- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
The idiocy goes right over their heads
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Oh they don’t want fifty percent to be conservative. They want 100%.
That’s the thing with fascism.
Perhaps universities would hire more conservative professors if more conservatives were smart enough to be one.
“You don’t need a university degree to xyz!” Okay but you need one to teach university.
They think the D in DEI stands for Democrat don’t they
In practice, it does. It’s been a way to deliberately stuff influential positions with political supporters.
It’s… no. Just no.
It’s to help deal with getting minority representation in jobs. So usually women, people of color, Asian Americans, etc.
No where does political support be an influential factor.
Besides, what the fuck do you think political support would even do in the vast majority of these positions? In your view: Great. You’ve got a Democrat Walmart manager, what political influence are they even exerting.
I’ve spent years trying to imagine how fucking stupid I’d have to be in order to be a conservative and what it would feel like.
I just can’t.
Imagine being drunk and hungry all the time. For weeks. Years. Go on. Next time you’re drunk (or sleep deprived, if you don’t drink), try to read a complicated wikipedia article. Did you understand any of it? Or are the authors assholes who don’t understand shit?
It’s kind of sad. Like they’re trapped in a quagmire of feelings and slop, with no way to sober up. Except they suck, so it’s more dangerous than sad.
That’s an incredible description, and I’m feeling a deeper empathy for Conservatives than I had before. It’s fucking tragic what they do to themselves; it seems a sad life to lead.
Sometimes when I find myself struggling to grasp something that’s beyond me, I recognise an instinct within myself that wants to become hostile and belligerent at the text, as you describe — to do whatever is necessary to reorient myself such that I am smart and capable, instead of being thoroughly humbled by the uncomfortable experience of personal growth. I’ve become pretty skilled at recognising that instinct, and running in the opposite direction (that is, into the things that challenge me), but I can imagine what kind of person I’d become if I indulged it.
The people you vote for are not a job qualification.
balanced out the years of blatant discrimination
That is not the purpose of DEI initiatives, it frames DEI as an advantage which it is not. It is about recognizing our inherent bias, understanding the strength of diversity, and empowering teams to benefit from diversity by fostering environments where all team members feel respected and empowered to contribute.
Everyone in this image has allowed the fascist demonization of DEI to define their own understanding of it, even if subconsciously. That should cause concern, not applause.
That’s an impossible task. Conservatives are too stupid to be professors.
They’re too stupid to be presidents too, yet there’s a long line of them.
You historically do not need to be intelligent to be president. Or any kind of leader for that matter. You just need confidence and charisma that can persuade people to listen to you.
Yeah, but we always lower the bar for them, so it’s ok.
Anyone can profess nonsense, but if it’s conservative nonsense, you can get paid for it.
I’m reminded of a post I saw a while ago about how conservatives recognize many of the same problems (low wages, abusive work situations, healthcare hellscape, etc) but then connect the dots all wrong to draw the wrong picture. Most people connect the dots to get “capitalism and rule by an elite few is bad”, but somehow they get “queers, jews, and blacks are the problem!”
I think it helps to understand conservatism as a bias in the way people solve problems. In a vacuum where tribalism is absent, conservatism comes from being more risk averse and preferring older societal systems, real or perceived.
Capitalism was successful for the visible society until inequality grew so bad that economic development started going backwards. This perceived golden age also disenfranchised queers, jews, and blacks. So the appealing solution to many problems is to go back to the culture of the 50s where these things happened.
This risk aversion also presents itself in the rural/urban divide. People living in the suburbs who are risk adverse prefer the sheltered, familiar environment of rural areas/suburbs, instead of moving to cities, where they have to face the possibility of strangers, or foreign cultures/ideas. So the appealing solution is to stay in rural areas.
Conservatism also has a preference for stratified social structures. There is a core tenet that is very common among American conservatives that says “some people are more important than others”. This also causes conservatives to lean towards economic stratification, bigotry, and authoritarism.
Of course these are just their biases, i.e. the preferences that conservatives are likely to lean on when first presented with a decision. Similarly, progressives have different biases stemming from underestimating risk. Other factors can also have a lot of impact in political decisions such as context, tribalism, personal experience, etc.
I think the big issue corrupting American conservatism and preventing it from being a healthy stabilizing debate partner, like you see with European conservatives, is that the entrenched ideas and tribalism have gotten so extreme and detached from reality that American conservatives are just openly fascist. American Republicans hate European conservatives like Macron, Merz, and Rutte. The cause of that goes far beyond just personal biases and into serious structural problems in the US, and powerful corrupting interests.
Even then, why an educated person like JD Vance thinks he needs to end Liberalism worldwide and attack European culture is beyond me. My best explanation is either selfish opportunism or corruption.
But yeah, if you talk to the average Trump voter and get to know them, there is a lot you can probably agree on, and there are a lot of bubbles, tribalism, and misinformation you can debunk and come to reasonable conclusions on. We’re all logical humans somewhere.
I don’t know if conservatism is really about preferring older solutions. I think that’s the marketing. It’s pithy but I think the “conservatism means there must be in-groups the law protects but does not bind, and out-groups the law binds but not protect” is very explanatory. That might not be what they tell you, but humans generally feel a thing and then reach for a socially acceptable explanation afterwards. But it’s really just “I want my group to thrive, and the other groups to go away”. That was probably a survival trait in pre-history. Now it’s just being an asshole.
One of the problems is that the way these people are dividing people into groups is kind of stupid and self destructive. Instead of seeing “all of us who trade labor for money have common cause”, they think they’re in the same tribe as the ultra wealthy. Instead of recognizing that that queer couple is struggling to pay bills and raise their kids, they mentally put themselves in the same group as some rich assholes who (under)pay a nanny to raise their kids and never spend time with them. They vote to cut social programs because they think it’ll hurt their out-group, but it’s hurting them. They have the groups wrong.
I think there’s also more fragility among conservatives. They hear something like “white people perpetuated the horrors of slavery” and their ego freaks out. That’s an attack on the in-group! Can’t have that! And so they reject it, because the in-group is the most important thing.
To be conservative is to be a failure. To be less decent. It’s not hopeless. People can change. But I don’t think “Oh, they just prefer older institutions” is apt. It’s about dividing people into us-and-them, and really putting the hurt on “them”.
Your comment reminded me of Innuendo Studios’ video series “The Alt-Right Playbook” — in particular, “There’s Always a Bigger Fish”. I feel like this really made something click for me about how conservatives think.
I think that conservatives often recognise the injustice they face, and I agree that many of them identify themselves as rightfully belonging to the tribe that’s at the top of the pyramid — the “temporarily embarrassed millionaires”. What I find more interesting though are the ones who seem like they’d be content to be exploited by the ultra-rich, as long as they can believe that it’s a righteous kind of oppression, in which everyone is in their right place within the system. They seem like they’d be happy being trampled on by the people above them, as long as they can feel like they’re fulfilling their purpose, and that their suffering is as a result of some natural order.
Of course, even though they may welcome being crushed by the ones above them, implicit within the sense of order they crave is the fact that they would not be on the bottom level of the pyramid. That is, they believe that in return for their suffering, they feel they are entitled to power over the people who they consider to be “rightfully” beneath them. Their anger at people who resist oppression often seems to be like “hey, I’m doing my part in being subservient to the people above me, but this only works if the people at the bottom get in their place”. They seem to believe that letting oneself be crushed by those above you in the order of things is a noble fate — a stance that’s easier to take if you’re not on the very bottom of this order.
The core of this seems to be a deep, desperate belief that there is some intrinsic order to things, some arrangement of society that would make everything make sense. I can’t say I don’t sympathise with this; the world is complex and overwhelming, and things change so fast that I can’t hope to keep up. It reminds me of some advice I read about how to write good characters in fiction — “what lie does your character tell themselves?”. I think that this is their lie. It’s what they feel they need to believe to make sense of their own suffering. I agree that in-group mentality is a huge part of how they respond to the world, but I think that the out-group is more than just people they perceive to be beneath them, but more like the people who challenge the lie that they tell themselves to cope.
Perhaps they have moments where they recognise the injustice of their own suffering, and then they look at how the systems that produce that are so much larger than they are, which makes them feel small and scared. I sympathise with this too, because I also think that the power that I have as an individual is laughably trivial. For me, that’s why I find solace in solidarity, and in striving for intersectional progressiveness within my communities.
I wish that they could work with us to build something better. It is scary, but it’s easier when you’re not alone. It seems pretty lonely to be a conservative. Sometimes it feels like I care more for their own suffering than they do, because they either refuse to recognise the way the system is grinding them up, or they argue that actually it’s a good thing. Conservatives can seem like they’re driven by selfishness, but then they continually do things that directly harm themselves and people they care about. That propensity made a lot more sense when I understood the weird martyr complex they tend to build.
Even then, why an educated person like JD Vance thinks he needs to end Liberalism worldwide and attack European culture is beyond me. My best explanation is either selfish opportunism or corruption.
JD Vance wants to end Liberalism because he is a puppet for Peter Thiel. Thiel is a technocrat and wants power for the sake of power. Vance is just pushing his agenda.
Left wing: I don’t think we should have boots on our faces.
Right wing: If only my boot was on somebody else’s face, I’d be OK with the boot on my face!
They think boots are a zero sum game, but the reality is there’s as many boots as you allow.
Their worldview doesn’t really allow for systemic analysis. Every bad thing has to have a singular individual cause. Status quo bias personified.
It’s like the fucking MLs. Trump winning has to have a singular individual cause, that the dems ran a bad campaign, and they’re not at fault for actively campaigning against Harris.
Do these “conservative professors” have masters degrees and teaching credentials? What subjects are they qualified to teach? If so where are they hiding? Do they have a resume? Are they responding to job adds?
What, are you telling me my doctorate from Prager U isn’t real?
It’s as real as their god.
They already exist. They’re usually found in law, business, or theology departments (though not all professors in those departments are conservatives). They also exist in departments that don’t require you to apply your critical thinking skills to social issues, such as maths, IT or engineering. You wouldn’t know whether your professors in those subjects are rightists, conservatives, liberals or leftists though, because politics doesn’t actually ever come up in classes that aren’t related to societal issues. The only way you’d find out is if a professor is obviously biased against women and/or minorities, which does happen sometimes. The people in the original post don’t care about any of this though, the outrage is the entire point and the truth doesn’t matter.
Hard to believe there’s that many around. I had an American history teacher in JC that taught the civil war from the “states rights “ perspective. He taught with his own book and his class did feel like attempted indoctrination. Even my math teachers were pretty obviously not facist from they jokes and general good humor ext… i just don’t think there’s a large amount of educated men so devout in their far far right ideology that they all of a sudden want to become professors of bullshit …but maybe
I’m not saying that there’s people who become professors to spread their conservative ideas. Just like how there aren’t really any people who become professors to spread their liberal ideas. Nobody would become, let alone remain, a professor if they used their platform to convince students of their ideology. What I’m saying is being highly educated in one area is absolutely not a guarantee you’ll become a leftist, or even a liberal. And there’s plenty of professors that will never share their political views, just how it should be. Some of them are certainly conservatives.
In a less polarized time that was probably true but where were at now you literally have to deny facts to be “conservative “
Cousin Merle, recipient of the prestigious Joseph McCarthy professorship for Chucking Beer Cans Behind the Shed
They will teach the subjects of FREEDOM and FAMILY VALUES.
So this will be one class separate from American history and political science I’m guessing. Would it be considered sociology? Or philosophy? Sounds more philosophical to me
They will call it “Freedomology” and you will like it.
If you dislike it, you will be taken away and reeducated until you like it.
Alumni of the schools of hard knocks, common sense and Jaysus Chrahst.
Ah yes the school of white privilege and having to exist in a world with diversity “hard knocks”
I also read a paper (or maybe a book chapter?) a while back that discussed the fact that the way we teach engineering actively encourages people to become less socially conscious and more conservative. I can’t remember the name of the author, but I remember I found the paper/chapter from this video(total video is 33:52 in length and is a great watch if you’re a video person. However, the link is timestamped to the engineering bit that cites the paper/book I referenced)
And like many fields dominated by white men, they make it harder for non-white non-men to get in. I went to an engineering university (for math) and lived with my white male engineer friends. I watched one of them get into our very competitive grad school despite having bad grades, a late application, and no experience because all of his white professors liked that he wasn’t an Asian exchange student
I know anecdotes aren’t reality, but even on super liberal college campuses there’s still some pockets of right wing people
Think of it this way. Kurt Vonnegut was, by pretty much any standards, “woke” as hell.
Because he was a product of his times, he used the phrase “Mongoloid idiot” for Down’s Syndrome because that was the proper scientific term.
I’ll never understand people who cannot understand the difference in language across different eras. Just because we know it’s offensive now doesn’t automatically default everyone who ever used it as being just as bad at all points in the past
I’m not sure if you’re praising or condemning me.
We both agree that the term is seen as offensive now, but wasn’t in the past.
My point was that even someone as enlightened as Vonnegut had a blind spot. That goes to the idea of ‘conservative engineers’ who are probably just repeating things they were taught without thinking about it.
If you were taught about the “massacre” at Little Big Horn all your life, it’s hard to consider it from the other side.
I’m agreeing with you and just kind of generally rambling about the people who would be mad at Vonnegut in your post.
Kinda like the people upset that huckleberry finn has the n word in it
years of discrimination
Can’t say the n word no more :(
I’d be a conservative for as long as the job interview takes.
If conservatives were discriminated against, all of this would be true.
But they aren’t discriminating against conservatives for intellectual jobs. They’re discriminating against idiots.
It just so happens, for whatever reason, that the upper echelon of intellectuals often reject the backwards and counterproductive conservative dogma in favor of rational policies based in reality.
Yep, which this is not DEI, for the reason you describe. DEI just means you need to ensure you aren’t discriminating against certain segments of society. It doesn’t mean you have to hire or accept equal percentages, only that you aren’t dismissing some due to discriminatory factors.
That’s just what a woke gay muslim atheist commie would say!
You forgot TRaNs! Everything we don’t like is TRaNS!!
Living up to your username there!
Conservatives inadvertently reaching the point
Conservatives are painfully stupid.
The R in Republican stands for Retarded
If it wasn’t for hypocrisy, the GOP would not exist.
