Stop Calling Them “Conservatives…”
What the hell are they conserving besides their White, male privilege?
It has been hinted the word rapacious isn’t the right word. I disagree strongly. Just because you haven’t heard the word doesn’t mean it isn’t the word for the job.
ra·pa·cious (rəˈpāSHəs/) adj.
- aggressively greedy, grasping, avaricious, acquisitive, covetous;
- mercenary, materialistic; insatiable, predatory; ravenous
- informal: money-grubbing
"poor Tom has fallen for a rapacious gold digger"
I just want to get this off my chest before I return to my well-bunkered, temporal stasis chamber (which will protect me from harm by keeping me out of sync with the rest of the Universe) to await the inevitable nuclear war the conservative party seems so happy to aid and abet every time their Republican president wants to say something incredibly stupid. Like this:
Taken out of context, you might want to ask what was said that prompted this response?
Doesn’t matter. Because this statement will absolutely be taken out of context because it was said on Twitter, a single instant where nothing can be connected to it, yet everything can be attributed to it, and the responses in real time have the capacity to affect the outcome, whatever that inevitably may be; spooky action at a distance, indeed.
TEACHER: “Children (classroom of 2136), what company was complicit in bringing about World War III in 2019? What single decision could have made a difference in how our society functioned during that time and was later won in a lawsuit against this company as being a contributing factor in the start of the war?
DAVID: Twitter was that company, ma’am. If only they had considered how the president’s inflammatory rhetoric would disrupt relations with the rest of the world until he drove them into fearfully attacking the United States first. The lack of social responsibility of companies back then allowed them to experiment with society without taking any responsibility for the outcomes. Those were dark times, ma’am.”
Without context Trump’s tweet could be threatening, wouldn’t you think? Perhaps in the right light, it could even be an act of war…
What is it about conservatives and war? They seem so in love with the idea, valiantly going off to war, dying for the patriotic glory of the nation, seems to be the national pastime, with entire generations of families who have always been in one war or another, a lineage of violence, often for violence’s sake. As long as the rich and the powerful don’t have to do any of the dying, that is. Then conversations about congenital diseases take place. Bone spurs, or other such anomalies in the general public occur with the liberal application of money in the right hands.
It doesn’t seem to jibe with conservative sensibilities. You would think they were getting paid to go to war or something.
But if I were a conservative…
You would think war, being on an active war footing, sending blood and treasure to disappear onto foreign soil would be something a conservative, focused on protecting the quality of life for its people would want to engage in as little as possible. Remaining peaceful and on a peace-time footing wherever it could be maintained, so funds which would be spent on war, might instead be spent on peace.
Funds which would provide free education to every citizen, thought equal in the eyes of the nation and its future.
Funds which would ensure no one went without healthcare, without the capacity to seek high quality medical care, prolonging both the quantity of life and the quality for every citizen, allowing them to be productive into their old age, sharing their conserved wisdom for all.
Funds that could, if they were divorced from maintaining industries devoted to death and destruction could instead be devoted to houses of learning. Not only colleges of all types, catering to every individual based on their interest and what’s best for deciding the entirety of the Human future, by studying the past, the present and projecting on the future based on informed and ethical decisions made by responsible citizens, which education most certainly would create.
Not just academic schools, we might have vocational schools where they not only teach the skills, but perfect the means of making our society more functional, utilitarian and conservative, finding new ways of reducing the effects of our buildings and lifestyles on the natural world. Who would know better than the people building those homes, aligned with academics who study the natural world; schools which create citizens who will shape the future conserving the world and our lifestyles without the ominous threat of perpetual war.
Who knows, jealous of our national infrastructure which would be the envy of the world, where trains, move between major cities at near-supersonic speeds, where mass transit, people-friendly cities and enlightened work paradigms free citizens to be their most prosperous, healthy, productive, creative and visionary selves?
Is this not something worth protecting? The dream of something better than today’s fractious partisan politics, am I right?
So, I am required to ask by my personal demons, a few questions I have hoped to have answered by the conservative party.
Since none of the things I have mentioned seem to exist on any conservative agenda, nor on the agenda of any of the hundreds of companies lobbying and controlling our government, what exactly does the conservative party, conserve, except perhaps the feelings of the entitled rich (and invariably white) members of society, who feeling the pressure of a grown intolerance for the plutocratic status quo, have decided to turn in their victim cards early and cry “reverse racism” before they are even a functional minority, yet — what exactly does the conservative party conserve and if it were so good, why do they need so many underhanded methods to control voting, voting districts, or methods of manipulating the electoral college.
I mean if conservatism was really such a grand idea, I would be able to find something which promotes the tenets of the modern conservative party and have it be something where people, the environment, the social contract, economic, global and political responsibilities meant we didn’t just look out for American interests but the interests of the world at large.
But I can’t easily find one. Okay, that’s not true. I found something which professes to be what the modern conservative viewpoint might look like if it were written by a responsible adult. I almost don’t disagree but I am hard pressed to find anything in this document which is being adhered to with any degree of fidelity. Hell, if you can, I dare you to respond and tell me where. For the link averse, I will list those ten tenets and let you figure out if you need to make the next step.
- Limited Government
- Civil Rights
- Justice
- Religious Freedom
- Political Integrity
- Public Ethics
- Responsible Economic Management
- Competence
- Stewards of the Earth
- Understanding the balance between “guns and butter”
With that said I must now ask:
If conservatism was as good as we were promised, would it require the magic of gerrymandering?
I mean surely there is a way, using computers to come up with a non-partisan, completely fair means of distributing party affiliations such that no one has a particular advantage or disadvantage.
Or dare I say it: maybe we should find new ways of determining our elected officials; I mean, seriously, it isn’t the 1800’s any more, the limitations placed on the process could probably stand for some upgrades and refinements, i.e. the Electoral College.
Would being conservative, if it were so great, require economic stacking of the deck, highly partisan machinations heaped upon an unsuspecting and uninformed public, designed to disenfranchise and undermine fair elections in society?
Why not assume, if you can get an identification card anywhere in the nation, you are registered to vote, until such time as you are declared legally dead (or disenfranchised while in prison, to be renewed upon your release.)
A voter would be required to use their unique card ID to vote. It can only appear one time in any singular election. Stick some of that cryptocurrency mojo on it and ta da! Elections only citizens can vote in and are completely secure since no election will allow any vote to appear more than once linked to any single crypto-secured ID. You’re welcome.
If conservatism was as good as we were promised would it need to rely on dirty tricks? Would it need to rely on foreign governments to achieve its goals?
Or this:
We don’t have to ask whether there was collusion or not… we have confirmed evidence of hacking which means the possibility existed and that’s all anyone truly needs to pay attention to. Because conservatism says if I can do it I must and I will.
If conservatism was as good as it was promised why does it seem to focus primarily on making money, it doesn’t talk about people, like aiding the elderly, or the poor it, it wants to talk about how they live, and render judgment on their lifestyle blaming them for their poverty or their excesses while ignoring their own.
Conservatism doesn’t talk about helping anyone save the rich or people who are not in need of anything in any way except maybe in an emergency.
Help, my yacht is sinking, send the Coast Guard. We still have one of those, right?”
Its goals are primarily focused on money because with money, they have the power to do whatever they like, outside the political process, even if it isn’t conservative in the least.
Let’s not even get into the tone-deaf nature of these tweets made by Trump when Obama was in office but now are exactly the things he’s doing to distract from his ailing presidency…
Where are those conservatives now? Where are they when big businesses are losing money and thus shuttering jobs, when the stock market is losing money?
“Goldman Sachs: Buckle up. Trade war fears will likely get worse”
With the poorest Americans being affected by the machinations of the richest, when trade wars are on every nation’s economic agenda, trade wars which will affect poor people far more than the rich, and and the poor who will have to send their daughters and sons off to fight the real wars looming on the horizon.
How exactly did they get the name the “conservative party”? It often seems the only thing they’re trying to conserve is their wealth, not society, not humanity. So you have to ask what exactly are they conserving if it isn’t you or me?
They aren’t conserving nature; they dig everything up faster than ever, conflict minerals, fish from the oceans, strip-mining the rain forest, 20 acres a day; burning up the world in an economic forest fire and not a fireman in sight…
Perhaps we should redefine the Conservative Party and call it the “Rapacious Party”; consuming the Earth’s natural resources and turning them into stuff they can sell, appears to be their goal. No concern about breathing or drinking or eating ever seems to come up in polite conversation. Perhaps they think they are leaving the rest of us on the blackened Earth…
Wait. They do.
“The wealthy are plotting to leave us behind,” writes Douglas Rushkoff, describing what he learned from a high-paying speaking gig about the future of technology for “five super-wealthy guys…from the upper echelon of the hedge fund world,” — and what it says about perceptions of technology today.
Conservatives fancy themselves the stewards of the Earth, protecting it and preparing the way for the conservative viewpoints necessary to see mankind into the future. But only a select few deserve to be there. Let’s say those with the economic capacity to build a survival bunker and stock it for ten years. No? Then they don’t mean you.
Stewards of the Earth? In a pig’s eye. This was Thaddeus Howze and I am your…Cognitive Dissident
Thaddeus works as a writer and editor for two magazines, the Good Men Project, a social men’s magazine as well as for Krypton Radio, a sci-fi enthusiast media station and website. He is also a freelance journalist for Polygon.com and Panel & Frame magazine. Thaddeus is the co-founder of Futura Science Fiction Magazine and one of the founding members of the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop in Oakland.
