There Are a Lot of Conservatives Who Identify As Liberals in the USA

Your tips are greatly appreciated! Upgrade at 30% offSuicide is the second leading cause of death for young people in the United States. People talk about how our children are experiencing a mental health crisis. There’s a fair amount of awareness about these facts, even if our society doesn’t seem inclined to do anything about it.Today, kids face unprecedented pressures. They’re being murdered in schools. Wages have failed to increase at a sufficient rate to cover the cost of living. Climate change threatens to create an uninhabitable world.How do adults respond to this?They respond by sharing memes on social media with snarky comments about how their generation is “superior.”I’ve made it my habit to push back against those memes. My psychology changed a year ago when I was among a search party that found the remains of a murdered child. I have PTSD, I’m triggered, and I’m not going to seek treatment because I feel this is the mindset that makes me most effective at advocating for a kinder, gentler society.Today I received a response from a woman who objected to my criticisms of her “I hate young people” meme. She said she was “raised right” and that she was a “liberal,” but there was no apology for the fact that I’d called her out for punching down at children.What this interaction made me recognize is that there are a lot of conservatives who identify as liberals in the United States. These are people who refuse to demonstrate humility, they refuse to recognize error. They want to be praised for meaningless gestures of superficial activism even as they steadfastly labor to keep systems of injustice in place.When they’re piqued, they threaten to swing further conservative “just to show you.” This is because their fundamental beliefs are more aligned with the radical right than they are willing to admit.America doesn’t have liberalsAmerica has conservatives, conservatives lite, and progressives. There are no liberals. Whenever the progressives start to make a positive impact, the conservatives and the conservatives lite join forces to quash the movement.The American political landscape is plagued by gaslighting and DARVO. This makes it very hard to have a conversation with anyone. The type of conversations that have been normalized almost invariably feature false assumptions.Here are some things people are inclined to accept as true even though they’re verifiably wrong.* There are extremists on both sides* Young people of today are “entitled and lazy”* Social change must be slow* The media has a liberal bias* Education has a liberal bias* Our society can’t afford to offer free college education* America is free* Religion “won’t hurt” children* Our political system can be represented by a straight line with liberals on the left, conservatives on the right, and moderates in the centerIf you try to question any of these fundamental beliefs, the response will be an instant snort of dismissal. The median political viewpoint of the United States is so far to the right that you’re not even allowed to address the validity of fundamental concepts.Finding a lodestone within the chaosIn the face of all this pressure, it’s easy to lose your grip on your fundamental truth.You can orient yourself by looking at the big picture.If a person will not recognize that healthcare and education are human rights, then that person is a conservative. If a person says they support healthcare and education, but they don’t think our country can afford to pay for them, then that person is a conservative.Progressives are people who are working to ensure that everyone in our society is treated with dignity and provided with the necessary tools to survive and contribute.There should be nothing controversial about that objective. That objective represents basic human decency.Don’t you want your children to have access to healthcare?Don’t you want your children to get an education?Our current system is failing them because it’s supported by corrupt conservative ideals. Conservative ideals dominate our whole society. The only thing we haven’t tried is embracing progressive beliefs.Normally I would have blocked and moved onI didn’t block the woman who refused to apologize for her hurtful “youth of today” meme. I left a comment. We’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll comment next with a link to this article.I don’t see why it should be considered controversial when I tell people not to punch down at children. Stop for a second and consider how bizarre that is.Me: “Please stop insulting young people, they’re committing suicide at a terrible rate and suffering from many mental health issues.”Conservative who identifies as a liberal: “How dare you talk to me like that! I’ll show you! In the next election, I’m voting for the most radical right wing candidate out there!”Seriously?It seems to me that our whole society, but particularly members of the older generations, need to learn humility.It can’t be that when people draw attention to your inappropriate behavior, you feel entitled to lash out and destroy everything they love. We can’t have a mindset where we censor our own thoughts because we’re afraid of this outcome. Remaining silent is what got us into this mess.No. You have to tell people when they’re wrong even when it makes them angry. We have to stop normalizing this idea that affronted people are “allowed” to manifest some selfish, self-righteous response.How about if you just say, “Yeah, that was a bad thing for me to do, I repent. I’ll try to do better in the future.” Let’s make that the normalized expectation. Let’s stop kowtowing to conservatives who identify as liberals because we’re afraid they’ll change their vote.They’re not voting liberal anyway, if they were, our society wouldn’t be so dominated by conservative institutions and beliefs.Don’t make false assumptions about the American political spectrumHuman beings are inclined to act upon false assumptions and fail. When somebody draws a line on a piece of paper and says, “This is the American political spectrum,” it doesn’t mean anything. You can’t fall into the assumption that the line will be naturally bisected at the center with equal allocations of the population on either side.On what evidence are you basing this assumption? This is as foolish as believing the orbits of planets are circles because a circle is a perfect shape befitting of the heavens.It’s wrong.The reason nothing is working in our society (evidenced by the fact that kids are killing themselves at an alarming rate) is because too much of the population is influenced by baseless assumptions. It’s lazy thinking.Some people endlessly repeat the false claim that the US media has a liberal bias. The reality is that there is almost no liberal viewpoint whatsoever.Some people will insist that there is a liberal bias in US public schools. If that’s the case, why is the myth of the Lost Cause narrative taught as if it’s true history in much of the country? Have you ever heard anyone complain about the conservative bias in education or the media?They don’t because our whole discourse is nothing but gaslighting and DARVO. This isn’t a case where one side argues media and education leans liberal and the other side argues it leans conservative. No, this is a one-sided argument. The only narrative anyone repeats is a baseless claim that these things lean liberal. That’s a problem.That’s also a proof that we don’t have a free, fair, or just society.You’re not a liberal if you’re casually piling on kidsThere’s no need to share a meme that declares kids from the 1950s “had better manners” than the kids of today. Why do you feel a need to go on social media and praise your whole generation even as you take a swipe at the generations that came after you?Why?The Civil Rights Era didn’t end until 1964, how great could children of the 1950s be? In fact, they gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, so we’re still fighting the same battles. You can go online and find pictures of children from that era attending a lynching. So, no, I don’t buy that the kids of the 50s “were more polite” than the kids of today. Let’s stop these casual efforts to erase the deplorable history of our country.One of the fundamental tactics of fascism is to dehumanize people. You dehumanize people by telling them they “don’t work hard enough.” You dehumanize people by telling them they’re “inferior.” You dehumanize people by telling them they “owe” you something and that they are “ungrateful.” You dehumanize people by establishing an impossible standard they can never live up to.All this is exemplified by the casual memes people share that run down children who are suffering from mental health issues and at a high risk of suicide.I find it so bizarre how haughty people get when I call them out on this behavior. When I think of conservatives, I think of people who only consider their own feelings and who loudly mock the feelings of everyone around them.Think about that the next time you feel entitled to take a casual swipe at young people in crisis.“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” Why can’t we normalize that idea?The second you call out one of these conservatives who identifies as a liberal, they turn around and try to throw it back at you. That’s the entitled impulse that has led to the destruction of our children’s future.You all make this newsletter happen! Thanks for your sponsorship! I have payment tiers starting at as little as twenty dollars a year.Upgrade at 30% offUpgrade at 40% offUpgrade at 50% offUpgrade at 60% offI'm so happy you're here, and I'm looking forward to sharing more thoughts with you tomorrow.My CoSchedule referral linkHere’s my referral link to my preferred headline analyzer tool. 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