> protect their community from infiltrators and subversives
They see anybody who doesn't toe the Trump line as a brigader from r/politics. Everything is a conspiracy. But there are a number of very moderate conservatives that (for whatever reason) continue to call r/conservative their home, and they respond positively when something sane gets posted. I've had a couple great conversations over there with those folks. I just avoid the endless meme threads and other trashy pointless tribal gunk.
I find it hard to ridicule conservatives for the members that do them significant disservice through all the rather unhealthy obsessive conspiracy stuff because no conspiracy nonsense has been likely more amplified over about 4 years total at a nonstop pace, day in and day out by the propaganda organs of state than the Russian collusion conspiracy used to try to cap Trump at his knees.
But let's also not forget that the government clearly does engage in rather evil conspiracies … Iraq WMD, anyone? And there are hundreds more proven conspiracies.
What we are ally seeing here is the onset of a dissolution and dissolving of our social and national cohesion. It was a clear and provable risk from immigration and diversity as shown for decades in research after research from evidence all over the globe and history, but her we are. Social cohesion has been replaced by not only disintegration, but also by a destruction of the methods and ideals that unified the USA before. All that I have read and studied on the topic over years, essentially condemns the USA to breaking up absent of increasing levels of control and repression and imposition of a fake kind of unification around hollow ideals and values not shared among the actual people and cultures that now inhabit the the territory of the former USA (a bit of foreshadowing there).
I would love to hear theories on how you keep what are essentially distinct colonies of foreign nationals (by ethnicity) across the country in a cohesive jurisdiction like the USA, especially when you have an increasingly and justifiably angered native population that is noticing that the promise of utopia through immigration was a con job to disenfranchise them of what all people of the world would perceive as their birth right, the right to keep what those before us created for those after them. I just don't see it happening without extreme repression, which of course will see escalating reaction that will either end in victory or vanquish, for one side or another.
I feel bad for normal conservatives. They clearly exist, but they're getting quiet because the brand is severely tarnished right now. Then the only people talking are the Trump supporters, and the loop is reinforced.
I think you are mistaking something. Conservatism is not a brand. But what you are referring to is actually the vilification of the people who insist on wanting to keep (something they see as a right) what they have and built or was built for them by people who freely gave it to them. I suspect your misunderstanding of what conservatism is, is also a driving force that will destabilize things further because it is such a fundamental misunderstanding that conservatism is not like the brand of the Democratic party.
You appear to think of it as some kind of opposing sports team. I know the following will incense a lot of people here, but reality though is that the basic dualism is those how have and built something wanting to keep that; while those who did not build or have, want to acquire and take what they did not contribute to, build, or have. A thief is a person that wants what he did not create, deserve, or earn; yet wants to benefit from (or he would not steal it).
Essentially a person with such a mindset is a "liberal" with other people's things, opposed to a conservative that wants to keep what he earned as well as you keep what you legitimately earned. It's really just age old conflict captured in Aesop's fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper. That model manifests itself in the real world through things like the "communists" who want to take over what they don't understand and did not build and yet think they can operate, let alone even maintain; the people that object to huge student loans they willingly agreed to and want to benefit from, while not wanting to pay the cost; or immigrants to anywhere who want to receive what is essentially a part of the wealth and what others of a country built, not only zero cost, but to immense benefit and profit at the cost of the local population.
I understand what you’re trying to say, but let’s remember, the position of many who want higher taxes is that a lot of things some of those conservatives “built” was actually built by someone else and they also heavily rely on a massive infrastructure that is built and maintained by all of us.
Those conservatives absolutely rely on other peoples stuff just as much as liberals.
It isn’t nearly as cut and dry as a couple small paragraphs in a forum may make it out to be.
Interesting, are there lots of people who see it in these terms? It's very favorable to conservatives, and not so much to liberals, which leads me to suspect it is more wishful thinking than an accurate depiction of partisan politics. It looks a lot like what I'd expect someone to write if they weren't arguing in good faith, but were in fact playing this discussion like a team sport.
They see anybody who doesn't toe the Trump line as a brigader from r/politics. Everything is a conspiracy. But there are a number of very moderate conservatives that (for whatever reason) continue to call r/conservative their home, and they respond positively when something sane gets posted. I've had a couple great conversations over there with those folks. I just avoid the endless meme threads and other trashy pointless tribal gunk.