The Key Difference Between Conservatives and Woketards
Or Why Conservatives are So Much Better than the Woke
Another my three-year old piece still relevant now.
There's one crucial difference between Republican and Democratic supporters in US (and Western conservatives and ‘progressives’ in general). Conservatives mostly believe their progressive counterparts to be mistaken and deluded, but not necessarily evil.
So-called 'progressives', in the contrary, almost ALWAYS believe conservatives to be essentially evil. In their twisted mind, conservatives couldn't possibly be deluded by political propaganda, or genuinely mistaken still fighting for a good cause. No, 'progressives' don't even ALLOW conservatives a possibility for a mistake! It's always a 'wrong moral choice' for them. They're SO overconfident in their political agenda so they couldn't even allow for a POSSIBILITY that someone might disagree with it without being a 'complete asshole'.
This is so perverted and arrogant view that it turned me away from so-called 'Western progressives' for good - I just can't stand narcissism and self-righteousness. They are not only fanatically believe in their own righteousness without even allowing for a possibility to be mistaken themselves. Nope, even more, they're absolutely convinced that their political opponents also 'see all the goodness and truth of their progressive agenda', but, being 'essentially evil', they reject it!
Ask every American 'progressive' and you will hear this shit. So they don't even allow for a possibility that their political opponents reject their agenda because they actually consider it to be wrong and dangerous! Nope, they reject it because they're 'evil haters, bigots and racists', how else. This way of thinking is so wrong, so arrogant, so perverted in my view that I don't want to do anything at all with people who think in this way.
In addition to it, conservatives actually understand progressives and their arguments, but just disagree with it, while progressives even don't understand conservatives' arguments and logic completely. For example, I understand, that for progressives all kinds of immigration are great for us, no danger at all, and if you're against any of their immigration policies, then you're 'racist' - I understand their logic, I just disagree with it.
They don't understand mine, however. They don't understand that I believe unlimited immigration, especially from Islamic world, to be an imminent danger to our societies and public safety, due to an absolute incompatibility of our free world with Islamic totalitarian one. Progressives don't understand - and don't even want to understand - my argument. For them, I'm just 'bigot and racist'. There's a key difference in thinking, and I believe it's very telling of who's real intolerant bigot there.
And there's the same issue with everything, not only with immigration and Muslims. Progressives don't understand that conservatives do really believe inclusion of trans women in female sports is biologically unfair to cis women, and that giving kids hormones is simply child abuse. Nope, for progressives everyone who thinks in this way is just 'transphobic'. They don't understand also that we don't 'deny science' neither with COVID nor with climate change, we question the establishment view on it, and disagree with one-sided totalitarian approach to these problems, and with particular methods proposed to solve these problems which in our view don't really solve neither of them but do more harm to us all. Nope, for 'progressives' we are just 'morons and conspiracy theorists', right.
And so with every regard. Absolute arrogance and utter contempt for any opposing view among Western 'progressives' is astonishing. They don't even want to hear and to understand other views and arguments. Nope, they are already convinced they're 'bigotry and conspiracy' even before hearing them quite often. These people don't want to listen. They want just to ban and to cancel. And that's terrifying.
I think maybe it might be accurate to say that one reason for all of that is that their way of thinking is not based on reason.
I think that their way of thinking is ideological, a kind of an ideological fantasy, like a religion expressed politically, so they believe in some sense that they are the “Christians”, the “good” ones, even if they are atheists, and their worldview is the only one that involves really caring about others. I’m not necessarily advocating religion in my comments, I’m just describing something. To the degree that I could be called religious it’s in an unconventional sense, as is the case with a lot of people.
In regards to the question of being people who care about other people, I can’t tell you how many times I have known progressives or liberals or whatever we will call them are always talking about how much they love humankind, but then are completely neglectful as parents and actually don’t really do anything for other people. Of course that’s not always the case but I find it very noticeable and I find that conservatives are less likely to be that way. Conservatives have their problems also but there are usually very proud family, and very involved with their children’s lives. In the case of the conservative, they may be overly strict or repressive, but they are definitely involved!
When I say I don’t think these progressives are using reason, what I mean is that I think their ideological beliefs are a set of conclusions that they have come to prematurely without thoroughly thinking them through. And then they try to make the facts fit their conclusions rather than their conclusions carefully developing based on a series of observations. So in this sense, I believe they are anti-reason, in spite of the fact that they believe they are the ones who are pro-reason and they believe that they know all the facts. But we can see that they are very selective in their choices about which facts to pay attention to.
So I think all this might be a way of explaining why they attack reason itself when we try to use processes of reasoning. They can’t win in a reasonable argument, so their only tool is to try to induce guilt in the other side through condemnation, and the goal is to shut down the other side with that tactic.
In fact, it’s obvious to me that many of us who identify as conservative are actually the true liberals. But we are not communists pretending that we are not communists. We actually believe in liberty! We are the liberals! Some of us are true conservatives as well. But true old-fashioned liberals and traditional conservatives have had to create an alliance in order to deal with the pseudo-liberals who called themselves “progressives.”
By the way, I hate that term, “progressive.” But it shows that they also agree that they are not liberals. They started abandoning the term “liberal“ after Reagan made it an insult to call someone a liberal.
And as you point out, the animosity is right there in them for everyone to see. So it’s a case of “the emperor wears no clothes,” and if you try to point that out, the emperor tries to destroy you.
Reasonable people don’t do that, as you imply and describe. People who understand the truth of things do not need to get aggressive.
It’s only irrational ideas that need to be imposed on people with hate. That’s because there is no other way for those irrational ideal to prevail. People speaking the actual truth do not need to be hostile. They are legitimately secure in their beliefs. The hostility of people with irrational ideals from the fact that they know they are being irrational and anxious and paranoid about that, which then cover up with rage.
If I watch a debate, and I don’t necessarily know all the facts that are being debated, I am more likely to be willing to believe the calm person, the person that speaks respectfully and reasonably about the other side, as you have described here. The reasonable person simply thinks the other side is mistaken, but not evil, as you have written.
Actually, the way I think of it is that the other side has some kind of ideological “illness.” They’re not evil, they are just “infected” with a “mind virus” of some kind. To me that also explains their behavior, the advocacy of hostility, etc. it’s all caused by some kind of sociological and/or psychological toxicity.
OMGosh…this, 100%!! Alex, I had an “incident” with my 27 year old niece back in 2020. She is the only child of my oldest brother (I’m the youngest of 4 siblings). My niece has always been a radical liberal. I never realized just how radical until I had posted a funny picture meme one night on fb. The meme was a photograph of a cement wall with spray painted graffiti on it that said “Black Lives Matter”, but someone had added an “o” before “lives”…so it said “Black olives Matter”…it just struck me as funny and so I posted it. Got a few LOLs and funny comments and that was the last I thought of it. A couple weeks later, I noticed that there was a conversation going on (with a mutual family member) and I could see that they were talking to my niece, but I couldn’t see any of her comments. When I searched her name…nothing came up and it was pretty obvious she had blocked me. At this time, I had no idea why or what I had done to warrant her blocking me. So, I reached out to her (via text message) and received the most scathing reply. She called me every name in the book (racist, bigot, etc.)…I acknowledged that we most certainly saw the world and all its issues differently, but we were still family and perhaps we could just “agree to disagree” and I was told absolutely not and was cancelled right then and there.
I have never said a word about this exchange (with my niece) to my brother as I love him dearly and would never want to create a wedge between us. He, too, is quite liberal which is shocking to me and my other siblings. We were all raised in the same home with conservative parents…though my brother’s wife (along with his daughter) is also very liberal and radical. My niece did phone me in April of 2021 after my brother suffered a heart attack to let me know he was in the hospital (he did survive with a stent inserted) and amazingly, she did attend a small dinner party last December that I had hosted for my nephew (sister’s son) who was visiting Colorado from Texas for the first time in about 10 years. I was actually happy to see her and the evening went well…though we’re still not fb friends lol and I haven’t spoke since. I will do everything in my power to make sure none of this ever comes between me and my brother.
So…there is my story that confirms everything you wrote about! There is just something wrong with the liberal brain!