When and how did you figure out that American Conservatism was a scam?
Last edited Mon Nov 5, 2018, 01:43 AM - Edit history (1)
I’ve been reading some columns by reformed Republican and former Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard columnist Max Boot where he urges people to vote a straight Democratic Party ticket this year.
I can relate slightly to Max Boot - I was active in the College Republicans and even had a leadership position on a conservative campus newspaper that spawned the career of one or two of today’s Republican pundits.
It’s a source of embarrassment to me to this day.
I was about twenty when I figured out the GOP is, at least at a national level, a colossal scam which largely operates by harnessing ethnonational and religious resentments in the service of deficit-funded tax cuts geared to benefit the wealthy. This became clear to me back in the 90’s, when members of the LGBT community, not “Globalists”, Latino immigrants, and Muslims, were actively presented by Republicans as subversive, scary forces. I can still remember how heavily opinion pieces about the insidious “gay agenda” were pushed by people who privately admitted to me they could care less about the issue but it was a good way to “scare up” the religious Christian vote.
Nowadays, I try to look at my conservatism as a youthful indiscretion.
When did you realize American Conservatism was a hateful scam?
= new reply since forum marked as read
in 64, but I remember that after JFK was killed and the Civil Rights movement became the enemy de jour, the teevee had pictures of people being beaten and firehosed, along with dogs being sicced on them and I thought "there is no reason for this". At that time I refused to accept their terms of service and became a liberal then.
Wow, what a long strange trip it's been.
ran away from home the first time at 11 years old and hitchhiked almost 1/2 way across America and people took care of me but didn't try to make me turn around and go back. Same pattern played out until I was 16 and left home for good.
There are some great people in this country. Bet On It. 
My older brothers were very liberal, anti-war, and explained it all to me.
Now they're on the opposite end of the spectrum 
but I have grown more convinced of the evils of conservatism with every word and every action I see from "conservatives." Why should I be interested in helping billionaires conserve their fortunes by taking mine? That's all "conservatism" is.
i was always apolitical. pure luck, i left st. louis in a sellers market early 2006. Landed in my home town. lived with friends and relatives a couple of years. (I'm the bachelor uncle lol) so i had to get mine own place, of course. i decided i would read classic literature, waiting for cable to get turned on at my new residence. i read 75 or so novels over the next 2 years (never did get the cable turned on) . grapes of wrath, the brothers karamazov. uncle toms cabin, 100 years of solitude. .etc. next thing i knew, the hatefulness of conservatism was obvious.
read.
the.
classics.
Slaughter House Five is a genre of its own 
… all Political parties had the scam built in... but GWB went all in for the Deplorables, which were tolerated by politicians. JFK & LBJ started kicking them out and Nixon started the trend to "wink" at them... Reagan was not really one of them, but continue the "wink" for votes... George W Bush, Sarah Palin, Donald Trump... they exposed it and themselves.
The only downside was that seeing through the conservatives’ game so early made me more cynical than was probably healthy for an adolescent.
But I wouldn’t change a thing. Hard-core liberal since 1965!
I was 18 at the time and I couldn't believe how stupid they were then, and 20+ years later, the same morons are still in charge! 
And holy shit, what an eye-opener. On the bus ride into downtown L.A.’s Sports Arena, a rabidly right-wing Cuban couple bent my ears about how JFK’s assassination was actually good for the country. (As I’m only 15, I listen politely; today, I’d rage.)
Once inside, up in the nosebleed seats, there was an idiot waving a “Wallace for Attorney General!” sign, and a lone elderly African American gentleman who had tears running down his cheeks, and they weren’t from joy. Outside, there were a number of black kids carrying professionally made signage touting “Afro-Americans for Goldwater.” (They weren’t really into it, you could tell they were paid to hold the signs for news cameras.)
I was never so relieved to get home. The whole thing was like a Fellini movie, but without the art. Southern California was actually somewhat conservative back then (the L.A. Times endorsed Republicans for decades), but what I experienced wasn’t decent or respectable in the slightest.
In a way, my conservative high-school buddy did me a tremendous favor by asking me to accompany him to that rally. I saw/heard so many hard-core racists and vengeful kooks that, with a minimum of reflection, I knew with 100% certainty that I would NEVER be a Republican, and could never, ever trust a Republican. Enduring Reagan as governor only hardened my resolve: not only were Republicans pro-war, they were anti-youth to boot, and they didn’t hesitate to bring the military and law enforcement into the mix to shed some blood.
Liberal Democrat for LIFE.
I sometimes used to help my dad in his office in the National Press Building in Washington, and he used to get the weekly newsletter (it was called "Monday"
of the Republican National Committee sent to him. They sent it routinely to every office in the National Press Building. I couldn't believe the evil, mean-spirited tone of that party's rhetoric, and Nixon hadn't even been elected yet, although I despised him already. Goldwater had already started using the term "conservative," and the perversion of the word was in full swing four years later. It got progressively worse, until the word as defined in the dictionary had nothing to do with how it was being used by the Republican Party.
After I had moved back to the States from Spain, I noticed that Nixon's VP, Spiro Agnew had arranged to make a state visit to Spain on July 18th. Franco was still in power, and July 18th, 1936 was the start of the Fascist uprising that became the brutal Spanish Civil War. I had the occasion to ask Jim Buckley, the Senator from New York of the Conservative Party (he was William Buckley's brother, this is no joke) if he didn't consider this as going just a bit too far. No, he replied pleasantly, he thought it was just fine. That cemented it for me. He might as well have celebrated January 30th with some neo-nazis in Berlin.
The word "conservative," when used to describe a member of the Republican Party, meant nothing other than "Fascist sympathizer" as far as I was concerned. The meaning of the word "conservative" in English was relegated to linguistics students and investment strategists. Republicanese had perverted it for its own purposes, and given it another meaning entirely.
Like a lot of commenters further up the board, my eyes were opened in the 1960's. The campaign of Goldwater made it clear how hateful and mean the Republicans were. The racist hatred expressed during the Civil rights movement clearly exposed the blatant nastiness and hypocrisy of many social conservatives. The assassinations of Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Vietnam and Watergate, Tricky Dick Nixon, etc., as nauseam. I figured it out a long time ago. I quit watching television in 1980, when Raygun was 'elected'. I knew exactly what would be trickling down on the heads of the majority of us. 
I never did fall for that garbage. Their hypocrisy and breathtaking cruelty have always seemed glaringly obvious to me. Am really keeping my fingers crossed for Tuesday.
