Why Conservatives Suck Dog Dick

If Liberalism was Urban, then Conservatism is Country… Club. What’s good for rich conservatives (Country Club) is good for the rest of the country (peons). Or so they say. This would be fine if we were a nation of rich agrarian people, but we aren’t. Conservatism is the direct descendant of the ancient world’s “The Few.” As they have always tried tell you in their actions if not their words…“It’s not so much that we have so much, but it is crucial that the rest of you have so little. Otherwise, where’s the fun in it?”

The Few enumerate the rights of The Many

As a general rule, conservatives despise government since government might reign them in or rain on their parade. Nevertheless government can come in handy sometimes, like when it saves their rich asses after a stock market crash. Still, conservatives have little inclination to learn how to make government function: As long as they get theirs, they believe the government’s job here is done. How not to deal with a hurricane is just one example of conservative government “in action.” Ask New Orleans or Puerto Rico how that worked out for them. Wildfires in the blue state of California? They suggest raking the leaves or vacuuming the forest. Not providing health care is a talent in which they have had long decades of experience. Their inept bumbling of the current pandemic should come as no surprise to anyone. And now we’ll learn how the Post Office works after they’ve used their “zap” code.

Conservatives generally hate “innovation.” They fear the unknown precisely because it may not be as comfy as the pleasant present. This has been true since the days of Plutarch and Livy. Every now and then, though, a change happens that ends all their arguments to the contrary. In these cases, the conservatives either abandon their deeply held position and move on to new things to oppose, or they just die out. Our present task is to show how the ugly amalgamation that we today call Conservatism occurred in this country. In America’s case, the promotion of unfettered capitalism is its bedrock. This has always led to enormous wealth inequality, which for them is A Good Thing. But it also inexorably leads to a stock market crash, which is A Very Bad Thing indeed. The wealthy detest losing any of their wealth. Greed is something that takes constant nurturing. If you give a rich person a choice between “your money or your life,” most likely the gluttons will have to think about it and get back to you later. Crashes in the stock market often lead to recessions. Conservatives’ utter incompetence in dealing with economic setbacks like these is best shown when they have to figure out how to fix a Great Depression. Their hands-off, supply-side claptrap can only make matters worse. And so it was for Herbert Hoover who was then thrashed soundly in the 1932 election, and Liberalism and Keynesianism triumphed for the next forty years. Republicans learned their lesson from this debacle and somehow managed not to go extinct during the Age of FDR. Yet the conservatives inside the party were sullen and angry. Indeed, how were they to get power back from “The Many” without adding some of The Many to their dwindling Few?

Conservatives needed to enlarge their following with enough consummate cranks who would happily vote for Conservatism and yet be too stupid to gain enough wealth to join The Few. Correctly recognizing that the traditional anti-labor, petit bourgeois, and business interests weren’t enough to win a national election, they managed to get Barry Goldwater nominated in 1964. Goldwater made overtures to disgruntled segregationists in the South and lollapalooza militarists everywhere. He was walking proof that Conservatism had gone crazy, but in those days America wasn’t, and he was thrashed worse than Hoover. In 1968, Richard Nixon continued Goldwater’s Southern Strategy, but since he had to fight it out with George Wallace, this wasn’t noticed as much. Nixon’s real genius was to take advantage of the unrest caused by the anti-war and civil rights movements. He eagerly assumed the persona of Mr. Law And Order for all those masses yearning to breathe fear. He managed to persuade a not insignificant number of nervous white working class voters (the sons of fathers who had their heads beaten in to form unions) that they had more in common with their country club bosses than their fellow workers of another color. Beginning with the election of Nixon, these working class simpletons began to piss away all of labor’s gains… their hard hats cleverly covering up all the holes in their heads. Nixon also taught conservatives a useful lesson: How to mess around with voting and elections. They called it “rat fucking.” How charming. But this is the gift that keeps on giving Republicans a fighting chance against their ever increasing unpopularity. By the end of the seventies, though, Liberalism was in its twilight. It was despised by the left as well as conservatives. Liberals couldn’t come to terms with the lessons of Vietnam, they had lost the vision of New Deal, and they generally messed up or muddled everything they touched. At the same time, big things were afoot for conservatives and for The Few to add to their membership: A nice boy-scout-like organization, the National Rifle Association, which formerly introduced young and old to responsible gun ownership, was taken over by a collection of crackpots whose chief purpose was to help gun manufacturers sell more guns. (Preferably more guns with more firepower.)

Their old saw “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” is actually true: Any and all responsible gun owners would cheerfully relinquish their unnecessary military hardware and register their remaining firearms because that’s what civilized people do. The only ones who don’t will indeed be outlaws or inner city gangs. The new NRA is determined to bring back the Good Old Days when anyone could be a Bonnie and Clyde. It’s all horrible of course, but think of how worse it would be if the NRA leadership hadn’t wasted so much their members’ dues on their lavish life styles. This may be one of the few times that the greed of The Few proved to be A Good Thing. Another accretion to Conservatism came from opposition to the growing feminist movement. Generally speaking, The Few detest majorities. Since women are a majority, this kind of goes without saying. But Phyllis Schlafly would never go without saying. A darling of the John Birch Society, Schlafly published idiotic little booklets with funding from magnates in the oil and munitions industries. One of her unsuccessful-at-first crusades was against the “Me too” Republicans, but diatribes like these never had much effect beyond her fellow berserkers. However the fight over the ERA would change all that. Who could be against equal rights for women, you might ask? Phyllis Schlafly for one (men couldn’t have done it by themselves). The amendment was defeated with a lot of money promoting fear. Fear of what? Fear of housewives working (how quaint!), fear of women in the armed forces (you don’t say!) and fear of bathrooms. (Conservatives really think about bathrooms a lot... I guess that’s because their heads are usually in the toilet.) Along with the sexist sociopaths, Conservatives realized they could also pick up the ”Moral Majority” (an oxymoron in armor) for a song. And the singer was Ronald Reagan, who changed his tune from when he was Governor of California and became the first “pro-Life” President. (Ditto Vice President Bush). The idea is that men know better than women, old people know better than the young, and people who can’t have babies should tell women who can how. For some reason God got involved in all this. Well, at least the Catholic God and the Evangelical God, most of the other Gods seem to have remained mute. The warped logic at work here is that if we dismantle Roe v Wade there will be no abortion. But this is utter nonsense: Roe v Wade was decided precisely because there was abortion and it was damned dangerous. Social conservatives focused their wrath on clinics and doctors everywhere, and indulged in a wet dream that one day a Supreme Court would reverse Roe. The focus of their argument is the Right to Life. But it turns out this right only extends to the unborn. Once you get birthed, they want nothing to do with you. This reasoning also complements the fiscal conservatives’ concern about deficit spending: How can we not cut your social programs now in order that all those generations yet unborn will live a happy and debt-free life? But since they don’t want to protect the environment and combat climate change, those debt-free descendants will be celebrating in a dystopian hellscape. Ergo, the depraved Pro-Life position is really Pro-[Only-those-not-living-at-present]-Life. While Bill Clinton was going more than halfway to meet the Republican rightwing during the “gay” nineties, the impact of the AIDS epidemic and organizing of LGBTQ people gave conservatives a whole new group of Americans to dread. “All this fuss about Equal Rights seems to have no end,” they cried, “These people may even want to get married!” The nerve of them. This is much too radical for any “Moral Majority” to consider. At the same time, most of the decade was taken up with conservatives purging their party of RINOs, the new version of Schlafly’s “Me-Too” Republicans. The rightwing in the party had no more need of Republicans In Name Only after they had gained the segregationists, hard hats, fundamentalists, misogynists, homophobes, and gun nuts. And they were beginning to appreciate (thanks to Pat Buchanan) the fear of immigrants, and the voting potential of nativist Know-Nothings. But in the nineties, they just couldn’t win the Presidency. Just like they didn’t win it in 2000 either until Al Gore and the Supreme Court gave it to them. But what was the very first thing they did after getting back into power after eight years? Big tax cuts of course. Oh, and ending regulations on banking. Well, what did we expect? And it wouldn’t take a degree in economics to know all this would lead to another Great Depression. But before that could happen, these fiscal conservatives had to balance out their largesse to the rich on the backs of everyone else. As soon as they got their tax cut, they became hell bent to balance the budget by cutting Social Security and Medicare. You could have set your clock by it. Fortunately, they failed. And eventually all their avarice, incompetence, and negligence had its price: After the crash came the election of the first African-American President. This was too much for the hired guns of the privileged, so they spent the next eight years obstructing any progressive legislation they could.

Meanwhile the anti-immigration sentiment that had been around for decades got organized and formed the fever-pitched part of a new movement of unleashed wackos: the TEA Party. Although it started off as a sniveling and whining from the poor huckster souls on Wall Street who complained about their taxes being raised slightly ("we’re Taxed Enough Already")., it became a magnet to unify all the currents of Conservatism: racism, nativism, and fundamentalism. And you wondered how Donald Trump made mincemeat of his GOP competitors?? Donald Trump is the GOP! We must admit that Trump has managed to make that party and Conservatism even more stupid. They had gotten so used to denying global warming that now practically any action based on science has to pass through their impaired knowledge and ideological sieve. They’ve always been willing to sacrifice a woman’s health and life to the unborn as well as the current lives and happiness of living people for the betterment of mythical generations in the future, but now they even question current medicine and health. Pro-Life is openly attacking life itself. Nowadays we are forced to listen to their carping about masks and quack remedies. And when or if there’s a vaccine, guess who’ll be there to blow it up? The conservative anti-vaxxers. You can even see how technology is going to become politicized one day with these simpletons: it’s starting with destroying 5G towers, but it won’t end there. And don’t get these morons started on the Green New Deal. Of course, anti-intellectualism in America goes back several decades and has had a long history in Conservatism. Much as most of us like, want, and support universal public education, we concede it fails in enlightening a substantial number of American numb-nuts. The main reason that their shit show seems so widespread now is due to The Few using the power of the press. In Goldwater’s time, the ass clowns only had mimeograph machines and typewriters with broken Cap-Locks keys. Then they sought out AM radio, and a lot of good rock’n’roll music was replaced with bellicose white guys jabbering about Iran, socialism, and busing. But Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes (two real men of the people if there ever were) would give the word “News” a whole new meaning. And nowadays the rightwing has a second media empire, Sinclair Broadcasting, and an even “foxier” network: One America (OANN). So whenever the lunatic fringe goes all rogue on 4-Chan or Q-Anon, we’re all sure to hear about it as well. As long as The Few are allowed to keep and increase their riches, they are content with all this thundering in the peanut gallery for none of it threatens their wealth or power. The real question is what do the gun nuts, the know-nothings, the confederates, and the wrath of god people get out of this bargain? They don’t get any richer or obtain economic power, so why do they support The Few?? Why do they hurl the term “elitist” at artists, actors, and intellectuals, and yet happily carry water for the millionaire elitists on the right? The simple and obvious answer is that each conservative subset looks at themselves as The Few. Everyone is a jerk except them. Their group is perfect, exclusive, and best. They’re not as interested in money so long as they have power to yell at everyone, telling them what to do and when and how to do it. Even the crazy libertarians have grown a decided authoritarian streak over the years.

Ironically each one of these noisy lynch mobs is a minority, and likely to remain so because the difference is nobody (at least nobody with any sense) wants to join their crumby elite. But unlike real minorities, these jokers are minorities by choice. They despise people who can’t change their race, their ethnicity, or their gender identification. Our Side doesn’t do that. The left doesn’t hate rich people, we’re simply going to take some of the money back from them. The left doesn’t hate gun owners, we’re just going to take their semi-automatic weapons. The left doesn’t hate religious people, we’re just going to take away their right to persecute other religious people. The left doesn’t hate bigots… No, wait, we do hate bigots. We fucking loathe bigots. For your own health, bigots, stay clear of us. With a little luck, this upcoming election will be a harbinger of the death throes of Conservatism. It will be as shunned as Liberalism was in the 1980s. The thrashing that Trump and the conservatives receive should effectively shut them up for at least a decade. I don’t know what the people of the rightwing are going to call themselves after this disaster, but that’s their problem. If they don’t want to be ignored, if they hope to be invited sit down at the table for polite policy discussions, they’d better lose the name of “conservative.” It is a dirty word. It sucks dog dick. Poor little pooch. Case closed.

* * * And now a few words of advice that former conservatives would do well to follow if they hope to be taken seriously and not run out of town on a rail. Remember: No one likes to talk with an asshole!

1) Science, technology, and medicine, although always evolving, cannot be dismissed out of hand without evidentiary proof.
2) Nuisances to the public health are liable to fines and/or imprisonment.
3) Obscene wealth inequality will invariably lead to reform or revolution. Be very careful here.
4) Management has the right to hire and fire and direct. Labor has the right to organize, so let them.
5) Social Security and Medicare are here to stay. Deal with it. You mess with the Post Office? You die.
6) If you really want immigration reform, you’ll have to regulate the businesses that use immigrants instead of hollering at poor immigrant workers, which means if you don’t run a company, can’t program computers or pick lettuce, shut the fuck up.
7) Before you offer an opinion on women’s reproductive rights, be sure to check to see if you have a womb.
8) Being a responsible gun owner, you (and the manufacturer of your weapon) are financially responsible for any and all damages caused by it. Everyone else call 1-800-LAWYER!
9) Your religious views belong to you, your god, and your fellow believers. Do what you will amongst yourselves! Otherwise be as silent as the invisible god(s) you worship.