Well the society 20th Century Conservatives were formed to converse no longer meaningfully exists and they were one of the main architects of that dissipation.
I'm not sure it's so much a 'collapse', as you put it, as more of a tearing away of a disguise or veil. Apparently this project was set into motion in the 1970s, with the 'Powell Memorandum' in 1971. It might have even found its origin in the earlier 'Business Plot'.
The Powell Memorandum strikes me as incredibly viciously on target a call out here, shows extreme continuity on high, is OG anything and everything to own the libs. Coopt the courts and use that to roll back liberal society. Very good rebuttal. https://youtu.be/KuIFF-LCI4k
When I say it might have had its origins in the Business Plot, that's when a cabal of wealthy business owners, in conjunction with Prescott Bush (Yes, of _that_ Bush family) moved to take down FDR and replace him with a General (Smedley Butler) who said, "Uh, hell, no." and turned them in.
It is a total spent force. There’s no “there” there anymore. For all that people like to say “liberalism is in crisis or over”, conservatism is what actually has died
What do you mean? This is conservatism. This is what conservative government inevitably leads to. Conservatism is a fundamentally authoritarian anti democratic ideology based around the enforcement of heteronormativity and nationalism. There was no “good” conservative at any point.
Eventually people around you are going to get older, and you will probably continue to recognize them as human, despite them descending into the ontological evil of believing profligate government spending can be bad.
"Imagine having politics in the year of our Lord 2025 that don't reduce one's entire perception of the world to a few absolute blanket statements about why one's enemies suck. Incredible."
Did you know people can actually be bad and their ideas and beliefs bad and harmful? Did you know such a thing was entirely possible and even if individually they may act nice the politic movements they support are ultimately immoral making them immoral as well?
Did you know that interest payments can and do readily cripple governments that can't print infinite money—a category that includes the USA as of two months ago—and governments are quite good at creating sclerotic power centers that retard progress and prosperity?
This is the major theme of a video I made like 2 weeks ago. I hope more people begin to talk about it, because it’s clear that many elite conservatives have completely rejected their liberal-conservative roots and are reaching for something much older and much worse.
MAGA aren’t gullible people being mislead they’re deeply racist, sexist homophobic people who value the disenfranchisement and dehumanization of said groups above all else. This meme is stupid.
was just talking to my dad about Snow White* (1937) and I was invoke her (She, 1935), and how breathtaking changes were happening for Mickey Mouse was so recent (1928) so seeing Fantasia (1940) was a glow up
*But Snow White is new, the brothers grimm is only from 1812
so yeah Conservatism is not even old, it is a tradition from the French Revolution of the 1790s, Napoleon, and it became real with the Great Depression of 1812 to 1821 including the 7 years of the Luddite Revolution
followed by should we support the poor with industrial revolution riches ?
It is literally new yes and actually that’s important to say because they very often attempt to write their ideology back into history where it didn’t exist.
I think it just reminds me of the kind of reactionary politics that existed in some places before liberal democracies became status-quo.
Much of it is novel, but the bones of it are the idea that some kinds of people should rule and other kinds of people should be ruled, and that’s about the oldest thing there is.
It goes to Bush II and then the GFC. The GOP elites completely discredited themselves with their base voters. They lied to the voters for decades, then the voters caught on. Worst part for everyone else is that the GOP elites were merely hypocrites while their voters were racist fascists
Basically there has been a philosophical movement to separate institutionalism from nativism that has been cultivated for centuries that has been completed hollowed out since Rush Limbaugh became a kingmaker in the party.
There has always been questions how much is flattery/spin in people saying "I support Apartheid South Africa as a necessary evil" were sincere or merely papering over some dark shit with a veneer of respectability, but that Burke has been completely replaced by Moldbug as required reading is bad.
It's both. On the one hand, you're right that conservatives weren't fully corrupt the whole time. On the other, Movement Conservatism was always a lie.
2008 removed every pillar: invading other countries & atlanticism? Killed by Iraq and Afghanistan. Laissez-Faire economic program? Killed by the 08 crash?
Combine that with increasing acceptance of gays and secularism, it sublimed away. So there's a desperate search for something (racism)
The neoconservatives were liberals though. They switched sides because they saw America as a force for good in the world, and thought we should be beating up more bad guys. "Team USA, Fuck Yeah" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
That warhawk part is disgusting, Bush's you're with us or your with the terrorists was absolutely vile shit. Leaving the multipolar world to strike basically I laterally was deranged.
But conversely, American interventionalism in Ukraine was very popular. There's a lot of places we do have a role.
He isn't your ally. The neocons lost the battle within the Republican party to Trump, so he's against Trump, but he's no more your ally than if Trump and the paleocons had lost and been against him.
He's one of the architects of the current moment, who just didn't like how it was being executed... some of us remember The Project for a New American Century just fine.
"Become"?! That's not it at all, I'm afraid. Blind spot - well, yes, but only in the sense that a man won't understand something that his paycheck is based upon not understanding. Of course they did. They just didn't think it would happen to _them_.
Conservatism has always been and always will be a defense of the ruling class first and an ideology second. Sometimes some people actually took the second part seriously. But nobody ever took them seriously
I'm WELL aware of the damage he did but Reagan also pushed hard the need for us to be strong NATO allies and to defeat authoritarian regimes.
What a massive shift.
This "GOP"..
Absolutely not the conservatives of old.
For the far right to prosper, the policy of polarisation and division is the most effective growth strategy.
The antidote to the extremities is for media & the public to push these parties further on what their visions are - if they had to show their real plans the public would be horrified.
Look at Trump's takeover of the Republican party - its got to the point where they don't even publish a manifesto. The plan is whatever they say it is on any given day & nobody can hold them to account. Make them spell out their plans pre-election. Not just blame minorities for all problems.
people will say 'they were always this bad' and like they were never great but there is a clear difference between then and now and youre lying if you dont see it
I do think it’s changed but I’m not sure the change was in ideology. I think what’s new is the unprofessionalism, the lack of any long term thinking, the disinterest in anything institutional
In some ways it’s true that they’re just saying the quiet part out loud now, but that’s also related to how they’re just not able to keep it together these days
I would argue that the unprofessionalism has resulted from the shift from focusing on the good of the country (as they saw it) to their own personal enrichment, which is where the dismissal of an underlying ideology comes in.
I’m not so sure! Conservatism as whole is obsessed with status and hierarchy maybe even more than money. But Trump and his people are obviously corrupt on a level we haven’t seen in our lifetime. I don’t know that the ideology went away, as much as they found a way to make corruption a status symbol
both things can be true, what's going on now can be the product of the same revanchist throughline and also be worse than before, Clarence Thomas has been racking up wins for 30 years now, wins that matter
32 years after the 1932 election creating the “conservative movement” a thing I hate* so much
yet I consider myself some form of small C conservative / anti Utopic personality, one which wants homes for all and low wealth inequality for I believe humans can BS themselves as solo people
I think this depends on how you define "they". The John Birch Society were always deranged but they were at least as mad they didn't believe they were in the driver's seat as anything else. But that's just mainstream Trumpism now.
But there was always a continuity. None of these people were marginalized by the Republican establishment, they have always been there. What we call Trumpism was openly debated as a strategy for decades. Nixon resigned in disgrace and it took 4 years for the Republicans to be back in office.
The initial reaction to desegregation was open defiance of the federal government in the name of racism. The eventual reaction was to dismantle the new deal. None of this is new, this is just the logical conclusion of what they have always openly wanted.
Thank you! I am so sick of the "Rush Limbaugh was advocating for death camps in 1992 and you were just too blind to see it, but I was saying it the whole time" crap from people who were born in 1991.
Rush Limbaugh was saying "these clowns in Congress" and making shitty remarks about gay people that were A: more or less socially acceptable at time and B: we would barely recognize as hate speech at present standards of intolerance.
It’s always a bit tricky because I thought he was so insanely offensive and stupid that it was rare that I heard him directly. & in those days it’s not like there was millions of other places to hear what he said etc.
But if you are defending that vile and repulsive cancer on America who alongside
This is what I keep telling people: the GOP as a viable political party is going to be basically non-existent during the next election cycle. NO ONE is going to want to vote for these idiots because they're making things worse for EVERYONE (unless your name is Elon).
Agreed. And I'm not so sure a party that's basically just "Internet trolling" will ever win an election. Like, this is the most terminally online administration I've ever seen.
One weird thing to me is how the RNC has given up on liberal rule of law, and the DNC has given up on meaningful primaries. If I'm in favor of elections *and* rule of law I feel politically homeless. My fear is that voters were always like this, but it was suppressed with pre-Internet media control?
even easier to see if you look at, say, the descent of British conservatism or the transformation of continental Christian Democracy, or the dearth of ideas in southern European right wing parties that can't be traced to authoritarian regimes of the past.
The change is a product of the incentives in place. The two party system became obsolete as the information ecosystem evolved from ~1990 on. But those with the most power to change the 2 party system have the least incentive to do it, or even discuss it.
I think a lot of the pretense has dissipated but what politicians believe/don’t believe is immaterial and unknowable. What’s true is that you can draw a straight line from the war on terror to the moment we’re in now. That’s when the great march toward fascism began and many voices tried to warn us.
Hmm. Seems to me more like the John Birch Society fascist/crazy faction took over the party. They’re the same Nazi sfbs they’ve always been, just not being led by sane people.
More like "the seeds of this were always there." There was always a thread that distrusted intellectuals as agents of change (abolition, Communism, LGBTQ+ rights, or whatever they were afraid of). There was always deep misogyny. There was a sense of aggrievement over social progress.
And I think it was really only a matter of time before the cumulative social change became so much that American conservatives tacitly declared the entire American experiment a failure as too much had changed from the originalist vision, and democracy and civil rights were blamed for it.
I think if you positioned yourself in the right identity, yes they were always this bad. But also yes, many more people are being touched by it that never were.
The PNAC neocons that pulled GW Bush strings to exploit 9/11 for global power n profit, domestic spying, torture and lie-based wars had more honest principles and respect for law than the Tea Party Maga Trump cabal that undid the Never Trump con Establishment on the 2016 campaign trail.
right, like, buckley *did* do some actual thinking, freidman *did* make some actual arguments for good things, both articulated beliefs that go beyond "punish people i dislike"
his later arguments in favor of increased Black accessibility to civic participation and arguments in favor of MLK Jr. were a big chunk of the permission structure that led to me leaving the right as a teenager.
like if the choice was "Galbraith-style economics wins out but if there's a war you might get drafted" I think most of us win (also Iraq and maybe Afghanistan don't happen, good work all around)
Bush signed NCLB! Bush sr signed the ADA! They were full of it but conservatives made actual arguments and had policy programs! Now there’s no difference between Senators of the United States or guy assaulting Target cashiers over 2020 mask mandates, it’s all jackasses screaming in public
The popular conservatives of the Greatest Generation had to concede due to the events of their era, Great Depression/World War 2, that liberalism was correct. But conservatism prior to them never were liberals, they were feudalists who loved slavery and hierarchy, and like the Sith bided their time
Conservatism peaked with neoliberalism, and by “peaked” I mean only in the US where the parasite was destroying the New Deal/Great Society’s economic and political success that held fascism back. We are here because conservatism was always sophistry, neoliberalism always a threat and not an endgame
I remember Madison Cawthorn hiring only coms staff, no one to do constituency services, because all the job was to him was getting on Fox and releasing hot take press releases
they're all like this now, political performance artists
Oooh yeah. The maga con-man era is especially LARP-y. Like the entire signal war plans chat only makes sense if you view it as con-men who are LARPing what they think a powerful war room would be doing. Pete’s “we’re all clear on OPSEC” comment is pure LARP lmfao
The headlines keep burying this but every member of a Signal group can see all of the other members, like an imessage group. So all of them could’ve checked who was in it! 18 individuals, and none of them glanced the fucking members to see Goldberg’s presence.
As just a recent example, Bezos announcing that WaPo would run op eds only on free speech and free markets, two traditional pillars of conservativism, which Trump has been dynamiting every day of his presidency.
Not that they weren’t racist at all or anything, but it astounds me that there was apparently such a thing as “too racist even for Republican standards” in my lifetime.
I mean my grandfather was on Nixon’s enemies list, they were a lawless hellscape as was the Reagan administration. Contras was mind bogglingly illegal. Dubya had the made up war in Iraq, nsa surveillance and freedom fries bc France didn’t go along. Theres a straight through line from that to Trump.
It was always at risk for leading here would maybe be a more accurate way to frame it. And here we are.
It's also bad in different ways I think. The intellectual veneer is gone (though they often act like its still there), and the dissonance and emotional distortion have taken over.
I keep wrestling with this profound vibe I get from them of 'nothing matters.' But I think I've realized what matters to me is the well-being and treatment of people, and there's very little left in their ideology that has anything to do with that anymore.
Conservatism as a philosophy was always a back-formation, an exercise in justification. It was always about pretending there was more to them than "I've got mine, go fuck yourself". They've just decided they don't need to pretend anymore.
Comments
https://youtu.be/KuIFF-LCI4k
20 tiny coffins couldn't move the GOP (newly infused with Tea Party lunatics) to change anything.
They held firm, Dems and the country moved on, the GOP learned that they never had to give an inch on any issue.
I'm a better liberal because I do.
*But Snow White is new, the brothers grimm is only from 1812
only 213 years old!
yet also how 12 years from 1928 to 1940 with Mickey Mouse can make him feel so old, a mere dozen years when it goes from that to this
followed by should we support the poor with industrial revolution riches ?
I think it just reminds me of the kind of reactionary politics that existed in some places before liberal democracies became status-quo.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/07/29/the-right-man
Combine that with increasing acceptance of gays and secularism, it sublimed away. So there's a desperate search for something (racism)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism
But conversely, American interventionalism in Ukraine was very popular. There's a lot of places we do have a role.
I don’t want to give them too much credit. I’m a fan now because they are the most clear-voiced opposition to what the Republican Party has become.
They had plenty of time to do the reading.
What a massive shift.
This "GOP"..
Absolutely not the conservatives of old.
They are not legislatively, ethically, fiscally, or judicially "conservative"
They are now a hate and money cult.
The antidote to the extremities is for media & the public to push these parties further on what their visions are - if they had to show their real plans the public would be horrified.
the water gets hotter until it cooks you
I am seeing all this Hebert Hoover stuff and how he was from San Francisco and was the first class of Stanford (1891 to 1895)
and how he was for this kind of Abundance, Promethean Futurism (something I think becomes Fascism when it is in crisis), and how he spent
yet I consider myself some form of small C conservative / anti Utopic personality, one which wants homes for all and low wealth inequality for I believe humans can BS themselves as solo people
for I care and I wish other people care for our neighbors / people who are nearby , not to turn our eyes away
I don’t know if he was promoting prison camps. But I could believe he was.
But saying the GOP has changed is absolutely NOT a reference to people like Limbaugh.
But if you are defending that vile and repulsive cancer on America who alongside
Limbaugh was a key part of the dangerously destructive GOP contingent that has directly led to this moment.
And every sane reader of the political scene at that point could see this.
But it's much more than this. Conservatism is dead. This party will still exist, but they have no values nor meaning. There's no system of belief.
They were frog marched out of their wish for Kings/Lords and sent in on a new course post ww2.
Defeating Communism.
They defeated it! You can’t deny that, they took the USSR’s scalp.
And then the serious people, they had nothing left to do except retire and play golf.
they're all like this now, political performance artists
LARPing like 15 year olds lmao
This point blank couldn’t happen today.
“We did this already.”
“It’ll pass like every thing else does.”
“You’re over reacting.”
It's also bad in different ways I think. The intellectual veneer is gone (though they often act like its still there), and the dissonance and emotional distortion have taken over.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/i-dont-know-how-to-explain-to-you-that-you-should_b_59519811e4b0f078efd98440