Conservatives' feelings of victimization are real. Authoritarians feel victimized when they're deprived of the authoritarian hierarchical structures without which they are lost. They react strongly to invented problems like 'woke' and 'cancel culture' because these intrude on their brand. Intrusions by people who have actually been victimized -- by conservative constructs that permit and encourage exploitation. Conservatives see competition as natural and inevitable and competing has consequences.
So those people on whom conservatives go off are only fighting back. There are winners and losers to conservatives and those who don't see this are idiots and sentimentalists. Note the insulting tone, relating to the competitive outlook. Take no prisoners! All of that nastiness began with conservatives.
Conservatives invented cancellation. As authoritarians it's part of their identity. I don't belittle it -- that they feel victimized. But they're operating out of a framework that assumes victimization and strict hierarchical organization with limited opportunity to change your status or situation. So, for example, they aren't only comfortable with inherited wealth they want to see its effects enhanced. Death to the 'death tax!' Marketing this takes balls. Or blindness.
But it's their idea of social justice. No kidding. Similarly, progressives don't underatand this, at all, especially in affluent cultures. They are as dumbfounded by people who seem to want to limit their own freedoms as conservatives are by people who don't need to have a place in a hierarchy to feel safe. And security is a huge concern for conservatives because their authoritarianism is universal and not culturally determined. It's innate. There are people out there who want to dominate you.
To conquer you. To enslave you and tell you what to do, so they just shit their pants over nonexistent threats. Like Sharia Law, as though that was a viable thing. It would be laughable if shit like this and similar absurdities didn't get traction. But they do because of conservative media. Which is an echo chamber and, though the observation is trite, its status as a cliche works against keeping in mind 'echo' means amplification. A positive-feedback doom-loop ending in insanity.
So this is a culture of fear. Irrational fear, allowing that there are genuine threats. Guess what those are. Other authoritarians, to begin with. Add it up and you have a cultural self-destruct. Addiction to unreality. An unreality of imagined threats and hidden forces that are after you. This last farce of an election was a genuine tragedy. A win for a delusional view of the world that could get us all killed. I repeat, there are real, irreducible threats out there. But those taking us down are internal.
Reality might suck sometimes, and I take a break from it when I can, but habitual unreality is worse. The road to every kind of awful problem. Delusions have more animus behind them because of their roots in fear. Reality is always under revision. Because of change. Conservatives resist change -- the point of 'conservatism' -- so, again, the roots in unreality are deep. Delusions can live in an immutable place. Beacause it's a fiction. A fantasy. And a sick one, in this case.
The progressive view doesn't disallow conservatives' social structures. It encourages them, believing in freedom and diversity as a default, up to the point it impinges on the freedoms of others. Conservatives don't recognize this qualification. If they can limit your freedom and enhance theirs in the deal they win and you lose. Again, competition. In the extreme they'll limit your freedom to no apparent benefit as a show of dominance. To them, maybe, a benefit. Remember the fear.
They want to live in an environment that's not diverse because it's not reassuring enough to them otherwise because they're so fucking afraid. Allowing conservatives to control a society is a disaster. The assumption after WWII was that, what with nukes and the Holocaust, we had learned a lesson. Apparently not. Because delusions are immune to lessons. Conservatives are after our schools partly for this. They favor indoctrination, They are driven to control everything.
Because they need reassurance they can never get. Their problems are inside of them.
