The Conservative Mindset, part 2 of 496

I've been in my lab, working on a Unified Theory of Conservatism.  I want to understand why they think the way they do.  Why they often ignore reality, or twist it to fit their bizarre view of the world.  I know plenty of conservatives personally.  I like them (well, some of them.)  I can talk to, and learn from, some of them.  Those individuals seem to have a foot in the real world, and know a lot about history and current events, and can think rationally about them.  Even, sometimes, change their minds, or at least notice the obvious excesses of some in the media and politics.  But many conservatives, and most conservative politicians, seem to live in another world.  A world of fear, and hate, and irrational reactions to events.  A world of willful ignorance, of purposeful misinterpretation of reasonable things. 

I think it goes back to childhood.  Or rather, I think they want to go back to their rose-colored vision of their, and the country's, past.

Part of the problem is that they don't understand history.  Oh, they talk about it a lot.  But they don't actually know much about events of the past, and the conditions of the past.  They just have a superficial understanding, a third-grade sketchy view of what happened.  Hell, they just have that kind of understanding of current events too, but you get my point.

Like kids, they have a short attention span, and don't seem aware of what happened even a few years ago.  Partly because of that, they aren't able to put things in context.  Everything looks simple to them, because they don't know much and don't see any shades of grey.  They're right, they know they're right, and to hell with facts (or anyone else's viewpoint.)

They think things are simpler than they are, and pine for the "better" days of their youth.  Of course, the good old days weren't so great.  They weren't really simpler; their memory is just selective.  As a kid, you just don't see everything that's going on.  You don't understand a lot of what you do see.
And as we know, the "good old days" were really nastier, and deadlier, and meaner, and often dumber.

Conservatives seem to live in fear, generally of whatever thing is hyped on Fox at the moment.  ISIS, Ebola, "taking my Medicare."  They blame that weird new kid in the White House for whatever bad thing happens, or might happen.  They react as if the mailman is going to give them a flesh-eating disease next time they open the door.

I don't think Republicans know what America really is, what it's all about.  I don't think they know what democracy is.  They don't understand history or our principles.  They're a perfect example of "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."  They think they know a lot, when they are ignorant.   And they are extremists about the things they don't understand.  I am a moderate, but when they see Reagan as a socialist gun control freak, well, the lines have moved.  The conservative craziness has made me more liberal too.  And when I tell them this, thinking it might make them slow down and think, maybe try to be reasonable, it just pisses them off more.  And makes me vote more liberal, and more Democratic.

Conservatives tend to ignore, and look down on, people who are different than them, or worse off.  Cutting funding for seniors in the name of "cleaning up waste."  Yeah, tell us how you really feel.  Pretending racism doesn't exist.  Assuming anyone on welfare is cheating the system.

So: short attention span, easily frightened, short-sighted, self-centered, ignorant, prone to tantrums, insisting on getting their own way.  Does that describe children, or conservatives?  Or both?  And frankly, I'm having trouble coming up with positive aspects of kids that would also apply to conservatives.  Cons certainly aren't curious about the world around them, gazing in wonder at new things.  They don't have that fearlessness that kids can show when discovering new things.  They don't have the (to be fair, often-shortlived) tendency to share and be nice.

Conservatives are children.  Something stunted their moral and mental growth.   They need to grow up, emotionally and intellectually.  And they need to do their homework.