The Sin of American Conservatism

No more mincing words about it. American conservatism led us to this moment.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Before I started writing this post, I wanted to cover my bases. I wanted to ensure that I could back up my assertion there was nothing—and I mean absolutely nothing, past or present—that the lives of everyday Americans were made better as a result of a conservative policy achievement. The answer was none. Not one.

For the past 80 years, this country has entertained a charade: that conservatism was a sociopolitical ideology that was not only worth taking seriously but was effectively where the true heart of the country is. After all, the idea of limited government, local government, fiscal responsibility, personal responsibility, and a strong national defense seems quite good on the surface. Strengthening families. Promoting civic responsibility. Safe communities. Rule of law (and order). Championing free enterprise. Freedom. Liberty. You have heard some form of what I just mentioned uttered by self-identifying conservative politicians and liberal politicians who believed that doing a friendly nod to conservatives would help them win hotly contested elections.

Well, I’m here to tell you that all of it was complete bullshit. Not some of it. All of it.

American conservatism has always been about defending two things: patriarchal white supremacy and unencumbered selfishness. That’s it. Nothing else. Conservatives have sold their ideas and rhetoric as just about everything else than what it is to gain power. It’s been successful, considering all they had to do was appeal to the selfishness of voters who mostly have no idea how government works aside from what they learn in the media (and consequently get pissed off over misinformation and disinformation).

No tactic was off limits, including lying about the proper interpretation of Judeo-Christian ethics; waging culture wars; spewing waves and waves of cumulative action to overwhelm the opposition; creating a multi-billion dollar echo chamber to amplify and spread utter bullshit; subverting democracy with petulance and malevolence; shameless, naked hypocrisy; controlling the education system by working to actively starve the public school system in favor of unaffordable private schools where they can carry out the same indoctrination they accuse others of; and the deliberate welcoming of token ethnic minorities into their White-led and White-dominated coalition by selling it as an upgrade in social status, while promising them that it will get them somewhere so as long as they know their place in the hierarchy and not be woke enough to question the obvious veneer of racism.

To further sell their bullshit, they championed personal responsibility as a means to abdicate their responsibility to other human beings; called for limited and localized government to control how much they could be held accountable, if at all; celebrated the traditionalism of the patriarchal headship order (single mothers, be damned); commodified liberty to the point where they tied freedom to an individual’s economic wealth (and worth); and spoke of a strong national defense to protect our freedom—not only of the supposed American way of life but the freedom that comes with unilateral hegemony.

As much garbage as this is, conservatives have managed to win elections and maintain an advantage in the balance of power consistently since the 1970s, despite multiple Democratic presidential administrations and years of Democratic control of Congress up to 1994. American conservatism has little value except to assuage the id of voters who want politicians to coddle their selfishness and insecurities, regardless of how much collateral damage it may cause to other human lives because, in the mind of conservative voters, it is simply “better them than me”.

It is hard to compel people to be selfless, especially in a consumerist culture that deliberately makes satisfaction unattainable. Selfishness sells. It just does. Conservatism relies on perpetually selfish anger among voters: not the type of anger that inspires people to make lives better and uplift society as a whole, but the type of resentment that is fueled by dissatisfaction with their own lives, especially when that dissatisfaction is weighed against society at large. As a selling point, conservatives comically tell voters who to blame (some minority population that is easy to demonize; take your pick), and ask voters to elect them so they would have the power to punish said culprit(s). In return for voting for full-of-shit conservative Republicans, voters hope that it will somehow, in a depraved sense, their decision at the ballot box will help them feel better about their own shitty lives.

We have seen the shallowness and emptiness of American conservatism expose itself over the past 80 years. However, instead of doing what is necessary to send conservatism into the dustbin of history, we make excuses for it, make peace with it, defer to it, capitulate to it, or worst of all, fear it. Conservatism is the reason why the government falls short of its potential in investing in the well-being of its citizenry, partaking in the same commodification of the human existence that is championed by the oh-so-enterprising free market which, in theory, the government should act as a bulwark against in the public interest. But the hollowness of conservatism is a feature, not a bug.

That hollowness, by the way, has become even more outlandish. Gone is the masquerade of defending so-called “classical” liberalism, or what I would call “liberalism-for-the-fittest”; and its replacement has been the naked, ugly truth of illiberal right-wing populism. No need to say the “n-word”, when you can turn “affirmative action”, “DEI”, and “woke” into coded, racist pejoratives. Why utter slurs, when all conservatives have to do is advocate for the weaponization of government policy and institutions to delegitimize social justice initiatives? Why wear robes and hoods when all conservatives have to do is whine, bitch, and claim victimhood while wearing dapper suits and ties, get into power because voters bought the bullshit, and then push for the expansion of government as a means to reinforce White, patriarchal hegemony.

I will say, however, that those of us who are not conservatives—the liberals, the progressives, the left-libertarians, the social democrats, the bluer wings of the Democratic Party, et al.—have been naive for the past 8 decades.

Out of our collective notion to be more humanistic, we probably looked way too hard for the goodness of conservative Republicans. We took the high road. We did not demonize conservatives like conservatives demonize all opposition to them. We did not do enough to amplify their selfishness, cruelty, and hypocrisy. The whole American conservative movement was built on the pillars of the grievances, fragility, insecurity, and paranoia of a particular demographic, and we did not do enough to counter this.

We underestimated how much more of a setback conservatives saw the election of Barack Obama; infinitely more, in my eyes, than how we saw it as a triumph against conservatism. We thought that the goodness and the progression of American society would continue to triumph against a reactionary right-wing Wehrmacht; instead, the Wehrmacht got stronger and helped Donald Trump get elected not once, but twice. We kept bringing policy knives to culture war gunfights, further emboldening American conservatives to seize and wield power by any means necessary.

Today, Americans have not only a white supremacist in the White House, but an entire administration dedicated to defending and enforcing white hegemony. This was only made possible thanks to the depravity of American conservatism.

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Some of us feel doomed. I do not.

If we want to turn the tide against American conservatives, we can. However, we have to want it. November 2024 will be seen as our Waterloo if we don’t do something about it.

So, do something about it.

If there’s a protest, make your voice heard. Start blogs. Write posts on social media. Fire up a podcast. Make YouTube channels. Hone your anti-conservative message. Communicate effectively in a way that a persuadable listener who is sitting on the sidelines can understand. Donate to partisan Democrats. Let’s help shepherd the Democratic Party into becoming a true anti-conservative, anti-right-wing party. If you have family and friends who voted for the incumbent, cut them out of your lives. Their vote contributed to the shit that you are seeing now. Buy from businesses and entrepreneurs who share our values and have not bowed to conservative pressure.

As I said before, this is a war. A cold, civil war. There is a lot at stake here, and you cannot fully rely on Democrats in Washington. We simply cannot succumb to the sins of American conservatives, for that would be the ultimate capitulation that none of us can live with.

Fight.