Hi, all.

As should be news to no one, polarization and animosity between conservatives and liberals is at one of its all-time highs in America right now. There’s even talk of a second civil war looming. Obviously, there are strong passions and convictions on both sides, and people on both sides have claimed that the other is a grave threat to the integrity of the nation itself. I’m familiar with the views and concerns of my own side: we view Donald Trump’s (and his allies’ and supporters’) statements and actions as being an attack on the democratic process that defines our nation, and are worried that the strategies and tactics he and they are employing will make future elections farcical, paving the way for an authoritarian state (a dictatorship). I am less familiar with why conservatives feel Democrats and liberals are a threat to the nation and its integrity in similar fashion. My best guess is that conservatives buy Trump’s assertions that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and thus might have similar fears as liberals do, but I also get the sense conservatives have deeper, older concerns than this, and that Trump was/is viewed as a solution to them.

Can you please try to articulate here what those fears are? And, to any liberals reading this, please refrain from answering in conservatives’ stead. I’m interested in their opinions, not your opinions of their opinions.

  • MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    10 months ago

    However, the tax increases liberals push for are heavily weighted towards corporations and the super-rich; working and middle class people are largely unaffected by them.

    The rich are still people, and I believe they share the same rights as everyone else. They aren’t just some free money glitch to bankroll a bunch of shitty government programs. I don’t care how much you make, you’re equally entitled to that money as everyone else and shouldn’t be punished for success.

    The classic divide about government regulations is that liberals want more of them and conservatives want less, but the regulations themselves are almost always very specific, policy-relevant things that aren’t the same as one sector of society forcing their cultural values on another

    How so? You can’t just claim that everything you support doing is specific and policy-relevant while everything you don’t isn’t. Why aren’t environmental regulations you forcing your environmentalist values onto others? Why aren’t the massive regulations around employment forcing your values onto others? Because clearly not everyone shares the same values, else there’d be no percieved need for government involvement in the first place.

    The tug of war over regulations is about the freedoms of the private sector vs. the interests of the public. We all agree there should be a balance, just like we all agree taxes are necessary; the only debate is about what that balance should be.

    Which is, fundamentally, a matter of forcing values onto everyone who has a different stance on this topic.

    I’m not sure what your point is here, so maybe I do regard it as a bit pedantic?

    My point is that there’s nothing wrong with authoritarianism when it generates the right results, and that I see no reason to prioritize democracy when it repeatedly fails to achieve anything desirable. Why should I place democracy, which is fundamentally a value-neutral system, over actually ever achieving anything?

    He is mentally disordered in a very extreme and dangerous way, and it’s frankly irresponsible to put him in power over others

    Given 4 years of him as president, surely you can point to examples beyond just “he made policy decisions I don’t like”, no? If you want to argue that something is evil, you’re going to actually have to point out how it is evil, because I don’t accept it as a deontological wrong. I consider politics to be a game of results. I’m perfectly fine with whatever actually ends up generating desirable results, regardless of whether someone is going to cry eViL at the end.