The Conservative Mindset, Part 1 of 496

Someone once told me, long ago, "you'll get more conservative as you get older."  I've always been conservative on some issues, liberal on others.  And I've changed some over time on a few of them.  You know, like a living, thinking human being should.  But overall I haven't gotten more conservative.  One thing keeping me from being more conservative is seeing the batshit craziness coming out of so many conservatives.  We can talk about how high taxes should be, what interventions overseas are necessary (if any,) whatever.  But conservatives as a whole, politicians and individuals, have pushed me away because so many of their positions are simply irrational, not based on facts or on just thinking about issues and coming to different conclusions.

In fact, the older I get, the more I think conservatives just don't live in the real world.  Hey, fantasy is great.  Ideals are great.  Principles are great.  I buy into the American dream, to some extent.  I think our country's entrepreneurial spirit and independent streak are great.  But we live in the real world.  I wish charities and churches could cover all the needs in this country.  They can't, though.  I wish police only shot people who absolutely deserved it, never unnecessarily.  I wish that were all true.  It's not.  We need laws, regulations, taxes, and common sense (for example, don't have the police investigate themselves, like the fox watching the hen-house.)  And we can change laws if need be.  But we live in the real world.  There are other people to compromise with, other governments to deal with, disasters to plan for and recover from.  I think most conservatives assume liberals don't want to work hard, etc.  Which is bullshit, and shows their disconnect from reality.  There are plenty of entrepreneurial liberals, religious liberals, etc.  They live in the real world and deal with problems that are there.  Not just what they want the world to be.  Conservatives make a lot of noise about what they want (everyone to be like them, in a nutshell) but they don't make much effort to improve things in the real world.  I see a few of them try occasionally, and it is nice. But it is noteworthy because it is rare...

Another thing- they tend to look back on their childhood as paradise.  And a lot of childhoods are good.  Mine was.  But they assume that their childhood experience applies to everybody; that it was universal.  Just as they assume their religion applies to everybody.  Partly it's nostalgia. But not everyone's childhood was the same.  Or good; but even if it was good, it's still not the same.  "We didn't have these boom and bust cycles." But we did Maybe not as much in the '50s.  But definitely in the '30s, '40s, a bit of the '50s, '60s, etc.  We just had a big one, but not as big as the Great Depression.  They grew up with stability, and expect life to always be like that, and everyone's life to have been like that.  That's not normal.  And it is narrow-minded.  Anything outside of what they grew up with is abnormal. This idea that your experiences apply to everyone else? Guess what: they don't.  I don't assume my childhood was like everyone else's, or that my spiritual views should apply to everyone else. But conservatives do.  "When I was a kid..."I wasn't raised that way..." So what?  Those are your views, and your experiences, not the way the world is or should be.

Hm.  It feels like I'm working on a Unified Theory of Conservatism.  Trying to wrap all the craziness up in one package, and explain why they are the way they are.  It's hard to do; there are so many random strands of vitriol and delusion, so much ignorance and deception, that it'll be hard to stuff it all into one box.  I'll
give it another shot sometime soon.