I don’t have much of a problem either way as I don’t think I’ll be engaging in political discussion on this website past this post but it seems like any sort of non-left wing opinions or posts are immediately trashed on here. That’s fine. There’s clearly a more liberal audience here and that’s okay. I just don’t want Lemmy to become a echo chamber for any side and it seems to be that way when it comes to politics already.
Mostly making this post just to drum up discussion as I’m new here.
Edit: Thanks for the rational replies. I was expecting to get lit up for even mentioning this topic lol.
Your comment is a pretty good attack on what the GOP has become. My criticism is that the GOP doesn’t represent all of right-wing political ideology. I think most people, or at least people like me, aren’t dogmatically locked into any party or ideological label. I have some views which conservatives would agree with and plenty that they wouldn’t. Overall, I think that most conservative-oriented communities are narrow-minded at best, and openly racist and authoritarian at worst. But the left-leaning communities aren’t great either. They (justifiably) want to insulate themselves from the hateful parts of the right. Unfortunately, this often devolves into an echo-chamber without real discussion. I’m hoping Lemmy as a whole doesn’t devolve down either path.
I haven’t seen a discussion about the merits of different tax policies (and no, “cut all the taxes!” isn’t a policy), or the role of local/state/federal government, or social service policy (and no, “stop all poor people spending!” is not a policy), or the appropriate division of power between executive/legislative/judicial, or anything like that, in decades. W was president the last time I saw any form of media having a real discussion about those things.
Before 2015 or so, there were a handful of people in my circle who identified as conservative that could have a real, nuanced, complex conversation about public policy with; people who I thought were incorrect, but who could articulate their points well enough that I could kind of see where they were coming from, and we could come out of a discussion with a better understanding of each other, and maybe one or the other of us might even have softened on a given position in the process. It was possible to find basic, fundamental points on which we agreed, and use those as a foundation for a broader discussion.
Since 2016, all of those people, to a man, have become Q-anon deep-state groomers-coming-for-our-kids frazzledrip climate-hoax hunter’s-laptop gays-have-it-too-good morons. Not a single one of them still believes in any of the fundamental points of agreement we used to have, from which a productive discussion could be based. They have entirely left reality behind in favor of Jewish space lasers and (the latest talking point) “every father thinks about his daughter that way!”.
I have not met someone who identifies as a conservative or a Republican who isn’t on that same train for a very long time.
This has been exactly my experience as well, and why I am increasingly comfortable with skepticism of unqualified conservative voices as a default.
I have been having good faith debates over real policy with conservatives for three decades. Since Carter more or less. I know what that debate looks like. But since 2016, I know two types of former conservative - the reformed, who were awakened to the monstrosity that Trump created. And those who openly embraced fascism like a parasite embraces dog shit.
Every person. Every single one so far, who has been equivocal on this topic has turned out to be quietly the latter. The ones belonging to the former group are very open about feeling dumb and misled, even victimized. They express loudly and often the nature of their reform to anyone who will listen.
That pretty much mirrors my experience, except that I would say the point in time where a conversation was still possible was pre-2008.
Then, the Tea Party became a thing. Hatred for Obama became a thing. And drifting into conspiracy theories became a thing.
Before Bush left office, it was possible to have a policy conversation. Once Obama was in office, something broke in conservatives. Suddenly, conversations were about how Michelle Obama was secretly a man, and how Obama was secretly a Muslim, and how Obama was a terrorist or a Marxist or a Leninist, or about Obama’s birth certificate, or about any number of topics that had absolutely zero to do either with policy or with reality, but that were just items of faith in conservative circles.
And then the rise of Trump started, and conservatives completely stopped caring about reality, about observable facts, or about whatever they had just said the day before. Suddenly, Bush was the worst president ever, McCain was a loser, Romney was an idiot. Facts didn’t matter. Truth was subjective, and changed by the minute.
I have a couple of friends who were always Republican. I talked to one recently who still thinks of himself as such, and he’s pretty much adrift politically at the moment. In his (conservative) locality he’s gone from being mainstream to being called a RINO. Sadly, his resistance to the Q-anon cult is not shared by many of my other acquaintances who skew right - some of which have gone off-the-deep-end bonkers.
Like you said, a lot of mainstream conservative discourse (esp in America) has abandoned reality. But that doesn’t mean your friends’ old ideas are any different. The ideas and philosophies should be judged on their own merit, not the merit of what your friend has been warped into. You’ll never catch me defending mainstream conservative discourse. But I find it a bit stifling how America has become so polarized that we can’t even discuss the reasonable ideas without being accused of bigotry and conspiracy theories.
I can see a future for Lemmy where every instance that allows any non-left discussion is defederated. This would result in 2 spheres of Lemmy with little discussion. I hope we can be open-minded enough to realize that would be a bad thing.
That’s fine, but then there is a burden to both understand why your adjacency to this evil force makes people uncomfortable, and to rhetorically separate yourself from it as needed. This is just the unfortunate reality of how deranged mainstream conservatism has become.
I consider myself pretty libertarian in the grand scheme of things, but I am fine with an echo chamber where basic human rights are respected. I believe that my vision of society has no place for bigots or theocrats and that such people should be treated legally the same as fraudsters or thieves. And I think it’s absolutely insane that this would be considered controversial in a good faith conservative circle. The real conservatives I know would understand that an inclusive, well represented society is a productive and ideologically secure society.