Conservative Logic - Tumblr Posts

the foundation of a lot of conservative thought is that there is some kind of magical force keeping the amount of suffering in the world constant, and that any effort that would broadly reduce suffering a great deal can be safely dismissed as being useless or untenable without examining it very closely.

This goes along with a very deep fear or intuition that something very very bad will happen if people do not suffer enough. It is a belief that the innately corrupt aspects of human nature will run rampant without "punishment" both in the strict sense and in a bigger, more general sense of "being taught a lesson" about how the world is harsh and cruel.

Conservatives who aren't, like, openly sadistic monsters can only resolve the cognitive dissonance by placing a very sharp dividing line between "kind/good/compassionate behavior as an individual" and "things that would improve society."

You, as a conservative individual, can donate to a charity or do something nice for someone, but this cannot be part of any responsibility you have as a member of your society. An individual can be kind, but it is either necessary to make sure the society individuals belong to is cruel, or at least necessary not to try to make it less cruel.

Conservative folks that don't consciously embrace cruelty must rely on historical illiteracy to call upon a monolithic " The Good Old Days" where the cruel and coercive aspects of society were stable and accepted enough that they were tempered by the benefits of true absolute conformity to traditional morality and gender roles+ the pleasures of a Simple Homesteading Life.

They rationalize coercive social standards through the argument that it only FEELS like coercion if you are introduced to another possibility, and if you immediately go limp in the jaws of the role predetermined for you, you will never want anything else. Women for instance were all perfectly happy being submissive housewives, back when there was no choice socially or legally. Everyone would be straight if no one was ever exposed to a happy openly gay person.

There is also a deep conviction that the human brain can only handle a small amount of pleasure or happiness above a neutral baseline, and "too much" sexual pleasure or mercy or relief from pain always either comes from or causes something grotesquely evil.

Their view of pleasure and happiness is very cynical and economic Law of Equivalent Exchange type stuff. Often, lots of sexual things are evil in the eyes of these people basically because they offer a suspicious amount of pleasure with no obvious "cost." They will SAY that sexual deviance is all these terrible things, but they believe that "deviant" sex feels good—too good, in fact, that's why it's that much more evil.

A lot of "trad" losers believe masturbation is from Satan because their schema for understanding the world can't accommodate the idea of something that gives you pleasure for "free," without hurting someone else or hurting you. For that pleasure to be "given" to you, it has to be "taken" from somewhere else (your soul or whatever)

It also works in reverse: the more you suffer in the present, through Hard Work or whatever, the more Good you will reap. It's a big reason why war and dying in combat are so romanticized by these people: that kind of Extreme Bad unlocks a level of Good not accessible otherwise (Freedom🎆🇺🇸)

real turd of an ideology all things considered

They'd argue that a fully passing trans woman is more of a man than a cis man that thinks women deserve rights. It's a nonsense ideology based on hatred of the Other.

Honestly I a minor thing that conservatives do that I find incredibly telling about their psychology is they'll take adjectives that describe minority groups and use them as nouns.

Instead of saying "a black person" they'll say "a black"

Instead of "a gay person" they'll say "a gay"

Instead of "a transgender person" they'll say "a transgender" (well, when they don't just say a slur)

I don't think it's a conscious thing, but I think it tells us a lot about the conservative mindset. They don't view us as people - they view us as an out group fundamentally separated from personhood that fully encapsulates who and what we are and makes us innately and radically different from "normal people".

This was further borne out in an argument I got into with a conservative back when I still had a Twitter account. The guy steadfastly refused to accept the idea that a trans person could be a normal person because trans people are only 1% of the population. When I pointed out that literally everyone has things about them that are statistically very rare, his only response was to scream incoherently at me about self-mutilation and grooming children.

Thinking abt that time where I heard someone on the bus say

"yeah I wont call her Eric, her name is [my deadname], people cant just change their names"

misgendering me for no reason? low blow

my dad was born in Germany and has a German name, but when he moved to America, he changed his name to an American one. Is that bad too? Or just me changing my name, since I'm trans?

I found this on Facebook. Conservatives, who are all about "stop sexualizing children", seemed awfully silent in the comments.

But God forbid a teacher put a rainbow flag in a classroom.

It actually confounds me, just how many conservatives are Star Wars, Star Trek, and Lord of the Rings fans.

Until you look through their eyes that value Image over Substance, it's hard to understand.

When you look at the packaging, rather than the message, then you can see that what conservatives enjoy is the AESTHETIC…the image of a space-going "military" (Star Trek), and the idea of "being a rebbull" (Star Wars)…the attachment to a storied ancient european history that they can resurrect and install as the default, along with a king to rule over all peoples (Lord of the Rings).

This is despite the fact that they themselves would have the rebels tortured and killed; and have tried to use the one ring as Boromir so mistakenly insisted. And despite the fact that conservatives tend to be so completely incurious and so quick to demonize and destroy difference; that they either would never leave the planet in the first place, or, would start a war with the very first alien species they ever met! 😅

Conservatives have, 10,000%, wrapped up a bunch of truly awful, harmful relationship behaviors, and feverishly labeled it "tradition"…

It's like…."Grandpa, 'tradition' is food, clothing, holidays, folktales, music, language, and things of that cultural nature. What you have ahold of there is lack of self-awareness, consistent consent and boundary violations, and probable jail time. 😭 Now, let's get you to a therapist!"

I think what disturbs me most about a lot of the religious right whenever they debate atheists on the existence of god, is that a lot of them are so incredibly desperate to get to the 'Yes, a god exists!' conclusion -- NOT because it means that we can understand the universe and ourselves better, or that we can make life better for everyone because of it -- but so they can then relax, and finally say, guilt free: "And that's why women need to be slaves in a kitchen with no goals or dreams of their own"; or, "And that's why trans and LGBT+ folk aren't allowed to be a part of society"; or, "And that's why we need to treat children like they're 'mini mes' that have no identity or interiority of their own!"; or, "And that's why we should be allowed to completely trash this planet with no regard for other species, nor even ourselves!"

Honestly, if you look at the way Israeli settlers behave, their society looks like a conservative's wet dream.

The racism is BLATANT, and taught directly to children, in schools. Their history books are, outright, front-to-back lies.

This results in brainwashed, ignorant af adults who will literally block food aid going to starving children. Who make stereotypical, minstrel-like mockery "comedy skits" of Palestinians to share on social media. Who will set up chairs and treats on a hill so they can watch and cheer on bombings of hospitals and universities and museums and residential buildings from afar. Who will sing songs about killing arabs to their children, or even watch state/military sanctioned torture and snuff films of innocent arab people like it's a holiday program.

And of course, Israeli and Jewish folk and Holocaust survivors who stand up to speak against these things? Are beaten, arrested, harassed, and shunned, in the so called "safe home" of Israel.

This is the unhinged, completely inhumane kind of "society" politicians, corporations, and ruling class want in the US, the UK….frankly, everywhere.

The whole core of how capitalist-approved "economics" works involves "people constantly acting only in their own self-interest"...

Which makes their systems patently false from the start.

Because humans are actually humane.

We evolved to be.

Despite them creating police forces and militaries and committing massacres and genocides, and enclosing common lands and enforcing hard borders and false scarcities and unnecessary cut-throat competition throughout the world -- they can't QUITE seem to condition human beings into not being human...

No matter what they do, humans will still crave the act of saving each other from dangers, and the act of being saved by other humans.

No matter what they do, humans will still need connections to community and to the earth, in order to thrive.

No matter what they do, humans will still want peace and pleasure and rest; the ability to create and to collaborate and to explore; and being able to accomplish tasks that have actual impact and meaning for themselves and for their communities.

The only way that the rich can keep playing this pointless, dick-waving, worldwide, world-destroying monopoly game they got going; is if they abolish humans, and create an economy out of bots.

Reminder:

There's never any actual morality behind any of the GOP's motives.

Control and power, preferably through enforced struggle and misery, is the only thing conservatives are interested in.

The 'moral majority' thing is a smokescreen designed to make you hesitate and debate while they harm as many people as possible.

Empire, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism…these structures CANNOT survive anywhere where almost any kind of relationship thrives.

You cannot have an authentic self.

You have a pre-approved self PRESCRIBED to you, and any attempt to deviate from the "self" that you are assigned is continuously policed and punished.

Your connection to the land is continuously denied and sabotaged -- precisely so that people can't survive and take care of themselves via collaborative subsistence.

Every oppressor and abuser demands that you be dependent on them, so that they can continue to oppress and abuse you. And, even if they sweetly insist that they will allow you to have some freedoms; they will simultaneously make sure to sabotage and gaslight you until you're in a position where you can't care for yourself anyway: a process that infantilizes and enslaves human beings into the structure of unequal power that they crave.

Your connection to others is constantly policed.

We see how various media outlets and social media platforms attempt to control conversations, muddy narratives, use algorithms to funnel people into more right-leaning content; and, even force people to change the terminologies they use; to absurd effect (unalive, grape, etc).

We see in the pages of Project 2025 how desperate the old guard of western hierarchy are, to regain full control of people's connections to each other, by denying people any options about how they live, with whom, to what end, and under what circumstances.

I really think that conservatives have a hang-up: over what actually constitutes a family; and over what behaviors should occur within a family structure.

To them, a "family" is a Unit of value and association designed to enhance the social validation of, and the ability to make and enhance profitable alliances for, The Father (head of household).

Everyone is expected to serve the father; based on the father's legal title of being a father, (not on his behavior being particularly positive or fatherly)…

And, while empty gestures may be made towards love and respect for the sake of image and social ritual; the father in question, who is expected to be cruel, controlling, DISTANT, and domineering, inspires anything but those things.

To me, a "family" is a group of consenting people with a special, supportive, emotional connection -- gender can be set aside utterly as long as the roles are agreed upon and met.

You can have all kinds of people filling all kinds of familial roles that are motherly, sisterly, fatherly, brotherly, son-like, daughter-like, aunt-like, uncle-like, cousin-like, nephew-like, niece-like, everything around and in between…

But what actually counts is that genuine and deep connection: that mutual support that nurtures and builds up emotional, physical, and mental health and resilience; and the room that they each make for each other in the world to be their full and best selves…ideally inside a living space that reads as safe, and as home to them all.

Such authenticity threatens the brittle facade of the "strength", pomp, control, and circumstance that patriarchy demands of men, however…

So, for ghouls such as some conservatives are, such emotions and support read as literal threats to the father's control and dominance…

And goodness if that doesn't violate their whole purpose for the "family": to obey and kowtow to and labor for and validate and serve "The Father"... zero real connection or care needed or wanted, lest it call into question the father's manhood or upset the fragile hierarchy being performed.

Reminder:

If bigots really were "naturally superior", then they wouldn't have to oppress anyone.

It's a shame that their beliefs -- that, "only those who are 'superior' should be able to live and thrive" -- drive them to then have to try to be in a superior position at all times….in order to stroke their own egos, and to soothe the deep insecurities that they themselves have made insurmountable and untenable, by endlessly pursuing vectors of pointless domination in the hopes that they can convince everyone to let them hoard the plentiful resources which they refuse to peacefully share.

The world would be so much better if everyone was allowed to just live, and be who they are, and be allowed to be comfortable with each other; without breaking their bodies and minds and spirits to "earn" the birthright of existence and thriving which the Earth simply offers us for free.

Evolution / Revolution

Original comic post.

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Throughout history, conservatives have shown themselves to be a people who are fine being crushed by "their betters" as long as someone else is crushed worse.

So long as the hand that crushes them will pat them on the head and proclaim them "special", they're fine with, and will even canonize, their own pains and struggles.

Further, they erroneously view their pain and struggling as having earned them their position of lesser persecution (from a nebulous and magical moral standpoint -- not the transactional one they are heedlessly agreeing to), rather than as an arbitrary, externally-imposed condition originating with our oppressors... despite the startling obviousness of that fact.

It's woven through their religion. It's woven through their economic views. It's woven through their view of social issues.

They delight in victim-blaming and proudly stand up for those who abuse us all...

Because, for all their talk of "freedom" and "individualism", conservatism is merely the cowardly perspective that the enabler takes while watching the conflicts between the family abuser, and the family scapegoat.

Just kind of flabbergasted that EVERY time these motherfuckers want to start a civil war, it's over their bizarre psychological need to strip other people of their rights.

Do they not have any fucking hobbies whatsoever?

😅 It would probably blow an evangelical's mind to learn that some scientists have caught evidence of fetuses touching themselves in the womb.

Humans evolved with the potential (not the certainty) of procreation. Sexuality is inborn, not taught.

You can't "teach" or "influence" someone to be queer any more than you can "teach" or "influence" someone to be cishet.

You can try and force them.

If you're an asshole.

But it will be for nothing cause it's not gonna work.

What needs to be taught are the definitions and knowledge that will allow the child to understand themselves better, and eventually, navigate their inborn sexuality more safely and happily.

And so, all these religious conservatives do by denying children honest, open, and age-appropriate sex education; is stunting their development as a person at least, and endangering them with enforced ignorance at most. 🤷🏾‍♀️

(Kind of explains why child abuse in religious groups and regions are higher than non religious ones.

The abuser takes advantage of the child's lack of knowledge, as well as their indoctrinated shame, fear, and silence around the topic of sex, in order to deceive and manipulate the child into staying quiet).

This is coming from the same people who want the government to force preteens to give birth.

It's also coming from the same people who judge people for being childfree.