Category: Scary Crazy Wingnuts

To the elite, equality looks like oppression

~ Dr. S. ~ 1 Comment

Conservatism traffics in nostalgia. Promises to make things Great Again reinforce the misguided notion that “things were better in my day” and suggest that the path to progress leads right back from where you came.

But in reality, conservatism isn’t about the past, it’s about right now. It’s about ensuring that whoever has money, power and privilege in this moment gets to keep it. The only thought conservatives give to the future is to ensure that the current power dynamic, which shuts out all but the privileged elites, is preserved.

Nostalgia is just the fairy tale conservative elites tell, the attractive wrapper for the real product: fear. Fear of change, fear of the Other, fear of losing ground, status, influence, relevance, things.

As a result, angry white men who never really had much access to meaningful power complain they’re disadvantaged because they are white men, when it’s really about money. So they blame people even poorer than themselves for usurping their advantage and privilege, even though those people have neither. They raise Home Depot patio torches and chant, “Jews will not replace us!” They join militias that play Army in the wilderness in hopes that implicit threats of violence (or actual violence) will restore their whiteness, their maleness, their straightness, as meaningful resume toppers.

They keep score like this: If other groups are gaining, I must be losing. But when you’re accustomed to privilege, even equality looks like oppression. So they long to return to a time when they believe they held the advantage.

But the leaders of the conservative movement don’t actually care about nostalgia. They care about getting theirs and keeping it. Conservatism isn’t about raising anyone up. It is, and always has been, about ensuring that those who are already up can’t fall.

And if you’re not already up, all conservatism has to offer you are stories about how great things used to be — and divert your attention toward who they want you to blame.