinctive happened in 2016--low-information white voters had come to be disproportionately concentrated in the Trump constituency. In fact, the findings suggest that Trump was able to draw low-information white voters away from Clinton by using emotional appeals to people’s racial and ethnic anxieties, making his reliance on these voters much greater than 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney."

• After analyzing specific data from a January 2016 American National Election Study Pilot Survey, the article found evidence that "Trump’s overwhelming white support was comprised disproportionately of low-information voters, whose lack of basic facts about politics (and also lack of interest thinking about ideas more generally) made them vulnerable to relying more on their emotional fears and resentments about immigrants, Muslims, and blacks (but not their anxieties about the economy)."

• "Low levels of political knowledge may well be associated with disinterest in relying on ideas and critical thinking skills to process reasons for deciding to support a candidate." This means that many Trump supporters who have a low level of political knowledge (as seen in Figure 6) may lack critical thinking skills and are more open to emotional appeals.

  • "A lack of political knowledge and a de-emphasis on cognitive processing create an opening for emotions to predominate in the decision-making process."

  • It can't get any clearer than this: "it is distinctly possible that Trump attracted a relatively high number of low-information white voters compared to his opponent Hillary Clinton and his predecessor as the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. Further, it is likely that these low-information voters had a low Need for Cognition, and that given their lack of information and low levels of reliance on cognitive processing, these voters relied more on emotions in their vote decision, making them more vulnerable to acting on the basis of fears and anxieties regarding Mexican immigrants, Muslim refugees, African Americans, and even President Obama. And with emotions replacing facts and reasoning, this base of supporters for Trump may well have been more willing to ignore his deficiencies as a candidate and find themselves vulnerable to not being able to challenge his consistent misstatements, untruths and outright lies." 

• Trump attracted more low information voters with who engage little in activities which require thinking than Mitt Romney: "not only have low information voters decidedly favored Trump in 2016, this appears to be a phenomenon that is unique to the 2016 election, and not based on a general tendency of low information voters to support the Republican nominee. Compared to Romney, who was arguably a more conventional Republican candidate, Trump has attracted significantly more support from low-information voters."

• The article finds that people who were less likely to engage in and enjoy activities that require thinking (a need for cognition - NFC) and a low level of political knowledge had "relatively 'warmer' feelings toward Trump, compared to those with higher levels of NFC and political knowledge."

  • "as we move to those with low NFC and political knowledge, a clear preference for Trump emerges."

• In regard to the charts referenced below: 

  • Figure 7 displays how voters with lower NFC (people who engage in activities which require thinking) are much more likely to favor Trump over his 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton. 

  • Figure 6 shows how voters with less political knowledge (answered two questions regarding US policies wrong) were more likely to favor Trump over Clinton.

Study from the American Politics Research Journal - "The Dynamics and Political Implications of Anti-Intellectualism in the United States"

• Studies the political implications of anti-intellectualism using "cross-sectional General Social Survey (GSS) data and a national election panel in 2016," and ultimately finds that it is associated with "the rejection of policy-relevant matters of scientific consensus" and support for politicians like Donald Trump.

• The study identifies that the trend of anti-intellectualism is growing and quite prominent on the right: "while anti-intellectualism may seem like it has been a unique feature of Donald Trump’s rhetoric in the 2016 campaign, recent research suggests that anti-intellectual attitude endorsement has been growing in the mass public for decades, especially on the ideological right."

  • "Unsurprisingly, at the individual level, conservatism has been shown to be a strong predictor of distrust toward scientists and experts. Relatedly, conservatism has also been shown to be associated with skepticism about the research experts produce even on issues where consensus does not contradict or even supports conventional conservative values and political opinions (e.g., the mass production of genetically engineered food)."

• Conservatives have cognitive styles which are not as diligent or detail oriented when compared to liberals: "conservatives tend to hold cognitive styles associated with less scrupulous information processing than liberals."

• In one of the models used in this study it was determined that anti-intellectualism was associated with an increase in support for Trump: "anti-intellectualism boosted positive affect toward Trump in the multivariate models, relative to Clinton, by 5% in the July wave of the CSPP Study, 9% in the September wave, and 8% in the October wave."

• Trump's campaign for president in 2016 was, at least initially, shaped by anti-intellectualism.

  • "the effect of anti-intellectualism might best be thought about as initially shaping support for Trump, which is then highly stable over time." 

Research from Cambridge University - "The cognitive and perceptual correlates of ideological attitudes: a data-driven approach"

• This research aimed to investigate and evaluate whether cognitive disposition sculpts worldview and did this by exposing more than 330 US-based participants aged 22 to 63 who were to a slew of tests – 37 neuropsychological tasks and 22 personality surveys – over the course of two weeks. Their findings? - "Conservatism and nationalism were related to greater caution in perceptual decision-making tasks and to reduced strategic information processing, while dogmatism was associated with slower evidence accumulation and impulsive tendencies." Essentially, the further right someone is the more they suck at these mental tasks.

  • Furthermore, "Extreme pro-group attitudes, including violence endorsement against outgroups, were linked to poorer working memory, slower perceptual strategies, and tendencies towards impulsivity and sensation-seeking—reflecting overlaps with the psychological profiles of conservatism and dogmatism." 

    • The research re-iterates this point later, stating "Interestingly, the psychological profile of individuals who endorsed extreme pro-group actions, such as ideologically motivated violence against outgroups, was a mix of the political conservatism signature and the dogmatism signature."

  • "these findings suggest that ideological worldviews may be reflective of low-level perceptual and cognitive functions," essentially saying that the Conservative worldview may be reflective of low cognitive and low perceptual functions. 

• Specific excerpts on conservatism being associated with low cognitive function:

  • "Political conservatism was best explained by reduced strategic information processing, heightened response caution in perceptual decision-making paradigms, and an aversion to social risk-taking."

  • "the finding that political and nationalistic conservatism is associated with reduced strategic information processing (reflecting variables associated with working memory capacity, planning, cognitive flexibility and other higher-order strategies) is consistent with a large body of literature indicating that right-wing ideologies are frequently associated with reduced analytical thinking and cognitive flexibility."

  • The research draws similarities between conservatism and religiosity, stating that "The psychological signature of religiosity consisted of heightened caution and reduced strategic information processing in the cognitive domain (similarly to conservatism)"

• The Guardian published an article about this with the title "People with extremist views less able to do complex mental tasks, research suggests" which wrongly attributes the findings of the research to "extremist views" rather than conservatism but even in the article the authors of the research state that "the 'psychological signature' for extremism across the board was a blend of conservative and dogmatic psychologies" when interviewed for the article. 

Research from the Psychological Science Journal - "Bright Minds and Dark Attitudes: Lower Cognitive Ability Predicts Greater Prejudice Through Right-Wing Ideology and Low Intergroup Contact"

•  Please note that I link to the full text on SciHub, as Sage Journals offers no free access to the full text.

• Ultimately the study finds that low intelligence in childhood "predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology" based on large scale data sets from the United Kingdom and a US data set "confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact." Essentially, racism/prejudice and some aspects of conservatism are liked to low cognitive ability and there is a correlation between the right-wing and prejudice. The study also notes that it controlled for education and socioeconomic status. 

• The authors state "We propose that right-wing ideologies, which are socially conservative and authoritarian represent a mechanism through which cognitive ability is linked with prejudice."

• The study finds that "individuals with lower cognitive abilities may gravitate toward more socially conservative right-wing ideologies that maintain the status quo and provide psychological stability and a sense of order" and state that their findings are "consistent with findings that less intelligent children come to endorse more socially conservative ideologies as adults."

• The study uses g as a synonym for general intelligence and finds that links between low g (low general intelligence) and right-wing ideology: "Together, the well-established theoretical and empirical links between lower g and greater right-wing ideology and between greater right-wing ideology and heightened prejudice suggest a mediating mechanism by which lower g may be associated with greater prejudice." The study proposes a mode in which lower g (general intelligence) predicts greater right-wing ideology, which then predicts more prejudiced attitudes (Figure 8).

  • Ultimately, "individuals with lower cognitive ability may be more attracted to right-wing ideologies that promote coherence and order, and because such ideologies emphasize the maintenance of the status quo, they may foster greater outgroup prejudice."

  • Also: "a review of the literature reveals meta-analytic evidence supporting a relation between lower g and greater endorsement of right-wing ideologies"

• In the data sample from the US, the authors note that "Lower levels of abstract reasoning also predicted greater right-wing authoritarianism, which in turn predicted elevated prejudice against homosexual." That is to say a person with limited or little ability to quickly reason with information to solve new, unfamiliar problems (that is what abstract reasoning is) was more likely to be attracted or apart of the right-wing. Conversely, "Individuals who had a greater capacity for abstract reasoning experienced more contact with out-groups, and more contact predicted less prejudice."

One of the most obviously ways in which conservatives display this low cognitive ability is through their reliance on name calling as criticism. All too often you'll see conservatives attempt to "criticize" an ideology by calling it "woke" or a product of "wokeism" or criticize a person by calling them a "social justice warrior" or "woke." The "criticism" ends there - they don't engage with the ideology or arguments presented, nor do they bring up any facts, data, or logic to show why the ideology or person is wrong/bad. It simply is wrong/bad because it's "woke" or the person is a "social justice warrior." Imagine you make a claim like "Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time" and you get two responses from people that disagree: one person just says "that's stupid" while the other responds by saying "I disagree. Brady benefitted from having one of the greatest coaches ever, a consistently great defense, and had some pretty lucky calls in his career. Peyton Manning has more MVPS, some of the greatest statistical seasons by a quarterback in NFL history, and almost always had a subpar defense but still managed to make it to four Super Bowls with four different head coaches." The second is obviously more convincing while the first person can't even articulate why they disagree and may not even know why they disagree past a knee jerk reaction. The only people the first response would be convincing to would be those that already have some bias against Tom Brady or already think Brady is not the best QB of all time. It's just preaching to the choired. Name calling - saying something is "woke" or stupid - is what someone does when they disagree with something but have little to no facts or logic to disprove it. Conservatives may also resort to this because name calling is an appeal to emotion - ethos - rather than an appeal to facts and logic - logos - and it's been established that some Trump voters were swayed more by appeals to emotion than logic. This leads me to believe that conservatives are just making words/insults up to hide the fact that they have little to no facts or logic to support their beliefs or refute leftist beliefs. It is worth mentioning that leftists can engage in this too, calling things they disagree with racist, homophobic, or transphobic but there is a difference: terms like racist, homophobic, and transphobic have been in the vernacular for a while and all have specific and firm definitions while terms like "woke," "wokeism," or "social justice warrior" are all words that have been made up in the past five or six years with vague definitions. 

To me, ignorance can be defined as choosing to be stupid. There are a variety of things that can lead a conservative to be ignorant of things like moments in history, anything that supports a leftist belief or worldview, leftist arguments, leftist beliefs, reality, et cetera.  A conservative can be this ignorant because: 

They're apathetic to anything that doesn't benefit them

• In a word, selfishness. People like this are only concerned with themselves and how they can benefit the most in a situation. They can't imagine living life in someone else's shoes and can't fathom experiences outside their own. 

They're too fearful or stupid.

• Fear can prevent conservatives from understanding something because rather than trying to understand the unknown or an uncertainty you can just label it bad and call it names like "socialism," "woke," "fake news," et cetera and eschew it because they don't want to face their fears. 

• Stupidity can prevent conservatives from understanding something because an issue or an argument may just be too complex for their puny brain to handle. 

They've spent too much of their lives believing the same things and can't think different, or don't want to even try because that would . 

• This is basically the sunk cost fallacy - tendency to follow through on an endeavor if we have already invested time, effort, or money into it, whether or not the current costs outweigh the benefits. These people have devoted years of their lives to conservative beliefs and/or 4+ extremely passionate years declaring fealty to Trump and because of how much they've invested they can't even consider switching opinions or considering different views. 

• Additionally, the longer someone holds a certain belief the harder it is to convince them otherwise. 

They're lazy and just want to feel as though they’re correct rather than putting in the time and effort to determine what is correct. See the "Apathy" section below for more on this mindset. 

•  Some conservatives might not even care about being correct or finding out what's best for people and only care about finding information that coddles them and their worldview and makes them feel as though they’re in the right so they don’t have to stress their puny brains actually attempting to understand something. 

They don't have the time to meaningfully engage with content on political and social issues and really invest themselves in to these things. 

• This mainly describes people who live in rural areas. Why?

  • They have a lot less time to be engaged with political and social issues. People in rural areas have physically demanding jobs that require a lot of manual labor and can last all day. They don’t have a strict 9-5 work schedule or weekends off like a person living in an urban environment would. Thus, after a long and exhausting day of work they don’t have the time or brainpower to delve into research, theories, studies, et cetera - they just wanna relax and chill, likely with some media that just tells them what they want to hear and re affirms their beliefs so they don’t have to exercise time and brain power they don’t have thinking about the world and social and political issues. Conservatives can't handle media that makes them question the world, the way in which they view the world, or their place in it anyways. Conservatives need news and information that is easy to digest and doesn’t challenge their worldview or make them question their beliefs.

  • Additionally, these people's parents were likely conservatives, there are a lot more religious people in these rural areas, there is a lot less internet access in rural areas, thus less access to information in general, and there’s a lot less variation in the number of jobs to be had in rural areas so people in rural areas pretty much just run into people who look like they do, think like they do, believe what they do, live their lives like they do, et cetera. They aren’t exposed to a diversity of people or ideas the same way someone in an urban environment would and their world is a lot smaller. 

They see politics as entertainment rather than a way to find what's best for the common good and help the most people. Some of these folks may only be engaged with politics to troll "trigger," or "own" the left (see below).

• White Christians make up a large portion of the modern conservative base - non white voters make up 40% of registered Democrats but less than a fifth of registered Republicans and 79% of Republicans are Christians while only 52% of Democrats are Christians according to the Pew Research Center. Thus, most conservatives are not really incentivized to pay attention or care about politics - their human rights haven't been up for debate like minority rights (specifically black people) were, their right to freely practice their religion without has never been up for debate, and many Conservative values and beliefs (free market/capitalism, God being one with the state, two genders, sex as binary, etc..) had been present, if not the norm, in America prior to the birth of today's conservatives. All their needs are pretty much taken care of so why care about something - politics - that has little to no effect on you? - Entertainment value. 

• Many modern American conservatives might engage with politics for its entertainment value rather than to actually make a positive difference or change in the world and figure out the best ways and policies to help people. This is why Donald Trump's political theater was so popular among conservatives and why he's so beloved by many on the right. Conservatives like the entertainment of “libtards getting owned” and the political theatre of people like Donald Trump more than finding ways to fix or identify problems facing the country. After all, there have been little problems for white people in America in the first place so they're not used to trying to fix anything and can't even fathom there being a problem with America since they've experienced so little hardships and so few problems. Conservatives may facts or logic because the entertainment value modern conservatism provides is more important that what’s right or improving other peoples lives. This emphasis on entertainment also attracts a lot of people who are edgy to try and gain attention or for the sake of being edgy to the conservative movement. It's very easy to get attention if you're a character as wild as Trump, so by emulating him and adopting his/conservative opinions these people eager for attention by being edgy can easily get the attention they want (obviously with no regard for the implications or accuracy of what they're saying to get attention). 

They just want to troll, "trigger," or "own" the left and don't stand for anything themselves, only opposing whatever the left is doing. Some of these folks may also be engaged with politics only for the entertainment value (see above).

• Some modern conservatives are defined not by what they stand for but what they are against. Often times, modern conservatism does not seem to be about creating policies to help Americans or doing what can be done to put the country and its people in a better place, rather it is about trying to stop the "radical left" from doing so. Rather than trying to help Americans modern conservatives are engaging in a culture war and devote time to complaining about Mr. Potato Head being re-branded as Potato Head and Twitter. CPAC's theme in 2021 was "American Uncanceled" and consisted of people just complaining about the left and how they're being "cancelled" and what they need to do in opposition to the left rather than discussing plans and policies for America. A more apt theme for the conference would have been "we're losing in the marketplace of ideas and that's unfair." Modern conservatism exists solely to oppose the left. Whether they call it socialism, marxism, communism, "woke" or anything else, the arguments conservatives are making essentially boil down to "down with progress!" Modern conservatism has two goals: stop the left and try and humiliate, or "trigger" the left. No care for the country or it's people, just pointing at others who do care and laughing at them and insulting them. 

  •  I think that a signifgantly large portion of the people who identify as conservatives today only identify as conservatives because they're afraid of what the "radical left" might do. Five, six years ago they probably didn't care about politics but they got brainfucked by conservative media into thinking that the "radical left" believed in all kinds of absurd things and wanted to do all kinds of things so out of fear they adopted conservative views to try and counter this fake, straw-manned version of the left.

• Some conservatives don't stand for anything (partly because the things they supposedly care about have been the norm in America for a while so they don't really need to advocate or stand for anything), only oppose a lot. What they oppose is typically whatever the left is doing or whatever conservatives think the left thinks, as is evident by the conservative skepticism around the COVID-19 vaccine. Despite the fact that the vaccine was developed under and by a conservative administration, the Trump administration, pushed for by that administration, and set as a goal by that administration, conservatives magically became skeptical of the vaccine and invented various conspiracy theories surrounding it because Joe Biden became president and encourages Americans to vaccinated (just like Trump and his daughter Ivanka did). Some Republicans have noticed this baffling change of heart. The Republican governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, has stated that anti-vaccine "propaganda" from the right wing and vaccine hesitancy is "literally killing people," harmful, and certainly not helpful in a news conference according to The Salt Lake Tribune. He also states "We have these talking heads who have gotten the vaccine and are telling other people not to get it. That kind of stuff is dangerous, it’s damaging, and it’s killing people." He also recommends that people "ignore all of these other voices that are giving demonstrably bad advice" and points out that vaccine misinformation is just killing the supporters of the people spreading vaccine misinformation. He even says the Republican party should be taking credit for the vaccine and praised Trump for his efforts on creating the vaccine. He urges Utah residents to get vaccinated. This echoes a sentiment from this Youtube video about vaccines in which the Youtuber notes that talking heads like Bill Maher think it's smart or cool to be skeptical about vaccines right up until there's consequences for himself. Mitt Romney even called Republicans polarization of the vaccine "moronic." He also states "After all, President Trump and his supporters take credit for developing the vaccine, why the heck won’t they take advantage of the vaccine they received plaudits for having developed?" It's almost as if conservatives just want to oppose whatever Biden and "the left" are doing, even if what they are doing is the same thing Trump did or planned on doing. 

• The whole US troops withdrawing from Afghanistan fiasco is another great example: At a rally on June 26th, 2021 in Wellington, Ohio he said this regarding Afghanistan: "Where I started the process and all of the troops are coming back home. By the way, I started the process. They [Biden administration] couldn't stop the process. 21 years is enough, don't we think? They could not stop the process, they wanted to but it was tough to stop the process when other things were at yes, thank you thank you [he receives applause here from his supporters at the rally]. It's a shame, 21 years, by a government that would not last - what are we going to say? We will stay another 21 years? The whole thing is ridiculous. But we are bringing our troops back home from Iraq and Afghanistan. We brought them back home..." He goes on to say "So I started bringing them [US troops in Afghanistan] home." In February of 2020 Trump negotiated a withdrawal agreement with the Taliban, so this is what he's referring to when he talks about starting the process. The Trump administration didn't even include the Afghan government in this agreement though, so it was kinda doomed to fail from teh start. Despite this, idiots like Josh Hawley blame Biden for this "weak" move even though Hawley tweeted in support of it and identified that it was the Trump administration that had planned the withdrawal of US troops. This dumbass even said Biden should resign for doing so. I guess Hawley is so stupid that he doesn't realize the implications of these tweets - that a president taking an action Trump took means they should resign and are weak and/or incompetent. Conservatives cheer and praise something when Trump does it but then when Biden does the exact same thing they treat it like the worse decision ever and proof that he's weak and incompetent. No consistency in their views aside from just oppose whatever the left is doing, even if it's the same thing conservatives and/or Trump did months previously. 

• This shows how conservatives are defined more by their opposition to the left than any of their own beliefs and values. Conservatives view politics as more as entertainment than actually something to help people with peoples lives at stake. They like the entertainment of “libtards getting owned” and the political theatre of people like Donald Trump, rejecting facts or logic because the entertainment value modern conservatism provides is more important than what’s right or other people's lives.

They're annoyed by pretentious leftists or got their feelings hurt by pretentious leftists.

• Some remain ignorant to things because of an annoyance with the left. These people will remain ignorant because they had a bad experience with pretentious leftists online or are annoyed by the snobbiness some leftists have. Thus, they purely want to “trigger” or “own” the left. Basing one’s political beliefs solely on the best ways to spite the people who hurt your feelings, said mean words to you online, or acted snobby is pathetic, petty, and childish. These people are very weak willed if they’re willing to change their entire worldview, understanding of history, values, and beliefs just because a few people acted snobby or pretentious online.

• These people may start posting increasingly stupid and edgy stuff online meant to “trigger” leftists, which brings us to our next reason...

They want attention. 

• Some people may be ignorant because they only engage with politics as a way of getting attention. Posting stupid things and "edgy" racist, homophobic, transphobic, and generally bigoted "jokes" and content is an easy way to get attention online because it draws interest from conservatives and actual bigots along with criticism from leftists ("cancel culture"). Why is it such an easy way to get attention? - It fills a need for the conservatives and actual bigots who need media that coddles their beliefs and worldview. Today leftist beliefs are more visible in the media so these people are desperate for something that tells them they're right and the seemingly increasingly popularity of leftist thought is not because conservatives are losing in the marketplace of ideas but because the left is "brainwashing" the masses with "propaganda." Notice I say that leftists beliefs are more visible because while many celebrities and companies will express such things on social media or in statements to media many of their actions and operations may not reflect the things they're saying.

  • Many of the people who capitalize off of this need are referred to as “grifters” (I don’t really use the term much). With the attention comes money, notoriety, and power, so someone who starts off just wanting attention by posting stupid and edgy conservative content online could eventually make this their livelihood and become someone who manipulates the conservative masses*. Because they’re so engrossed in this world they may eventually fully adopt a conservative worldview and begin actually believing in the stupid and bigoted things they once just posted for attention. 

*They make a living, or obtain some combination of wealth, power, and notoriety, fear-mongering and telling conservative masses what they want to hear.

They're manipulated by the people fear-mongering and telling them what they want to hear. 

Fear really is the mind killer because it "kills" certain brain processes, interrupting them in a way that leaves humans vulnerable to intense emotion and impulsive reactions, according to this University of Minnesota webpage. Some are never able to overcome this fear so in a sense it "kills" their critical thinking skills and makes them only able to act on emotion, immediate reaction, and impulse, meaning that's what they base their political beliefs on. This leaves them vulnerable to emotional appeals and manipulation. Most of this fear is instilled by conservative media outlets and social media figures. By getting people to be afraid, they lose the ability to think critically and become much more suggestible to extremist beliefs and actions. And considering many conservatives already suck at critical thinking and have low cognitive ability already, this is incredibly easy to do. 

Fear is a big motivator for their conservative beliefs, values, and arguments. Fear of job-stealing illegal immigrants, fear of “socialism,” fear of “socialists,” fear of the government taking their guns, fear of Big Tech, fear of a white minority in America and the uncertainties that bring, fear of trans people, fear of their way of life and the things they believe (even if those things are outdated, flat out wrong, flawed, or harmful) fading away and losing in the marketplace of ideas, fear of black people, fear of change, fear of anything new, uncomfortable, or unfamiliar, fear of things that appear too confusing or complex to understand, et cetera. 

As previously mentioned, fear makes people more vulnerable to emotional appeals. The fear of the unknown - change, things that are confusing or complex, things they're unfamiliar with - is probably the biggest motivator since your imagination will always conjure up something SCARIER than the thing actually is. And this fear causes conservatives to imagine extremely scary versions of reality, potential futures, and the goals, beliefs, and values of others like a future where white people are massacred by minorities or there being people who are trans because they're pedophiles or something. Their imagination gets an assist from the fear-mongering and manipulation by conservative media (I discuss this more in depth below). 

Tradition is also kept alive by fear (in addition to stupidity and bigotry). The unknowns and uncertainties that come with new things can be scary, so to avoid confronting that fear conservatives will just reject it and stick with what they know - tradition. It also helps that tradition requires little to no critical thinking skills because that's all been done already by people in the past. 

Leftist values, arguments, and beliefs are not rooted in fear. Rather, they involve actual principles, theories, logic, data, evidence, studies, and reasoning and because they’re not based much on emotions there is a higher quantity of quality evidence to support them.

• You could make the case that climate issues are somewhat motivated by fears, but at least these fears are backed up by science and data. 

There is an argument to be made that bigotry, or hatred, is the fourth major alongside stupidity, ignorance, and fear, but I think bigotry is more of a result of those aforementioned traits. A conservative might be too stupid to understand the various factors that contribute/contributed to the position black people in America are currently in and see one crime statistic then come to the conclusion that black people are just worse than white people (which I describe in a section of the BLM page), they might be generally uneducated or too ignorant to conceptualize and understand experiences outside their own, or they may be too afraid of a future where there's less racism against minorities because they think that'll mean more racism against whites (in that case they're likely also stupid because they view racism as a zero sum game). Stupidity, ignorance, and fear all contribute to bigotry in their own way and they also make people more susceptible to manipulation by actual bigots who are disguising their beliefs to make them seem more socially acceptable. 

Most of America has been shaped and influenced by the lives, experiences, and perspectives of straight white people, straight white men specifically.  These straight white people enjoyed many things others different than them could not up until the last few generations when things started to become more equal (or at least less overtly discriminatory) and other perspectives and experiences began getting attention. This incredible amount of change - the desegregation of schools in 1954, the civil rights act of 1964, the sexual revolution in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the election of the first black president in 2008, gay marriage becoming legal in 2015, increasing visibility of trans people, the increased attention on racism in 2020 - has been somewhat threatening to straight white people. I know the "when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression" quote is kinda cheesy and overused but it certainly applies here. 

The election of Barack Obama also contributed to bigotry in the Republican party and it really much of the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, and anti-black attitudes in today's Republicans and conservatives. Obama was "criticized" for potentially being Muslim (or having a Muslim sounding name), there were conspiracy theories about him being an immigrant from Kenya, and some thought he may have been playing up his "blackness" to appeal to black people, and these three things gave conservatives easy ways to attack him. There were plenty of things to criticize Obama for, but these things weren't it. This lead these attitudes to become mainstream and Trump capitalized on them by appearing to the fear of and hatred towards immigrants and Muslims that had been built up during Obama's tenure as president. Essentially, Obama's election gave bigots the opportunity to turn their bigotry into "legitimate" political beliefs and gave them an excuse to connect the things conservatives already disliked about America or saw as issues in the country with Muslims, immigrants, and black people. Obama's election also increased levels of racial resentment, probably because some fragile white people felt threatened by a black person being president and couldn't accept it as true so they can up with conspiracy theories like him being an immigrant to avoid acknowledging this reality. Here are some studies that look at how Obama's election increased racial resentment: 

Research from the Politics, Groups, and Identities Journal - "Examining whites’ anti-black attitudes after Obama’s presidency"

• Please note that I link to the full text on SciHub, as the publisher does not offer a free version of the full text. 

• Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) the research finds little evidence that any level of racial resentment among whites decreased after America's first black presidency, rather "These findings suggest that Obama’s rise to power increased whites’ perception that blacks threaten their dominant position in the United States."

• Using a stereotype battery that has been used by the ANES since 1992 the authors are able to determine that between 2008-2012 "we do not see evidence that contact with Obama had a positive influence on white attitudes towards blacks as a group"

  • Also: "The mean level of white sympathy for blacks actually decreases from 0.44 in 2008 to 0.30 in 2012 (p < .001), the mean racial resentment score on the standard four-item battery changes little from 0.65 in 2008 to 0.64 in 2012 (where high values indicate more resentment), and the mean warmth toward blacks on a standard feeling thermometer decreases slightly from 0.66 in 2008 to 0.63 in 2012 (p < .001). Taken together, these analyses yield little evidence that white attitudes toward blacks improved during Obama’s first term as President, and there is even some evidence to suggest that prejudice may have increased."

  • Essentially, white opposition to Obama was "roughly equivalent" in 2008 and 2012. It's also "not clear that the effect of prejudice on vote choice meaningfully changed between 2008 and 2012."

• Crazy stat here: "The data reveal that in 2008, 38% of whites reported that Obama made them feel afraid, and while this proportion was slightly lower in 2012 at 36%, the two are statistically indistinguishable (p < .38). In short, it appears that four years of exposure to and contact with the nation’s first black president via the media did not meaningfully reduce whites’ fears about him."

• Using ANES data from 2008-2009 panel survey which "allows us to examine the same set of individuals over time rather than relying on analyses of two separate groups of people from the ANES time series," the authors find an increase in the effect of racial attitudes on policy opinion over time: "Considering this finding in combination with our cross-sectional data, we find scant evidence that racial prejudice declined during Obama’s first term in office even with whites’ regular exposure to the president. Indeed, on the topic of discrimination in the labor market and support for affirmative action, the association between prejudice and whites’ policy opinion actually became stronger over time. These results are consistent with the interpretation that Obama’s ascendancy to the presidency was perceived as a threat to whites’ superior group position: in the age of the first black president, the impact of prejudice on public opinion about racialized policies increased, even when Obama did not explicitly associate himself with such policies." 

• It's pretty much the same story for Obama's second term.

  • "In 2008, 57 percent of whites rate blacks less favorably than they rate whites, on average, on the stereotype battery. In 2012 and 2016, 58 percent do."

  • "the levels of anti-black stereotypes remain high after Obama’s second term"

  • There is "a substantively large increase from the association between prejudice and policy opinion in 2008 and 2012."

• In conclusion, the research states "Contrary to the idea that the nation’s first presidency increased white tolerance of black people, in none of the five areas of white opinion and behavior examined here — opposition to Obama, opposition to policies intended to aid blacks, prejudice against blacks, the relationship between prejudice and opposition to Obama, and the relationship between prejudice and opposition to policies intended to aid blacks — did we witness meaningful decreases during Obama’s time as president."

  • "In fact, the relationship between prejudice and policy opinion actually increased in some cases over Obama’s first term – even for policies with which Obama was not clearly associated – as evidenced by both cross-sectional and panel data. Obama’s rise to the presidency resulted not in the decline of prejudice but in its activation."

  • "Furthermore, additional analyses indicate that the above findings are robust to: (a) measures of prejudice other than stereotypes, such as racial resentment"

  • In short, having a black president made a portion of white America more racially resentful and more prejudiced. The effect of prejudice on opinion about policy has increased for some white Americans from 2008-2016.

• While prejudice influences opinion about policy, it is important to note media affects this as well when covering Obama-era policies like Social Security and Medicare. Research from the Politics, Groups, and Identities journal found that between 2007 and 2017 "news magazines portray these well-liked social programs by overwhelmingly highlighting white beneficiaries. Further, the media often depict these white recipients in a sympathetic and positive manner. This is in sharp contrast to media coverage of poor people that disproportionately, inaccurately, and unsympathetically focuses on black citizens."

Research from Oxford University Press - "Privilege on the Precipice: Perceived Racial Status Threats Lead White Americans to Oppose Welfare Programs"

• This research aims to "test a theory of how perceived macro-level trends in racial standing shape whites’ views of welfare policy" and while it focuses only on welfare policy the results are still interesting. It uses American National Elections Surveys (ANES) data from 2000-2012 and two different Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) surveys/experiments to test the theory.

• In the first of three studies the authors find that the racial resentment among white people increased in 2008 due in part to Obama's election and the economic downturn. White people's opposition to welfare also increased around this time. 

  • "Using representative survey data, we find that the period beginning in 2008 has seen changes in Americans’ attitudes toward welfare, and these changes differ by race. While minorities show more positive attitudes toward welfare in 2008, whites’ attitudes became somewhat more negative."

  • "The result is that 2008 marks the beginning of a widened divergence among whites and minorities’ attitudes toward welfare. In addition, we find that whites’ racial resentment rose beginning in 2008. These findings are consistent with our claim that feelings of racial threat—particularly, the perception of increased political power among minorities during a period of economic recession—helped shape whites’ welfare attitudes in recent years."

  • "we found that whites’ and minorities’ welfare attitudes diverged in 2008, the year of the candidacy and election of President Obama and the financial crisis, and whites’ racial resentment rose during this time as well."

• In the second study, the authors find that presenting information to white people about the perceived decline of a white majority in the United States increased their opposition to welfare and was mediated (brought about) by racial resentment.  

  • "In this study, we found that white participants responded to information suggesting that whites are losing their majority status—and hence their power as a voting bloc is declining—with increased racial resentment, which led to greater opposition to welfare."

  • "This mediation result is particularly noteworthy because it provides evidence that the link between whites’ racial resentment and welfare attitudes is not spuriously driven by individualist or conservative principles, since white participants expressed greater racial resentment under conditions of threat to racial status. Further, this effect was unique to whites, and we found no evidence that whites reported more conservative opinions on non-racial issues."

  • "white Americans who saw a demographic report emphasizing the decline of the white majority tended thereafter to voice greater opposition to welfare, and this effect was partially mediated by increased racial resentment."

• In the third study the authors find that "threatening" white people's sense of their economic advantage over minority groups led white people to have greater opposition to welfare programs but only if those welfare programs were framed as benefiting minority groups more than whites. 

  • "In this study, we provide evidence supporting the final link in our logic: that racial threats lead to anti-welfare sentiment among whites because they perceive such programs to mostly benefit minorities. Where a welfare program was portrayed as primarily benefiting whites, threatened white participants reported almost identical support for welfare as unthreatened white participants. These findings provide discerning support for our claim that whites’ opposition to welfare following racial threat is due to increased racial resentment."

  • "information threatening the white economic advantage resulted in increased opposition to welfare programs when whites perceived those programs to primarily benefit minorities, but did not affect support for programs portrayed as benefiting whites."

  • Essentially, this is saying that if white people are reminded or informed that they could lose their majority status in America they will oppose welfare programs that are presented as helping minorities (but not oppose welfare programs that are presented as helping whites) due to a racial fear or resentment. 

• The authors conclude that their findings "provide consistent support for our claim that white Americans’ welfare attitudes are shaped by concerns about the status of their racial group in American society."

  • Also: "We provide evidence that racial resentment rises in response to macro-historical trends that threaten whites’ standing in the racial status hierarchy, particularly in eras of economic decline. We demonstrate that racial resentment rather than in-group identification drives the relationship between racial threat and opposition to welfare."

You can check out the "White People and Racism" section on the Miscellaneous page for more on this. 

While many of these quotes are not specifically about today's conservatives, I think they are very applicable. 

• "Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." - Isaac Asimov 

• "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion." - Proverbs 8:2

• "The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible." - Karl Marx

• "I don’t understand evolution, and I have to protect my kids from understanding it. We will not give into the thinkers!" - Futurama

Arguments and a lack of evidence

Conservatives and their "arguments" are perfect examples of dogmatism and naive realism. Not only are many conservative arguments not supported by evidence beyond individual facts presented within a vacuum or with no context, but some conservative arguments aren't even informed by evidence yet they are stated as if there is seemingly indisputable evidence backing them. 

• Take what this conservative media host says in this video at the 8:37 mark for example. About satanic pedophile rituals of elites drinking the blood of a tortured baby he says, "the problem is, we need to prove it. I'm not there yet. He's basically admitting that he has drawn a conclusion about something without evidence and is looking for evidence to prove it.

This is a backward way of thinking - believing something to be true and then searching for evidence that supports it rather than looking at evidence and reality and then drawing your conclusions from that. And if you have a pre-conceived conclusion then you'll be looking at the evidence with bias. The internet has made it extremely easy for conservatives to look for evidence that only supports their feelings and then cling to it so they don't have to consider anything else and experience the mental anguish critical thinking brings upon them. Slightly exaggerating there, but you get the point. To me, this lack of evidence shows that conservatives don't care about being right, what is best supported by evidence, or doing what is best for people. Instead, they want to be treated like they're right so they can rationalize how they engage with the world and political/social issues and keep living their lives as unbothered and unchallenged as possible. 

• There's a quote from Karl Marx which I think describes this rather well: "The democratic petty bourgeois, far from wanting to transform the whole society in the interests of the revolutionary proletarians, only aspire to a change in social conditions which will make the existing society as tolerable and comfortable for themselves as possible."

So, twisting reality, manufacturing a different reality, or just avoiding reality altogether serve to distract from this lack of evidence. Additionally, some conservatives just may not have the critical thinking skills and cognitive ability to conceptualize other views of the world or think outside of their own experiences. Thus, they must make up for this in their arguments. The biggest threat to modern conservatives is reality, and while they would say something very similar about leftists there is one big difference: conservatives have little to no meaningful evidence. But they can just always come up with an ad hominem and call the evidence biased, "fake news," "woke," "marxist" or coming from an "sjw" or "virtue signaling." Or just call it...Jewish.

Because reality often does not reflect or align with conservative views and beliefs, arguments will typically serve one of these three purposes:

• Distract from the fact that reality does not often support or reflect conservative views and beliefs.

  • Most often this takes the form of theatrics and entertainment - ad hominems, insults, memes, name-calling, "triggering" liberals, "owning" the liberals, any kind of spectacle. Trump was really good at doing this and his public speaking, while hardly in tune with reality, was entertaining and enthralling to watch for many. 

• Make excuses for why reality does not often support or reflect conservative views and beliefs.

  • This describes the "arguments" about colleges and universities being left-leaning because Marxists have infiltrated them, education being brainwashing, theories about groups of elites trying to disrupt or overthrow America, cancel culture censoring conservatives, et cetera. 

• Eschew reality altogether and create a new one.

  • Conspiracy theories like QAnon are obviously a good example but so are "arguments" that hyper-focus on one fact or one piece of data in a vacuum, devoid of context like bringing up that one crime statistic about black people.

Obviously, many of these arguments are terrible, but conservatives don't even have to make good arguments to achieve their goals or be convincing enough to persuade people away from leftist beliefs.  All conservative media has to do is create enough doubt in people's minds that they get overwhelmed by the conflicting information, become exhausted, and disengaged from the subject so they fall back on the easiest course of action. That easiest course of action typically benefits conservatives because the easier course of action is typically not engaging in critical thinking, falling back on whatever "feels right," whatever aligns with "common sense" or what a person knew before and has always thought was true, etc... 

Conservative "arguments" overview

Most conservative arguments will fall under at least one of these categories:

• Stupidly misunderstanding something or coming away with an absurd and wildly inaccurate interpretation (i.e. “Masks don’t even protect you from getting COVID-19, it says so on the packaging, so why are they being mandated if they don’t even work? It’s just about control”).

• Presenting a limited amount of facts lacking contest that would support their beliefs in a vacuum (i.e. "Trans people have a higher suicide rate so clearly they have a mental illness.")

• Non sequiturs (i.e. "If there can't be a football team called the redskins then we shouldn't have sports teams called the lions because lions are scary and hurt people.”)

• Strawman, typically blowing things out of proportion and exaggerating to fear monger or make the left seem crazy

  • Reality (i.e. "The government is forcing people to get the vaccine and taking away their freedoms, not even giving them a choice. It's fascism just like in 1984 and its proof that there is a socialist takeover happening that's trying to destroy America. Pretty soon the government will be knocking on people’s doors and checking if they’re hiding any unvaccinated under the floorboards.") 

  • Arguments (i.e. "The left wants you to take medical advice about the COVID-19 vaccine from Big Bird and Elmo," or "The left wants open borders and surges of illegal immigrants to come into the country and destroy America and the white race," or "The left wants kids to learn about LGBTQ people so they can indoctrinate them into their degenerate sex cult and pedophiles can have sex with them.")

• Ad hominem (i.e. Calling things "woke," "fake news," "marxist," et cetera, calling people "woke," "social justice warriors," "socialists," and generally insulting them or giving them nicknames like "Sleepy Joe" or "Crazy Nancy," or saying things like "liberalism is a mental disorder.")

• Gish gallop (don't really have a good example for this one but you'll know it when you see it - it's when a bunch of half-truths, lies, facts that are missing context, or any number of these other "arguments" are made quickly one after another.)

  • The gish gallop refers to a technique where someone argues a cause by hurling as many different half-truths and no-truths into a very short space of time so that their opponent cannot hope to combat each point in real-time.

• Slippery slope (i.e. "If we mandate masks today then we’ll be in a totalitarian state tomorrow," or "If we legalize homosexuality then pedophilia and bestiality will be next.")

• Logic they won't apply elsewhere (i.e. Thinking planned parenthood is bad, racist, and should not exist because its founder believed in eugenics and was at the very least apathetic to racism but not believing America is bad, racist, and in need of changes even though there were racists among its founders and the constitution was written to exclude black people. Or using suicide statistics to say that trans people are mentally ill and eroding society or whatever but then not applying the same logic to the fact that the white suicide rate is higher than the national average). Also, check out Figure 1 and Figure 4 below for a great example of this from Candace Owens and Charlie Kirk, respectively.

• Excuses (i.e. "Conservative views aren't represented on colleges because Marxists have infiltrated academia and education is now liberal brainwashing and indoctrination.")

• Imagined hypocrisy (i.e. "If you really support immigration then you'd open your home to illegal immigrants but you won't do that," or "If you think racism is bad and black people are disadvantaged then you should give your yearly salary to a black thug but you won't.")

• Whatever the Nazis said (more on all that here under the Conservatives Plagiarize the Nazis page)

• Common sense or appeals to tradition (i.e. "There aren't more than two genders it's just common sense.")

• Circular arguments (i.e. If something is bad or has perceived negative effects then it is socialism because socialism is bad.)

• Self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e. Using the HIV rate in the gay community or trans suicide rate as evidence that both are degenerate or mental illness despite the fact that it was intentional discrimination and lacking health care access that caused both issues.)

• False-premise: Basing an argument off of something false or misinterpreted, using evidence that's wrong or has been misinterpreted, or arguing against something that isn't real/not happening or has been misinterpreted. (i.e. "Critical Race Theory is bad because white children shouldn't be held responsible for slavery and racism and they shouldn't be made to apologize for it.")

I also find that many conservative "arguments," especially those made by influential conservative figures or the people paying these figures, is just petty self-preservation under the guise of an argument because they want to preserve what benefits them, favors them, makes them feel comfortable, et cetera. This is why traditions are brought up so much. "Tradition" is a vague enough term for these people to hide behind rather than just outright saying something like "gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married," or, "blacks shouldn't be treated equal to white people."

Extended thoughts and theories

Conservative beliefs and values mainly persist because of the fear that's instilled in already stupid or ignorant people through made-up stuff about "the left" or blowing something about "the left" out of proportion (like equality for black people means discrimination against white people or because CRT is being taught in schools that means the white race is under attack and experiencing genocide or because kids are made aware of gay and trans people that means the left is trying to make all children gay and trans and indoctrinate them into sexual depravity) that they convince themselves and others to be real, then dangling that threat in front of other stupid people who lack critical thinking skills and may already have biases that would make it easier for them to accept false information. That, and because hate and bigotry will always exist and there will always be those with losing enough morals to manipulate stupid and fearful people for power and money. 

• Modern conservatism thrives off these stupid, ignorant, and fearful people who are susceptible to emotional appeals and fear-mongering. And you always fear what you don't understand. The world is a world conservatives always fear, but never understand. 

• I really think a big portion of people who identify as conservative today do so not because they believe in conservative values or any of that but because they're afraid of what the "radical left" apparently thinks or what the "radical left" apparently will do/is doing and feel they have to adopt conservative values or strengthen existing conservative values to combat the left. This fear is largely instilled by conservative media, as I talk about below in a different section on this page. 

General tactics and trends

Triggering their opponent 

• Conservatives will try to provoke a reaction out of their opponent so the conservative can claim they are "triggered" and relying on feelings over facts or so the conversation can then devolve into a shouting match filled with insults where the conservative can come out on top since they're more accustomed to making these emotionally-driven arguments and theatrics.

Evidence in a vacuum, devoid of context

• Although a good portion of conservative "arguments" involve logical fallacies, things that aren't true, and logic that's either totally absurd or logic that they wouldn't remain consistent within a different scenario, et cetera, there are nuggets of truth in there. However, these factual nuggets are presented in a vacuum without context so they appear to righteously support a conservative worldview. But obviously, that one fact doesn't give a full understanding of something. Still, conservatives will latch onto these small facts (seemingly forever) and just ignore any other related facts and things that can give them a better understanding of something. This is probably because that better understanding typically supports a leftist view or because conservatives are just so stupid that they can't conceptualize more than a few things at once and view things in simplistic, reduced terms. Probably a combination of both. 

• There is actually a specific phrase for this someone who "can't see the forest for the trees" describes a person who is too involved in one detail (one tree) of a problem to look at the situation (the forest) as a whole.

Ignoring quantity and quality of evidence

• While both conservatives and leftists have things they can point to that support their beliefs, doesn't mean both have the same quantity and quality of evidence backing it. All too often, conservatives just assume that because there are some facts that support their views, their views are of equal value and merit to those of leftists. But this really isn’t the case. Imagine this exchange:

• Leftist: "Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time."

• Conservative: "Oh yeah? Well, Joe Flacco never lost a Super Bowl and Brady lost three. That sure pokes a hole in your narrative."

• Although being undefeated in the Super Bowl is certainly a piece of evidence that can be made to support the argument that Joe Flacco is the greatest QB of all time, there is far more evidence for Brady's case. Brady has won seven Super Bowls and three MVPs, made 14 Pro Bowls and 3 All-Pro teams, and has a variety of other records and accolades. There is just a higher quantity of quality evidence to suggest Brady is the GOAT much like there is a higher quantity of quality evidence to support leftist beliefs when compared to conservative beliefs.

Vague references to an argument

• Vague statements and gesturing by saying things like "they are trying to destroy America," or "don't let them brainwash you with their narrative" serve to help hide the fact that conservatives don't have much evidence to support their arguments. They're also like Mad Libs for others to fill in the blanks and then feel like the argument is in support of their beliefs.

• Take these two arguments for example:

  • "Tom Brady is the best red zone quarterback in the NFL."

  • "He's the best passer in football."

  • The first argument is specific, and because it's so specific it requires evidence - Brady's passer rating, completion percentage, and touchdown-to-interception ratio in the redzone, the context of the possession, what defense he's facing, who he is throwing too, and a variety of other things. It also challenges people to think critically because of its specificity and how many factors there are to consider. The second argument requires virtually no evidence because it's so vague and doesn't specify who "he" is, what factors into being a good passer, or what level of football or league "he" is in. As previously mentioned, the vagueness doesn't just mean the arguer doesn't have to provide evidence for their claim but it also allows others to fill in the blanks so they feel the statement supports a specific belief of theirs. 

Appeals to tradition

• I think conservatives will often argue in favor of tradition, or use tradition as "evidence" for their positions because it requires virtually no critical thinking skills. All the thinking, planning, research, analysis, et cetera has already been done for them by people in the past so appealing to tradition means conservatives don't have to strain themselves doing that themselves. Additionally, tradition is something that's familiar and comfortable, offering an escape from the unknown and uncertainty that comes with change and new things that some conservatives are so afraid of. 

  • So appeals to tradition are popular with many kinds of conservatives - conservatives who have low cognitive ability and are too stupid to understand and conceptualize seemingly complex or confusing things, conservatives who are afraid of the unknown and the uncertainties that come with change and new ideas, conservatives (mainly those in rural areas) who don't have the time to dedicate to doing research, gathering evidence, and thinking themselves, and conservatives who just don't want to dedicate the time and because they're selfish and/or see politics more as entertainment. 

• Of course, there are conservatives out there who favor tradition because they are genuinely bigots and want to return to a time when white people were treated better than black people, gay people couldn't marry and were openly discriminated against, et cetera. 

• Appeals to tradition are also extremely vague because there have been so many different traditions at different times throughout different human cultures so conservatives don't have to provide much evidence.

Hypotheticals - saying something is happening but providing no evidence it or saying something is going to happen but not being able to logically explain how we get from here to there

• This is basically a combination of the non sequitur, strawman, and slippery slope. Or "just trust me bro" in simpler terms. 

• The argument here is hardly an argument, rather it's presenting something so morally reprehensible - like leftists aborting/killing babies the day before birth or school lessons about sex, gender, and LGBTQ people will mean that it will soon be legal for pedophiles to have sex with children - that a person who questions it or challenges the assertion and what needs to be done to prevent it is seen as bad. The argument here is essentially, "this sounds so bad that you'd want to do whatever you can to prevent it, even if it turns out to not be true, right? Better safe than sorry."

• Obviously, there is little to no evidence for these insane claims, and the people that make these arguments kind of know that because they avoid providing evidence. They'll just over and over say things like "I just told you," "Wake up," "Open your eyes," and "Look for yourself." In a round about way, they’re saying “if you can’t take my word then you can’t be convinced because the only real concrete evidence of this is me saying it happened/saying it’s true.” They’re kind of admitting that aside from their words/feelings, there’s no other basis for their claims. 

Common sense 

• The notion of common sense or tradition is a useful tool to conservatives because it's a very vague way of presenting your beliefs without directly coming out and saying them or providing evidence for them. In reality, backing up your argument with common sense is basically saying "this is something many people believe - its common - therefore it is true." This is a dumb way of thinking because you're not thinking, just observing something that has persisted over time and assuming it's right because it's how things always were or are. 

• Common sense" should not be used to justify political beliefs or social issues or support policy anything like that. One of the biggest problems, and handicaps, with using "common sense" as a form of thinking is that it is limited by personal experience. Additionally, "common sense" implies that because something is common - that most people think something - then it must be sound judgment, essentially if most people think something makes sense then it must be sound judgment. This is practically the original "sheep" or "sheepeople" thought process: everyone else believes it so it must be true. Anyone who makes an appeal to "common sense" to support their argument or idea is really saying "it's true because a lot of people think so." Dumb. 

  • It's common sense that cold water would freeze faster than hot water - it's already cold - but there are ways hot water can freeze quicker than cold water, called the Mpemba effect. It's also common sense that you should wear a coat to not get a cold but colds aren't the result of cold body temperature, you can only get a cold from coming in contact with someone who has a cold. Like COVID-19 a cold spreads through droplets in the air or sometimes from contact. Here's more info on how wearing a coat does not protect you from getting a cold.

  • Sure it might sound crazy and go against common sense that you can get a burn from ice or that in certain conditions a hot drink will cool you down quicker than a cold one, but something sounding crazy to you or it doesn't pass the sniff test that doesn't automatically mean it's wrong and everything that supports it being true is fake news, biased, "marxist indoctrination."

• Nobody should be drawing conclusions or making arguments based on their personal experiences or what they think everybody else believes but this is the kind of thinking common sense promotes. Rather, we should be making sound judgements based on rigorous study of an issue, as some dude in Psychology Today talks about in an article.

Conservative "arguments," especially those found in media like a PragerU video remind be a lot of infomercials:

• Infomercials and conservative media both rely on a spokesperson who is either persuasive or appears to have some credibility who is paid to endorse something they probably would not endorse, believe in, or use if they weren't being paid to promote it. 

  • Infomercials will have a persuasive and energetic spokesperson like Billy Mays or Phil Swift and conservative media will have a persuasive and energetic spokesperson like Sam Crowder or Tucker Carlson.

  • Infomercials will have a spokesperson who appears to have some credibility like a former athlete or a chef (that's probably just an actor pretending to be a chef). Conservative media will also have a spokesperson who appears to be credible like Ben Shapiro or Dennis Prager. 

• Infomercials and conservative media both exaggerate and strawman things in order to make the shit they're peddling more appealing and valid. This is the most important aspect of each, and the main reason why each convinces people to buy the product they're selling. 

  • Infomercials will create an exaggerated strawman of something like cracking egg which yes, can be difficult or messy, but it's not so difficult and messy as the infomercial presents it with the entire eggshell landing in the pan and half the egg missing it entirely and it getting all over you. Similarly, conservatives craft an exaggerated strawman of a leftist belief like "black people face racism and discrimination in America" and present them as something like "liberals think anything negative that happens to a black person is because of racism" or "liberals see racism in everything." Both infomercials and conservative media present this exaggeration as reality when it is not.

• Based on this exaggerated reality, infomercials and conservative media will both present what they're selling - a product or a conservative belief - as what's needed or the right way to address a (exaggerated) problem. 

• Most of the time infomercials and conservative media rely on stupid, reactionary people not being able to think more than a few steps ahead to them buy their shitty product/adopt the shitty views rather than actually making a good product or making a sound argument.

  • Infomercials rely on reactionary idiots who will see the ad and then don't think beyond the immediate reaction of not wanting to experience the exaggerated troubles presented in it, not realizing how they're being manipulated by the exaggerated reality. Similarly, conservative media relies on reactionary idiots who watch it and don't think beyond the immediate reaction of being against the wildly exaggerated and strawmanned leftist belief being presented and argued against. They don't realize how they're being manipulated by the exaggerated strawman of a leftist belief that's so intentionally absurd it's easy to argue against.

    • Infomercial: "That can happen when you try and make eggs? - I don't want that to happen to me, I need this product to make sure that doesn't happen!"

    • Conservative media: "That's what leftists really believe that and want to have that happen? I don't like that, I need to be a conservative to fight against it!"

• Now imagine a person who watches these infomercials constantly, maybe even daily, and buys practically every single product being advertised. They would be so detached from reality because they always use these products - not cracking an egg without the EzEgg, not cutting a tomato without the 360 Samurai Blade - and begin to believe in the exaggerated depictions of simple tasks depicted in the infomercials are what people actually experience. That’s what conservative media does. The people who watch them begin to believe that the exaggerated and strawmanned leftist values, beliefs, and arguments depicted in them are the actual values, beliefs, and arguments that all leftists prescribe to. Thus, they have no interest in actually trying to understand leftist beliefs because they’re presented in such an exaggerated fashion. Just like the reality of cracking an egg or chopping up vegetables isn’t as hard as an infomercial makes them seem, leftists beliefs aren’t as wild, stupid, and crazy as conservative media makes them seem. But if you watch a ton of infomercials and buy the products or watch a ton of conservative media and adopt their beliefs, the exaggerated and strawmanned depictions become your reality.

  • • Essentially, infomercials and conservative media both present a crazy or exaggerated version of something that will convince stupid people that the crazy/exaggerated version actually is reality so they need to buy the product being advertised or adopt the views being advertised in order to reverse the crazy/exaggerated thing or prevent it from happening. 

Avoiding reality 

• The sense of reality for conservatives is dictated by what they're trying to avoid, and if they're trying to avoid reality how can they face it? 

  • Example: Conservatives want to avoid being inconvenienced in any way so when reality suggests that some temporary inconvenience may be necessary - wearing a mask to limit the spread of COVID-19 - they avoid it and can't face it or even admit to what is happening. 

  • Another example: Conservatives want to avoid a Democratic presidency so when reality suggests that a Democrat won the election they avoid it and can't face it or even admit it happened. 

  • Excuses must be made - COVID-19 isn't real, it's just like the flu, masks don't work, the election was rigged - for them to justify this avoidance. Of course, avoiding reality is a lot easier when you have low cognitive ability and a weak mind that leave you vulnerable to emotional appeals. 

• Because conservatives don't often see reality for what it is, they often must come up with hypothetical scenarios ("if scientists and the mainstream media told liberals to eat poop they'd do it," or "if it was Trump that said this the liberals would lose their minds," or the whole thing about trans people going in bathrooms to rape children or whatever) to validate their views. Most leftists don't have to do this and can just point to reality in the form of data, studies, research, history, etc... that validates their views. Obviously, conservatives will fight leftists on this data and claim there is something wrong with it or that it can't be trusted, essentially making excuses as to why they can't face reality - there's that avoidance to reality coming back up.

• Additionally, the more you learn about history and the world, the harder it is to justify and maintain many conservative views. 

Feelings, facts, and excuses

• Perhaps the reason why conservatives are so caught up with this idea of facts versus feelings - aside from their own projection - is because they know, either consciously or subconsciously, that they don’t have sound logic or sufficient facts and evidence to support their views so they must convince with emotions and feelings. By reducing a debate/conversation/argument to feelings and emotions a conservative knows they are more likely to win or come off looking better because they base more of their views off such things and have more experience expressing their views in such a way. It’s like the old adage: don't argue with an idiot, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. This is what a conservative does - knowing they will be embarrassed with facts, evidence, and logic they must reduce a conversation/debate/argument and drag it down to a (very low) sphere where what they have to say sounds more convincing and appealing. When arguing against something you don’t understand - conservatives don’t understand many things, mostly things that support a progressive worldview (or they pretend to not understand it because it doesn’t support their views) - it’s hard to refute it with any facts, logic, or evidence since you don’t understand it, thus a reliance on feelings and logical fallacies (ad hominems, anecdotes, bandwagon, personal incredulity). When faced with facts, evidence, and/or data a conservative will do whatever they can to avoid acknowledging them or the conclusions that can be drawn from them. They’ll intentionally misrepresent the data, play dumb and pretend not to understand, and engage in all sorts of logical fallacies to get their opponent frustrated enough to show that frustration and then claim they’re “triggered” and thus relying on emotion. After all, the conservative was only trying to be fact-based and logical by questioning the data and evidence and that made the libtard get triggered. But in reality, the conservative cares not for the data and evidence and only aims to get a reaction out of their opponent they can then use against them to claim that their opponent bases everything on emotion since they showed emotion, thus “winning” the “argument” without actually engaging with any of the facts, logic, or evidence. Conservatives care more about optics and theatrics - who makes the more entertaining argument rather than the more correct argument - than the truth I guess.

• Conservatives overusing terms like "woke," "sjw," and "virtue signaling" exemplify this reliance on emotionally driven arguments rather than data driven ones. Someone will express a leftist belief that conservatives don't like and they'll invent new words and phrases that act as insults to describe why it's bad ("virtue signaling," "woke") or why the person expressing them is not to be believed ("woke," "social justice warrior") rather than actually giving factual or logical reasons as to why the belief itself is bad or wrong.. All too often you'll see conservatives attempt to "criticize" an ideology by calling it "woke" or a product of "wokeism" or criticize a person by calling them a "social justice warrior" or "woke." The "criticism" ends there - they don't engage with the ideology or arguments presented, nor do they bring up any facts, data, or logic to show why the ideology or person is wrong/bad. It simply is wrong/bad because it's "woke" or the person is a "social justice warrior."

  • Imagine you make a claim like "Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time" and you get two responses from people that disagree: one person just says "that's stupid" while the other responds by saying "I disagree. Brady benefitted from having one of the greatest coaches ever, a consistently great defense, and had some pretty lucky calls in his career. Peyton Manning has more MVPS, some of the greatest statistical seasons by a quarterback in NFL history, and almost always had a subpar defense but still managed to make it to four Super Bowls with four different head coaches." The second is obviously more convincing while the first person can't even articulate why they disagree and may not even know why they disagree past a knee jerk reaction. The only people the first response would be convincing to would be those that already have some bias against Tom Brady or already think Brady is not the best QB of all time. It's just preaching to the choired. Name calling - saying something is "woke" or stupid - is what someone does when they disagree with something but have little to no facts or logic to disprove it. 

• Conservatives may also resort to this because name calling is an appeal to emotion - ethos - rather than an appeal to facts and logic - logos - and it's been established that some Trump voters were swayed more by appeals to emotion than logic. This leads me to believe that conservatives are just making words/insults up to hide the fact that they have little to no facts or logic to support their beliefs or refute leftist beliefs. It is worth mentioning that leftists can engage in this too, calling things they disagree with racist, homophobic, or transphobic but there is a difference: terms like racist, homophobic, and transphobic have been in the vernacular for a while and all have specific and firm definitions while terms like "woke," "wokeism," or "social justice warrior" are all words that have been made up in the past five or six years with vague definitions. 

• Words like "woke" or "deep state" are just words conservatives hide behind when they lack an argument or any convincing evidence. Unlike terms like racism/racist or Nazi that have not been invented in the past five or six years, these words have been specifically invented to mask there is little substance to an argument. Here's my attempt at defining them:

  • "Woke" essentially means a new or controversial idea.

  • "Social justice warrior" refers to a person who cares about something the person calling them a "sjw" does not.

  • "Virtue signaling" is just an observation that someone is expressing an opinion, belief, or value that the person using the term virtue signaling doesn't like. 

• Possibly because they realize that little of what they believe in is supported by facts and logic, conservatives have rebranded empirical evidence from others (studies, research, reviews, etc…) to be seen as conformity. Making decisions based on the recommendations and words of experts or professionals in a certain field or forming opinions on things using large scale data sets is no longer seen as being a reasonable and rational person, rather you’re “conforming” and getting “brainwashed” by the ideas and information presented by other people and believe in these things simply because everyone else does. This is partly projection by conservatives but it also helps them rationalize how so little supports their views and beliefs. Obviously, conservatives are not logically consistent with this belief that having sources to back up one’s claims means they’ve “conformed,” they’ll still tell you 2+2=4 despite the majority of the population believing so and mathematicians teaching it and they’ll still tell you the Earth revolves around the Sun despite most other people believing that and there being a whole lot of research from experts that suggests so. 

• Claiming that others are "sheep" or "brainwashed" for doing something or believing in something many others do is just a way to make one feel special, if not better than others, and differentiate themselves from others without actually developing a sense of identity aside from what they aren't. They don't stand for anything, only oppose a lot. It's like people who base their identity off not watching Star Wars or not liking The Office, just in a way that is more destructive to the real world.

  • If you're too lazy to actually do something meaningful but want an easy way to feel special and different just oppose something that appears to be popular, just call everyone who engages in that thing or believes in that thing a brainwashed sheep. And then all the other lazy people like yourself will just have a big circle jerk over how smart and not brainwashed you all are. 

  • If you take advice from someone or are motivated to do something partly due to someone else's suggestion you're apparently brainwashed sheep who can't think for themselves to these conservative idiots. The hypocrisy is obvious though - conservatives will take almost anything Trump, OAN, Q, et cetera says as fact without thinking for themselves.

  • This whole "brainwashed sheep" thing also works to help conservatives rationalize why there's little evidence or support from data and research in academia that supports their beliefs. A conservative can easily contort their mind to ignore the available evidence presented to them by a leftist by considering that leftist a "brainwashed sheep" because they used other people's writings and research to formulate their opinion rather than "thinking for themselves." Of course, there is no consistency with this because conservatives will just as quickly back up their own views with someone else's works - an article, study, Fox News segment, et cetera - as they would call someone else a "brainwashed sheep" for doing the same thing. 

• I think this stems from conservatives lacking empathy (they can’t imagine or relate to doing research or a study nor can they put themselves in the place of a researcher) which then prevents them from being able to comprehend experiences other than their own, meaning they cannot conceptualize anything different. And different = scary, uncomfortable, confusing, uncertain so it of course must be bad.

Potentially because they're actually stupid and cognitively challenged, because their worldview and beliefs necessitate them to avoid engaging in critical thinking, or a combination of both things, conservatives appear to be very simple-minded and seek to understand things in the most simplistic, reduced terms possible. Thus, they often mistake the complexities of arguments and other things for being intentionally confusing to "brainwash" or manipulate people but in reality, they're often just too dumb to understand it. Conservatives will also use the complexity of an argument as proof that the argument is bad, wrong, or downright crazy. Obviously, this is a very self-centered way of thinking - simply because you don't understand something, that doesn't mean that something is inherently wrong or flawed. 

• This WordPress blog I stumbled upon offers a very good example of what I am talking about. The author makes the claim that the left is "incoherent" and the only piece of evidence they offer for the claim is one sentence from an article written by Judith Butler. The author says that they have no idea what the exert means, and that's as far as their "analysis" of it goes. The argument is literally that because they don't understand one sentence of one article, the entire left is incoherent. Incredible. 

• It's very easy to be dumb and call out things you don't understand as stupid and crazy without adding anything of value or trying to understand the thing you're insulting. That's modern conservatism in a nutshell. Don't understand something? It's seemingly too complicated or sounds crazy? - Call it stupid and crazy, woke and marxist, fake news, and propaganda, and never try to meaningfully engage with it. Use that as your argument against it and excuse for not understanding it rather than you just being dumb and lazy.

Reducing something to a "this or that" is a very simple-minded way of looking at it, but with the lack of critical thinking skills and low cognitive ability conservatives, specifically, Trump voters, have, it would make sense that they can only conceptualize things in the simplest terms. 

It seems like conservatives are unable to think about anything in more than two terms, usually two terms that are extremes. Something is either good or evil, black or white, this or that. Either this politician is a marxist, deep state swamp creature trying to destroy America or a patriot trying to save America. Either you are male or female. There is no such thing as a spectrum, a range, or a scale in the conservative world and it’s a wonder they can even fathom the existence of the color spectrum. You either declare undying fealty to America and love it or if you don’t (you’re neutral to it or you criticize it) you hate it and want to destroy it. It's too bad they can;t conceptualize more than two things at once. 

An example of: "so much for the tolerant left"

You’ll see conservatives argue that leftists are just as hateful or bigoted as they claim conservatives to be and this is a great example of how the conservative mind must view things in extremely simplified terms. Rather than noting that there is a difference between leftist bigotry like “I don’t like conservative people very much” or "I hate this person and they should have their Twitter account banned" and conservative bigotry like “blacks are a huge problem in this country and are subhuman, inferior to the superior white race because of how stupid, lazy, and violent they are” or “Hitler didn’t go far enough the Jews should be wiped from the face of the Earth because they cause all problems” or “gays have corrupted society and are the seed of sin and need to be executed for their crimes of degradation.” Conservatives have to reduce the definition of “bigot” down to the simplest terms in order to rationalize, justify, and be ok with all the hate and bigotry from the right that’s obviously far more extreme than what comes from the left but looking at it in the most simple and reduced terms - this group doesn’t like that group just like that group doesn’t like this group - means conservatives don’t have to grapple with the fact that they’re aligning themselves with such awful people or even acknowledge all the hate and bigotry on their side.

Quality vs quantity 

The need to view things in such simple terms also lets conservatives rationalize the lack of quality evidence they have to support their beliefs. There are two sides to every story, but that doesn't mean every side has the same quantity and quality of evidence backing it. Conservatives recognize that there are some facts that support their views and thus think their views are of equal value and merit to those of leftists. But this really isn’t the case. Imagine this exchange:

• Leftist: Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time.

• Conservative: Oh yeah? Well, Joe Flacco never lost a Super Bowl and Brady lost three. That sure pokes a hole in your narrative."

Although being undefeated in the Super Bowl is certainly a piece of evidence that can be made to support the argument that Joe Flacco is the greatest QB of all time, there is far more evidence for Brady's case. Brady has won seven Super Bowls, three MVPs, made 14 Pro Bowls and 3 All-Pro teams, and has a variety of other records and accolades. There is just a higher quantity of quality evidence to suggest Brady is the GOAT much like there is more quality evidence to support leftist beliefs when compared to conservative beliefs. 

A factor in why conservatives dislike intersectionality 

I also think this need to view things in simple terms is one of the reasons why modern conservatives dislike intersectionality - they lack the cognitive ability (or pretend to lack the cognitive ability and play dumb to ignore other, better arguments) to understand how a given issue can affect a person's different identities. Apparently, having to conceptualize multiple things at once puts such a strain on their puny brains, conservatives avoid the mental anguish by saying things like "we're just all Americans stop trying to divide us."

I think it's fair to say that leftists view politics as an instrument for enacting social change and progress. I don't think many conservatives share this view. Instead, they might view politics as a way to gain power and prevent others from doing so or as a form of entertainment. I go into more detail on each below: 

Politics as Power

I think many conservatives see politics and the government as a way to not only gain and maintain power but prevent others (the left) from doing so. Part of this may be motivated by their inability to conceptualize a relationship where both parties are equal, which I discuss a little more under the "Hierarchy not Equality" section below. I also talk more about their efforts to use politics as a means to oppose the left at every turn rather than doing anything productive or meaningful under the "Being Against the Left and Nothing Else" section on this page. 

Viewing politics as a way to gain and hold on to power is likely also a part of the reason why conservatives are so supportive of the police and military - both exist to help keep things in power and are very obvious forms of power themselves. 

Politics as Entertainment 

Politics can be very boring. Taking the time to look through research, studies, and data, reading up on history, and generally using critical thinking skills like I do when updating and adding to this website can be very time-consuming and monotonous. If you aren't passionate about politics or care generally about other people and how politics can be used to help others, these things won't appeal to you. But what may appeal to you and get you interested in politics is their entertainment value. Whether this is the political theatre and spectacle of a great public speaker like Donald Trump, SJW cringe compilations on YouTube, highly edited man-on-the-street type interviews, or something else, there are plenty of ways conservative "politics" can be more entertaining than what politics are really about. These more entertaining aspects of conservative "politics" attract a certain kind of person I think Karyln Boresynko, who you may remember as the person who said Jewish people chose to die in the Holocaust in a PragerU video, is a good example of this.

• Borysenko wrote a whole blog about the left being full of "doom and gloom" and the first Trump rally she went to being full of energy  - "the atmosphere was jubilant. It was more like attending a rock concert than a political rally. People were genuinely enjoying themselves" -  and people were dancing. So, she just switched around her political views, supported Trump, and became a conservative. All because his rally was more entertaining. She also talks about some leftist people in the knitting community being mean and "bullying" others in the knitting community and also uses this to try and rationalize her switch because I guess people being mean online is just as bad as the genuine bigotry and political violence conservatives account for (this is also evidence of conservatives viewing things in very simplistic, reduced terms)? 

This emphasis on entertainment also attracts a lot of people who are intentionally edgy just for the sake of getting attention to the conservative movement. It's very easy to get attention if you're a character as wild as Trump who says absurd and offensive stuff, so by emulating him and regurgitating the same conservative nonsense, these people can easily get the attention they want (obviously with no regard for the implications or accuracy of what they're saying to get attention). People like this who capitalize on this for financial gain or to increase their social following are commonly referred to as "grifters." 

I theorize that conservatives make arguments in support of tradition for three main reasons:

• Tradition is comforting 

• Tradition upholds the social hierarchies that conservatives see value in maintaining (straight white religious people at the top obviously)

• Arguments in favor of tradition can be vague and are easy to make

What makes tradition so comforting? 

Tradition is comforting, both because historically straight white people have traditionally benefited in social hierarchies and because tradition is familiar. There is no unknown with tradition and the past. So keeping things the same and sticking with traditional eliminates the fear that comes with the unknown and uncertainties of the future. Sticking with tradition also means conservatives don't have to engage in any critical thinking because that's all been done for them by people in the past. 

In a sense, critical thinking is the antithesis of comfort because critical thinking requires an individual to journey through what is, for them, uncharted territory and that can be uncomfortable and distressing. 

• Take your morning routine for example. Everybody 

With critical thinking, you're tackling unknowns and uncertainties head-on because you're dealing with things that are unfamiliar or having to work out a solution to a problem you have never faced. If fear takes hold and prevents someone from this then they can't think critically. Conservatives are familiar with how things are - having to work 40+ a week to scrape by and make ends meet, the top 1% having more wealth than 80% of Americans combined - and that familiarity, even if they're familiar with something that's bad or not that advantageous, means they'll side with what they're familiar with rather than think critically.

Tradition upholds social hierarchies

This one is pretty self-explanatory. Traditional upholds social hierarchies that conservatives would benefit from, considering most conservatives are straight white people. 

Tradition and vageness

"Tradition" is a vague enough term for these people to hide behind rather than just outright saying something like "gay people shouldn't be allowed to get married," or, "blacks shouldn't be treated equally to white people." These people who believe in such things realize that these beliefs are no longer socially acceptable so they can't express them explicitly. Instead, they make arguments in favor of tradition because they can act as a dog whistle to others with a similar mindset but are vague enough to where they can't be pinned down on such bigoted statements and/or specific claims. 

• Take these two arguments for example:

  • "We need to return to tradition because life was better back then," is incredibly vague and a lot less bigoted than...

  • "We need to bring back segregation because it would be a travesty for whites, the superior race, to share spaces with blacks."

Appeals to tradition are also extremely vague because there have been so many different traditions at different times throughout different human cultures so conservatives don't have to provide much evidence.

Please see the "Right wing extremists account for most political violence" section under the Crime Statistics page.

Racism/racial resentment stuff

Research Article from the American Political Science Association - Why Did Women Vote for Donald Trump?

• This article finds that, while party affiliation was a important predictor of men's and women's vote, sexism and racial resentment had a much larger impact on voters and the influence was about the same for men and women. 

  • In regard to Trump voters, "female voters, like their male counterparts, were most powerfully influenced by the degree to which they held racially resentful and sexist attitudes. Thus, the women who voted for Trump did so largely because they were not the equality-minded individuals emphasized in the gender-gap literature."

  • "The results clearly show that racial bias and sexism had virtually identical influences on male and female voters."

• While it draws from previous research, this article also uses the American National Election Study (AENS) like much of the other research it cites and research cited on this website.

• Through their analysis the authors identify that "Men who voted for Trump had significantly higher mean authoritarianism, racism, and sexism scores than men who voted for other candidates," and "Similar gaps existed among women"

  • Additionally: "Trump voters held significantly more anti-egalitarian attitudes than non-Trump voters." Egalitarian meaning "relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities."

• Those who voted for Trump are more likely to have sexist and racial racially resentful attitudes that voters for any other candidate: "Women who supported Trump, for example, were more Republican than those who did not. However, and more important, they held sexist and racially resentful attitudes more similar to males supporting Trump than to their female counterparts supporting other candidates."

• In their analysis the authors found that "Females with the highest levels of racial resentment were more than four times as likely (i.e., 68% versus 16%) to support Trump than those with the lowest levels of racial animosity."

  • Much like previous research this article finds that prejudice was a better predictor of support for Trump than partisanship: "Moreover, there is no evidence to suggest that Trump’s female supporters voted for him primarily because of partisanship rather than prejudice."

• Regarding support for Trump the aforementioned racial resentment and sexism are vastly more important than demographics like age, class, college education, and sex, which were not statistically significant. So when predicting support for Trump most demographics are statistically insignificant, with things like sexism and high levels of racial resentment being better indicators. This reinforces the ideas of other research which finds that attitudes were better indicators of support than demographics.

  • "Despite the prevailing narrative about Trump’s electoral base composed of older, working-class, not-college-educated men, none of these demographic indicators—including gender—attained statistical significance in the full model."

• Ultimately the article concludes that "it appears that attitudes hostile to gender and racial equality were more decisive motivators of vote choice in 2016," and "our analyses instead show that the women and men who supported Trump were strikingly similar with respect to the role of prejudice in determining their vote choice."

Research article from the Political Science Quarterly journal - "Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote for President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism"

• Please note that I cite the full text on SciHub, as the publisher does not offer a free version of the full text. 

• The article touches on some things we already know: Trump attracted a large portion of non educated whites with racism and/or sexism which was effective considering the presence of an African American president (Obama) and the first major-party female nominee (Hillary Clinton).

  • "A second explanation is that Trump’s willingness to make explicitly racist and sexist appeals during the campaign, coupled with the presence of an African American president and the first major-party female nominee, made racism and sexism a dividing line in the vote in this election. This led less educated whites, who tend to exhibit higher levels of sexism and racism, to support Trump, while more educated whites were more supportive of Clinton."

  • "there is reason to think that Trump’s strategy of using explicitly racist and sexist appeals to win over white voters may be followed by candidates in future elections."

  • "Explicit racist and sexist appeals appeared to cost Trump some votes from more educated whites, but it may have won him even more support among whites with less education."

  • This was the biggest polarization between college educated and non college educated whites for a Republican candidate going back to 1980 and it's the largest gap since 1964 (as seen below in Figure 20).

• Using two national surveys from the 2016 election the article finds "that while economic considerations were an important part of the story, racial attitudes and sexism were much more strongly related to support for Trump; these attitudes explain at least two-thirds of the education gap among white voters in the 2016 presidential election."

• Support for Trump was better predicted by sexism and denial of racism than economic factors: "While the economic variables in our models were significantly associated with vote choice, those effects were dwarfed by the relationship between hostile sexism and denial of racism and voting for Trump."

  • Essentially, the more sexist or racist/racially resentful/dumb a person is the more likely they would support Trump.

  • "these effects hold even when we control for other related concepts, such as authoritarianism, populism, and stereotyping toward racial and ethnic minorities."

• After their analysis of the two national surveys the authors conclude that "The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of whites based on education. In this article, we have demonstrated that very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less educated whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be associated with sexism and denial of racism, especially among whites without college degrees."

Other stuff

Article from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America - "Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy"

• This article, written by Vanderbilt University political scientist Larry Bartels, suggests that Republicans value whiteness over democracy. Note here that "democratic" is not used to denote the Democratic party, but democracy and the policies and ideals that align with it.

• In the abstract, the article states that "The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism on Republicans’ commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics." In layman's terms, ethnic antagonism - Republican's feelings towards nonwhites like immigrants, Latino individuals, and black individuals - makes Republicans hold more antidemocratic beliefs. 

  • The author notes that they measure ethnic antagonism by "incorporating not only unfavorable feelings toward Muslims, immigrants, and other out-groups, but also—and especially—concerns about these groups’ political and social claims." Essentially ethnic antagonism means racial resentment.

• This article analyses the "responses of 1,151 Republican identifiers and Republican-leaning Independents interviewed in January 2020 to survey items contemplating transgressions of a variety of essential democratic principles, including the rejection of violence in pursuit of political ends and respect for the rule of law and the outcomes of elections" and found that many respondents endorse undemocratic positions. 

• In it's analysis the article finds that "in every case the factor most strongly associated with support for antidemocratic sentiments is ethnic antagonism," and the "results suggest that ethnic antagonism has a substantial negative effect on Republicans’ commitment to democracy."

• The article notes a strong association between ethnic antagonism and antidemocratic attitudes. In every Republican subgroup analyzed - men, women, people with and without college educations, people in cities, people in rural areas, those with more favorable views of Trump, those with less favorable views of Trump, those with more favorable views of Fox News, those with less favorable views of Fox News, those with more favorable views of the National Rifle Association, those with less favorable views of the NRA - ethnic antagonism is strongly related to antidemocratic attitudes, even after statistically controlling for other factors. 

  • "Nor is the strong association between ethnic antagonism and antidemocratic attitudes limited to specific segments of the Republican rank-and-file."

  • "Some of the parameter estimates are significantly larger for men, people with college education, and (especially) those most favorable toward the NRA. However, in every subgroup ethnic antagonism is strongly related to antidemocratic attitudes, even after statistically controlling for other factors."

• In the discussion section of the article, the author notes that antidemocratic attitudes are most likely associated, or primarily attributed, to ethnic antagonism: "The support expressed by many Republicans for violations of a variety of crucial democratic norms is primarily attributable not to partisan affect, enthusiasm for President Trump, political cynicism, economic conservatism, or general cultural conservatism, but to what I have termed ethnic antagonism."

• Ethnic antagonism is hardly as pronounced in Democrats: "The powerful effects of ethnic antagonism on Republicans’ antidemocratic attitudes underscore the extent to which this particular threat to democratic values is concentrated in the contemporary Republican Party. Seventy-eight percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents in the 2020 survey had ethnic antagonism scores below the fifth percentile of the Republican distribution (−1.43), while 98% had scores below the Republican average."

  • "In this respect, among others, the attitudes of Republicans and Democrats are sharply polarized."

• Essentially, the more likely a Republican is to see immigration, or darker skinned people in general, as a threat to the "traditional American way of life" the more likely they are to threaten that tradition American way of life themselves by holding antidemocratic attitudes. 

  • "The relationship reported here between ethnic antagonism and expressions of support for violations of key democratic norms suggests that the effects of millions of White Americans’ concerns regarding the prospect of demographic, social, and political change may not be limited to the electoral sphere."

  • "it is not fanciful to suppose that expressive support for bending the rules or resorting to force to protect one’s 'way of life' is consequential for actual behavior—or that it could become even more consequential under inflammatory circumstances"

Research from the Group Process and Intergroup Relations journal - "The threat of increasing diversity: Why many White Americans support Trump in the 2016 presidential election"

• The abstract states things pretty clearly: "This experiment demonstrates that the changing racial demographics of America contribute to Trump’s success as a presidential candidate among White Americans whose race/ethnicity is central to their identity. Reminding White Americans high in ethnic identification that non-White racial groups will outnumber Whites in the United States by 2042 caused them to become more concerned about the declining status and influence of White Americans as a group (i.e., experience group status threat), and caused them to report increased support for Trump and anti-immigrant policies, as well as greater opposition to political correctness."

• The researchers set out to test what effect reminding white Americans about diversity has on them - " the current study tested experimentally whether reminding White Americans of the increasing racial diversity in the US: (a) affects their political preferences in the U.S. presidential elections, (b) whether it does so by increasing group status threat, and (c) whether ethnic identification and/or political party affiliation moderates these effects" - using data collected from a survey. 

• The researchers found that "Whites high in ethnic identification reported marginally greater positivity towards Trump and a significantly greater likelihood of voting for Trump," and participants who read a press release which indicated that racial minorities will outnumber non-Hispanic Whites in the US by 2042 instead of one which just talked about geographic mobility had "increased group status threat, support for Trump, and support for anti-immigrant policies, and somewhat (but not significantly) decreased support for Sanders, but only among Whites high in ethnic identification."

• The research touches on how whites seem to view racism as a zero-sum game: "Many White Americans in the US view race relations as 'zero-sum,' in which status gains for minorities means status loss for Whites and less bias against minorities means more bias against Whites. The belief that Whites are losing out to ethnic minorities is particularly prevalent among Trump supporters." Essentially, some white people are scared that they will become a minority in America and because of their views on racism then believe that society will treat them much worse simply because they are in the minority so they'll endorse more conservative political views and show greater fear/anger towards minority groups, among other things. Damn these mfs are obsessed with race.

Research Article from the Association of Critical Psychology - The Anger Games: Who Voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Election, and Why?

• Please note that I cite the full text on SciHub, as the publisher does not offer a free version of the full text. 

• The article uses data from the 2016 American Election National Study (AENS) to create a "multifaceted" profile of the white individuals who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. They article ultimately finds that Trump voters "voted for him mainly because they share his prejudices, not because they’re financially stressed." Essentially, a sharing Trump's prejudices was one the best, if not the best, predictor of support for Donald Trump in the 2016 election. An intolerant attitude is a better predictor of support for Trump than any demographic like class, age, education, sex, or financial situation: "The larger story of the 2016 election is that attitudes came to the fore and eclipsed demographics."

• In their analysis of the 2016 AENS data the authors note that prejudice was "highly predictive" of support for Trump. They also find that authoritarianism, defined as taking aim at despised groups and "support for intolerant leaders, because they are intolerant," was strongly associated with support for Trump.

  • Sharing Trump's prejudices was a better predictor of support for him than class background, age, financial situation, sex, or education level: "Trump’s white base is more readily found among voters who want domineering and intolerant leaders than among voters of any particular class background. Whether rich or poor, young or old, male or female, college or non-college educated, white voters supported Trump in 2016 when they shared his prejudices, and very seldom otherwise."

  • More on how attitudes and prejudice(s) were great predictors of support for Trump: "The decisive reason that white, male, older and less educated voters were disproportionately pro-Trump is that they shared his prejudices and wanted domineering, aggressive leaders more often than other voters did. Why these prejudices and preferences are unevenly distributed remains to be explained. But what we know now is that these attitudes are found across the demographic spectrum, and that wherever they appear, they prompt support for Donald Trump."

• The article references a study which found that 72% of Trump supporters agreed with the following statement: "Because things have gotten so far off track in this country, we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right." So much for the party of law and order. 

• As previous research has shown, Trump's base is uneducated and through their analysis the authors find that "Less educated voters show more negativity toward every stigmatized group at every percentile," particularly women and minorities. So essentially, less educated voters, who are more likely to be voters who are pro-Trump, have negative attitudes towards women and minorities. 

• These eight attitudes best predicted support for Trump: support for domineering leaders; fundamentalism; prejudice against immigrants, African Americans, Muslims, and women and pessimism about the economy.

  • "Overall, what we see is that a spectrum of attitudes inspired pro-Trump voting, and that many of these attitudes are particularly common among older, less educated, and male voters."

Research Article from Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology - "Authoritarianism, Outgroup Threat, and Support for Antidemocratic Policies"

• In the abstract, the article states that, through the author's research and data analysis, "those higher in authoritarianism were more conservative, more Republican, more likely to support Trump, and more likely to perceive Mexicans and Muslims as threatening. In addition, we found that those high in authoritarianism and outgroup threat perception were more likely to support antidemocratic policies targeting outgroups (such as implementing a Muslim registry and profiling Mexicans) and to abandon the rule of law by postponing elections and fast-tracking the deportation of illegal immigrants."

  • A definition of authoritarianism can include enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. The authors define it as "an ideology that favors conformity, deference to authority, and conventional values—as well as supports harsh punishment for those who violate ingroup norms and authorities." The authors also note that "authoritarians tend to support antidemocratic policies such as restrictions on civil liberties and the targeting of 'non-conforming' minorities."

    • "In short, those high in authoritarianism are less supportive of democratic norms and are more likely to perceive outgroups as threatening."

    • "authoritarianism reliably correlates with perceptions of outgroups as threatening and predicts prejudice, political intolerance, and antidemocratic tendencies."

  • Essentially, conservatives, Republicans, and those who support Trump are very likely to have political intolerance, antidemocratic attitudes, advocate for losses of personal freedoms due to their fear of an others.

• In the abstract the authors also note that "while perceptions of outgroup threat explain more unique variance for implicitly antidemocratic policies (those where the public might not realize that the policies violated democratic norms), authoritarianism explained more unique variance in support of more explicitly antidemocratic policies (those where the public knew the policies were unconstitutional." So, since it was just established that those who are conservative, Republican, and support Trump are very likely to support Trump, this means that many conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters support explicitly antidemocratic policies that infringe on personal freedoms. 

• As examples of some of Trump's authoritarianism, the article notes his previous comments on Muslims - "during the campaign Trump suggested that the U.S. government should implement surveillance of U.S. mosques, should ban Muslim immigration, and should implement a Muslim registry" - and Mexicans - "he launched his presidential campaign by implying that many Mexican immigrants were drug dealers, criminals, and rapists." 

  • The article goes on to suggest that those who support Trump "may be receptive to implementing policies that violate democratic norms by targeting outgroups based on their ethnic or religious identity." Basically the same thing as stated above in the abstract: that many conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters support explicitly antidemocratic policies that infringe on personal freedoms.

• To reach their conclusions, the authors analyzed answers from two surveys, one which was conducted in late 2015 through early 2016 (comprised of mostly white men and participants were roughly equally Democrat or Republican) and another which was conducted from late 2017 through early 2018 (comprised mostly white women and participants were about equally liberal and conservative). 

• Through their analysis, the authors conclude that measures of authoritarianism are positively correlated with Republicans and conservatives. In all of the regression models, authoritarianism was a significant predictor of support for implicitly and explicitly antidemocratic policies.  

  • "In all regression models, both authoritarianism and threat perceptions were significant, unique predictors of support for implicitly antidemocratic policies."

  • "In every regression, authoritarianism and perceptions of threat were significant, unique predictors of a willingness to support explicitly antidemocratic policies that challenge the rule of law."

• The article finds that aggression and conventionalism are "significant unique predictors" of support for antidemocratic policies. The article also notes that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to be higher in aggression and conventionalism. 

  • "when regressing on support for a variety of implicitly and explicitly antidemocratic policies, aggression and conventionalism consistently emerged as significant unique predictors"

  • "These same two components of authoritarianism were also the primary contributors for ideology and partisanship, with those higher in aggression and conventionalism being more likely to self-identify as conservative and Republican."

  • "Furthermore, both aggression and conventionalism are significant contributors to political affiliations as a conservative and as a Republican."

  • So essentially Republicans and conservatives are more likely to be high in aggression and conventionalism, thus making them more likely to support antidemocratic policies. 

• Overall, the results of the analysis show that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to be authoritarian. 

  • "Our results show that ideology and partisanship are moderately correlated with authoritarianism, with those who are more conservative and more strongly Republican more likely to be higher in authoritarianism." Those who are high in authoritarianism are also more likely to support antidemocratic policies: "we find that those high in authoritarianism are more likely to support policies that restrict the rights of outgroup members or that accept an infringement on the rule of law in the face of perceived outgroup threat."

    • "Support for these more explicitly antidemocratic hypothetical policies involving violations of the rule of law draws more on authoritarianism beliefs than on outgroup threat."

  • Additionally, the results show that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to find Muslims and Mexicans threatening: "We have also shown that perceptions of outgroups as threatening are strongly related with political affiliations. That is, conservatives and Republicans are more likely to perceive Muslims and Mexicans as threatening."

Research from the Sociology of Religion Journal - "Keep America Christian (and White): Christian Nationalism, Fear of Ethnoracial Outsiders, and Intention to Vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 Presidential Election"

• Using data from the 2019 administration of the Chapman University Survey of American Fears (CSAF), which has been collected annually since 2014, with the goal of documenting a wide variety of social, political, and psychological fears among the American public, this research finds that the strongest predictors of support for Trump were political party, xenophobia, a negative association with identifying as African America, political ideology, Christian nationalism, and Islamophobia. 

• Regarding Christian Nationalism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia: "Strong, positive relationships between each of these variables and Trump voting are readily apparent. Notably, for all three measures, of respondents who scored at the maximum on the respective indices, 100% reported an intention to vote for Trump. The strongest relationship is found for the xenophobia index"

• The research also finds that self-identifying as black is negatively associated with Trump: "Liberal political views (b = −.784; p < .001) and Democratic partisan identification (b = −1.232; p < .001), as well as self-identification as black (b = −2.422; p < .001) or Hispanic (b = −1.359; p < .001) are all strongly and significantly related to lower odds of Trump voting. Compared to African Americans, white Americans have 11 times higher odds of intending to vote for Trump, a reflection of the fact that only 3.3% of black respondents reported they would vote for Trump."

A survey from the American Survey Center found that 39% of Republicans believe violence is necessary if a leader "fails to act," whereas only 17% of Democrats believe political violence is necessary. This means that Republicans are 2.3x more likely than Democrats to endorse political violence. 

Despite often arguing against having a victim mentality and saying things like "no one is oppressed in America," or "if you allow yourself to become a victim then you become your own oppressor," conservatives constantly try and convince others of how oppressed they are and how they're so discriminated against. You can see this below in Figures 1 and 4. I think this is mainly for two reasons - 1). conservatives see minority groups that have been oppressed and discriminated against, or currently are being oppressed and discriminated against getting "special privileges" and they want in on it, and 2). perpetual victimhood is what conservatives use to justify the violence they enact on others and the stuff they fight for and enact can only be justified to them if they are constantly the victim. 

Commonly you'll see conservatives claiming victim status after being banned from a social media platform because they violated the platform's terms of service or saying they're oppressed and discriminated against because a store requires masks to enter or a stadium requires attendees be vaccinated against COVID-19. They'll also use a number of things as proof that there is some sinister plot to oppress them, destroy America, bring socialism to America, et cetera.

• Imagine a group of people who don't think germs exist and take every commercial for laundry or dish soap, every "wash your hands" signs in public restrooms, every program that tries to teach kids the importance of washing their hands correctly, the soap in public restrooms, and the soap sold at stores as evidence of specifically targeted brainwashing and propaganda that's aimed to oppress them and eradicate their way of life or society as a whole with a sinister group of evil people behind it all. That's kinda what today's conservatives are like.

Here are some examples of conservatives claiming to be victims

• Link - Trump calls him and his supporters "victims." 

• Link - Charlie Kirk claims that conservatives are "oppressed." Interestingly, he had tweeted that people in America are not oppressed and not victims, that tweet can be viewed here.

• Link and Link - Anti vaxxers wear yellow stars of David, comparing themselves as "victims" of exercising their right not to get a vaccine to Jewish people in the Holocaust. 

• Link - PragerU says victim mentality is bad, yet engages in it and uses it to advertise themselves.  

• Link - Josh Hawley tells the Washington Post not to censor, cancel, or silence him despite being given the platform to speak at that very moment by the Washington Post. 

• Link - Trump says he was a "victim" because he underwent a COVID-19 test. 

• Link - Trump engages in victim mentality, calling an impeachment trial a "witch hunt."

• Link - Trump engages in victim mentality, calling an impeachment inquiry a "lynching."

• Link - Trump engages in victim mentality, saying he is a victim of "political persecution" and a "witch hunt" regarding an inquiry into his tax returns that the Supreme Court opened the door for.

• Link - Matt Gaetz engages in victim mentality when he claims to be a victim of leaks, lies, falsehoods, and smears when under investigation for sex trafficking and having sex with a 17 year old girl. 

• Link - Matt Gaetz engages in victim mentality and claims he is the victim of extortion.

Conservatives will talk about how Planned Parenthood/abortion is bad because Planned Parenthood's founder Margaret Sander potentially believed in eugenics and was racist, thus making modern Planned Parenthood and all abortion bad, but then won't apply this logic to America which was founded by slaveholders who apparently wrote founding documents specifically and intentionally to exclude black people at a time when black people were considered property and only white men who owned land could vote.

Conservatives will use suicide stats to make fun of trans people or as evidence that they're degenerate but not do the same with white suicide statistics that are higher than the national average. 

Conservatives will talk about how "woke" people and "wokesim" is a problem in the US and how "woke" people are brainwashed or whatever but then also talk about how Americans need to "wake up" to "the truth" or "wake up" from liberal brainwashing. One of the Q Anon slogans is literally "The Great Awakening." Does waking up not make someone "woke?"

Conservatives will talk about how censorship is bad and whine about it but then censor ideas they don't like such as Critical Race Theory or outright ban things because a company said something they don't like (like Coke). 

Conservatives will make the arguments like "education has become marxist brainwashing and if you go to college you'll be indoctrinated to become a woke sjw marxist! they've infiltrated all of society and even the government! they are going to destroy America!" but then are amazed at how Joe Biden was elected president because "wtf how could commie China Joe Biden be the most popular president ever? I don't believe anybody would vote for him!"

Conservatives will call certain public safety mandates or recommendations from the government that limits their freedom like when the government asked people to stay in their homes or wear a mask in public to control/prevent the spread of COVID-19 "tyrannical" and that they feel like Jewish people in Nazi Germany because of how tyrannical the government is being but then won't say a word when the government shuts down a roadway for public safety reasons to prevent car accidents due to hazardous weather conditions or construction, totally restricting their right to move freely. 

Conservatives will say that COVID-19 is not scary and just like the flu but they'll also say that COVID-19 was engineered by China/the Democrats/the Deep State as an attack on Trump and/or America.

Conservatives will claim they love America but also claim they need guns to protect themselves from America's government. Are they in an abusive relationship with America and they're too scared to leave?

Conservatives will talk about how big corporations, Big Tech, and people like Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey - the elite - are a problem but also champion capitalism and free markets that allow the very things they complain about. 

Conservatives say that you shouldn't listen to the government and shouldn't let the government tell you how to live - instead be free! - but then campaign for the government to make abortion illegal and a variety of other things. Based on their own logic, if the US government were to ban abortion and tell people not to get them then every woman should be getting an abortion since they should just be free and not worry about what the government is telling them to do.

Conservatives hate conformity and say not to conform but then conform to the teachings and commandments of a two thousand-year-old book and expect their government to conform to and enforce the teachings of the book.

Virtue signaling

Saying something is “virtue signaling” is hardly criticism, it’s just an observation that parades as criticism and just relies on a person's preconceived notions and bigotry to make them feel as though it’s a legitimate argument. Virtue signaling is really just expressing an opinion or belief publicly. For example, if I were to be wearing a t-shirt that says “racism is bad,” I am obviously making it known that I believe racism to be bad. Saying I’m “virtue signaling” is just acknowledging that I’m doing it. Same with someone who has any political bumper sticker on their car, a sticker on their laptop, or a sign in their yard. It’s labeling an action and that action is publicly making something a person believes in known. This is hardly criticism and it doesn’t even address whatever message or argument the “racism is bad” shirt is making. Just pointing out that a person publicly displays their belief on a shirt or yard sign or bumper sticker is not a criticism of that belief. This would be like labeling the action of making noises like “mmm mmm mmhhh” while eating something good as “pallet signaling” and thinking it critiques the food the person is eating. Those disagreeing with the message of the shirt - that racism is bad - now believe that the wearer is not wearing the t-shirt because they genuinely agree with the sentiment but also to show off how much better they are than everyone else. It’s then assumed that the person wearing the “racism is bad” t-shirt doesn’t actually believe that racism is bad and is just wearing it to get other people’s approval and stuff. So if 90% of the world’s population owned a shirt that said “racism is bad” those disagreeing with that message can now take it not as a sign that the majority of the world actually thinks racism is bad (the actual, logical meaning that can be derived from this) but as a sign that 90% of the world is pretending to think racism is bad. Thus, this person has been brainfucked to believe that all signs of the world supporting and believing in something they disagree with is actually proof that the majority of the world agrees with them but are just too scared or whatever to admit it. This is dumb. A person may wear a t-shirt or put a sticker on their car or laptop that says “racism is bad” for the same reason they’d wear a t-shirt with their favorite football team’s logo on it or put a sticker with something from their favorite movie on it on their car - they just want something that expresses something they like or consider to be a big part of who they are as a person. It’s common for people to purchase products with messages they agree with or things they like on it.

"When you're accustomed to privilege..."

Modern conservatives are an embodiment of the “equality is oppression when you’ve been accustomed to privilege" quote because they’ll flip out acting like the world as they know it is ending and make huge deals out of being mildly inconvenienced (stores asking people to wear masks) or when a person in government recommends or advocates for something they dislike (Biden advocating for being getting the COVID vaccine). This is not to say that conservatives are privileged over leftists or some other political/social group but their behavior does remind me of a spoiled, entitled rich kid who thinks realities of the real world like having to wait for something rather than skip the line or having to clean up their own room rather than having a maid do it is some horrible struggle and discrimination or oppression to the highest degree.

• In a way, conservatives are like a child throwing a tantrum after being told they have to eat their veggies. 

Trumpism and the Q Anon "cult" recruitment

While anyone is vulnerable to "brainwashing" or "indoctrination" there are select groups that tend to be more vulnerable: dumb and/or ignorant people, people who are easily emotionally manipulated, and those left vulnerable due to life events (those who at a vulnerable time in their lives due to life events like financial instability, divorce, will often be easy to emotionally manipulate). We know that support for Trump is related to low cognitive ability and susceptibility to emotional appeals so that explains some of the Trump/Q Anon base but what about the third group? Well, we know that a majority of people who are recruited to cults were approached at a vulnerable moment in their life (this study finds that these factors influence a person's susceptibility to join a cult: ego-weakness and emotional vulnerability, tenuous or nonexistent family support, history of child abuse or neglect, proclivities to substance abuse, debilitating stress and crises, and intolerable socioeconomic conditions). The cult presents itself as an answer to the person's prayers or an answer to their questions. The Trump supporter in this video who says a guy stole his home, destroyed and separated his family, and destroyed his business is a good example of that. The Trump/Q Anon "cult" does those things in addition to presenting that whatever bad things that happened in a person's life to put them in a vulnerable moment, not as a singular one-off occurrence that sucks but part of a deliberate and calculated attack staged by an “other” that is the enemy trying to ruin that person's way of life, not only giving them a family and community but an invisible enemy that is always present to fight against. 

Candace Owens and "Blexit"

Candace Owens’ whole shtick is just telling black people that they don’t have to be Democrats. That’s it, that’s the extent of the argument. There’s no reasoning she offers, just the fact that you have a choice to be Republican is the argument for why a black person should be a Republican. It would be like going up to someone eating McDonald's and saying “you could be eating Burger King” and in response to them inquiring why they should eat at Burger King that person just says “because you could be eating Burger King.” There is no reason, evidence, or logic Candace Owens offers as to why a black person should be a Republican other than the fact that they could be a Republican. She's not offering anything new she's just reminding a person of a choice that they have always had but treating it like a huge revelation.

The media

Conservatives will talk about how the media shouldn't be trusted, the media is the enemy of the people, the media lies to people every day, and that people who listen to the media are "brainwashed sheep" but then consume media themselves and praise such media (PragerU, TPUSA, etc…) for “telling the truth.” Conservatives will even use forms of media to tell people how the media lies, that it can't be trusted, and that it's the enemy of the people. How stupid do they think their audience is (to be fair that audience is likely very stupid). This is just another form of cognitive dissonance - they’re claiming that the media lies but then accepting the “truths” they want to hear presented by the media that keeps them in their echo chamber. So it’s essentially "the media lies but only when it says something that I don’t believe in or something that doesn’t back up my beliefs/feelings."