Some friends I just can’t shake
hard enough
around the neck
with a firm grip
this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Then maybe it's time to start considering if conservative values have a place in our world? What does being conservative entail other than limiting the freedoms of other humans and refusing to spend money on anything but the military? Please give me a legitimate reason why we need to resist progress?
There's a general difference between conservative and regressive, or reactionary. Being conservative in the true meaning of the word can simply mean that you have a preference to wait and see, to, if in doubt, stick with the old and trusted. And there's nothing wrong with that: It's a good idea to have new ideas, but following every new idea blindly? Not so much. Society needs inertia, and that means both moving forward and not moving faster than we can actually adapt to ourselves changing. And we all have that in us. To different degrees, but it doesn't get more than 70% progressive or 70% conservative, in my observation.
That's because there's absolutely nothing wrong with lentil stew. It is, like so many things, tradition, "tradition" in the sense of a sum of successful innovations. Does anyone here have any problems with traditional woodwork? No? Thought so. Even the woodworking innovators respect it.
How to distinguish reactionaries from such true conservatives? Easy, actually: Reactionaries will invoke a past that never was, trying to move there, betraying that they're actually terminally misguided progressives. They do that in defence of failed innovations -- such as the nuclear family, or capitalism, or whatever.
I appreciate your honest response but, I haven't heard those intentions from anyone claiming to be conservative until just now.
I think it's fine to celebrate traditions, even fine to share them when asked, or offer to share them with people you know. My family makes these really specific pancakes for holidays, I love making those, great tradition. Some families deny their children basic healthcare because, traditionally their faith tells them to and that's child abuse, awful tradition. I get what you mean but it's a pretty shaky argument. As for waiting and reacting, how much longer do we need to wait to react to things like climate change, the homelessness epidemic, the opioid crisis, childhood cancer? If any of your traditions are against solving those problems, I'm sorry but I'm against those traditions and they aren't compatible with modern society.
I'm curious, why not find a new title for your political beliefs, and shame modern conservatives who line their pockets with money from big corporations? Sounds like the conservative badge isn't quite reflecting what you'd like it to anymore.
I'm an Anarchist, a widely misunderstood term. I thus emphasise with actual conservatives who are similarly misunderstood, is all.
We don't. Oh wait opioid crisis you mean the US, and your use of epidemic isn't hyperbole.
E.g. farmers over here don't mind environmentalism, they mind being told what to do by Greens who fail to care about farmers still being able to earn a living -- they're getting squeezed by supermarkets and agricultural subsidies, for decades, were designed to kill off family-sized farms. People don't mind electric cars they mind having to pay for a new one, doubly so while absolutely nothing got invested into rail over the decades and the FDP penny-pinched the 49 Euro ticket. People don't mind new building developments they mind that what gets built (by private developers) is way too expensive. People, and this is very telling, don't mind wind mills as such they mind not owning them: In SH, on the countryside, where mills are largely owned by municipal cooperatives, everyone is in favour, in MV, where they don't have much money at all to invest, they do mind as it's big corporations from the city who put the mills there. And this goes deep, studies show how subsonic noise emissions from those mills are calming to one group and a stressor for the other.
Things like cars and intensive, import-dependent agriculture aren't actually successful innovations, but mobility of people and everyone being fed are successful innovations. It's especially in these areas where trouble arises when so-called progressives declare the unsuccessful part evil but don't bother to protect the successful parts, thinking their part is done by fighting something, instead of building something new to replace it.
So, how long do we need to take until the US gets its act together? Exactly as long as it takes for progressives to realise that everything is going to change much faster if they care about being popular with the conservative crowd. Not the MAGAs and crazy evangelicals, forget about them, they're a symptom, not a cause.
Oh, last thing: Jehovah's Witnesses over here accept blood donations etc. for their kids. They had to change doctrine to get the status of a public-law church. I think they used an anabaptist-like "religious duty only starts when you're old enough to practice it" kind of reasoning -- that's a good innovation, isn't it?
I think you fail to account for the people that just don't care or are too (morally or otherwise) corrupt to care. You will not get a CxU voter to vote for anything else than their christian conservative values where anything against the status quo is bad.
A simple fact is that actions to minimize climate change will never be popular because it will affect most people in significant ways and it will hurt. We still need to do this, though. Conservatives are so hyperfocused on not changing anything and making other people's lives miserable that they cannot see what is coming to all of us not in the far future but potentially really soon.
There is no time to appease the conservatives and do things more their way to be more popular, because as the Americans say "if you give an inch they take a mile". Nothing will happen and that is something we all can't afford.
What it ultimately comes down to is corporate interest. Conservative parties will do nothing until it is in the interest of the corporations that fund them and their corrupt politicians. As you can see with the 49€ ticket, the railway maintenance or basically anything in control of FDP, CxU or SPD
Aside from LNG terminals, do you see anything wrong with this? And now don't tell me "That's SH you people are superior in any way so of course your CDU is sane", in BW the Greens are conservative and could, long-term, displace the CDU. Environmentalism is not exactly incompatible with Christian conservatism.
Then there's the difference in creed -- SH is very predominantly Lutheran, BW Catholic. Miles and miles of differences in official doctrine. That doesn't suddenly make the EKD progressive -- it simply isn't reactionary. At least hasn't been since 68, thereabouts.
Speaking about SH and the 49 Euro ticket: State employees get a rebate, welfare recipients don't. That's also CDU. It's not even "fuck the poor" but "also in poverty, one should be humble" (which yes sounds the same if you're not a Christian). But I really rather fight with proper conservatives about such stuff than with reactionaries about the right to exist of trans folks or something.
...maybe this just is about us actually having at least a semblance of proper conservatives over here and progressives elsewhere can't fathom non-insane conservatives existing.
I did not, in a single sentence, mention or imply appeasement. I said that progressives should start to care about preserving what's already good while implementing, and advocating, change. Even better: Frame your change specifically as preserving something good. Occasionally it will require re-thinking the way you want to implement things (generally for the better), very often it's just a matter of framing and messaging.
When the likes of Maaßen want to destroy civil liberties that's not conserving the status quo, and it's also not preserving something good. It's not conservative in any sensible meaning of the word at all.
What I see is a bunch of promises that will never happen. 16 years of CDU rule before the current government has shown exactly that. Claiming to do and actually doing it is a huge difference.
That is just delusional. Every single conservative party is blaming all the problems and failings of the current government on the greens. There is no way that they will ever overtake CDU as the conservative party. All that is not even accounting that most of the greens and their voters do not want to be more conservative.
Okay, and? Shouldn't politics and religion be as far apart as can be? Religion is notoriously slow in change and noone has the time to wait for religious conservatives to arrive in 2024.
So human rights are not a good enough reason to fight conservatives?! I myself am not trans or queer in any way but something doesn't have to affect me personally to see how harmfull it is. It is quite telling that this is again just a question of money. You would rather fight for money than for your fellow human.
SH is not the pinnacle of Germany and it also has its problems and if it is oh so great, why do they not lead by example?
If conservatives anywhere would be like "Hey we see the problem. Let's fix this in a reasonable way " they wouldn't be conservatives. It is that easy. The notion that progressives will just change stuff for the fun of changing things is frankly ridiculous. Times are changing and we have to change too to survive. This has been a law of nature for as long as life has existed.
You are right, this isn't preserving something good. It is "returning to the good days" that christian conservatives want, because they don't like the world changing. Returning to the time they think was the best is apparently better than just accepting change and adapting.
This is not even a problem of only the Christian conservatives but all of them. Lindner and the FDP want to basically make billionaires rule the world while everyone else slaves their lifes away for them.
? CDU is in power in SH since 2017, re-elected 2022 taking over from the SPD, before that 2005-2012 CDU, before that 1988-2005 SPD.
And we have a fuckton of wind mills: We're already producing quite a bit more than 100% of what we need and are continuing to expand. It's not a partisan issue.
The greens, and their voters, already are conservative in BW. Note that I said BW, not SH, not the federal level.
Should and are are two different things. The question you should ask is: Is it easier to turn people away from the Church or to reform the Church, and as even the Catholics are right now reforming I think you should rather applaud them, and strengthen and support Catholics in that change, than saying, warning hyperbole, "Nooo come to me to Satan's side with lots of gay sex". That would only cause reactionary stroppiness.
I don't have to fight the SH CDU on those issues because they're not trying genocide trans people. They'd get into all kinds of trouble with the Lutheran church if they did that kind of messaging because the Lutheran church is very keen on that whole love your neighbour thing: They don't want hate campaigns to poison people's souls. And I see nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with that.
We are, and we are. This is not up to discussion. Just a bit further south in the Bavarian town of Hamburg, then-mayor Scholz defended torturing people with emetics. Wouldn't happen here.
If you define conservatives to not include conservatives, sure. Bismarck introduced universal healthcare to conserve public peace (less charitably, to stop people switching sides to the SPD).
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Often there's just a pet project and people want to see it implemented, blind to alternatives. Like recently with the heat pump saga: Lots of (affluent) green voters and party members thinking "yes we're happy with our new heat pump let's make sure everyone has them", ignoring that the better solution, both in climate and social terms, is to invest heavily in district heating. Which then can use heat pumps of course. Antagonising gazillions of very much not affluent home owners for no reason whatsoever due to to the Greens being (practically speaking) unwilling to conserve the little socio-economic status that those home owners have.
I am not talking about SH because SH is just ONE part of Germany. The german Government was 16 years of sleeping on issues that needed solutions asap. Not all was bad, but in terms of future proofing Germany there wasn't a lot.
Okay, that is irrelevant as a reason that not all conservatives think like that. If they wouldn't be one of the first affected states they would just do what CDU does in other places since these politicians wouldn't be part of CDU otherwise.
Sure, that is not a thing on the federal level, though, which is what I was talking about. Even in BW I see it as delusional to think the greens could overtake CDU but that is just my opinion.
When the biggest conservative Party has christian literally in their name religion and politics can't be that separated. I for one think that the world is better off without religions but that not realistically ever happening, so reform is the only option. That doesn't mean that we have to be happy with the slow speed of reform and the stubbornness of a lot of believers in certain matters. Some things just aren't up for debate and have to be accepted.
That is good on a regional level but federally you can see a very alarming trend. Only thinking regionally is not the play. We NEED to fight for this everywhere because this may not be a thing now in SH but it may be a thing in the future. Also Lutheran church is just as likely as other denominations to just say they love but in actuality not loving at all. Just saying they don't want that doesn't mean that that is the truth. There are more than enough lutherans that hate just as much as catholics.
Oh so you feel superior? Any point you make is irrelevant then. A feeling of superiority doesn't let you see things objectively. I also categorize SPD as conservative btw and think Scholz is neither a good chanselor nor a progressive and he should be banned from any political role for this and his involvement in the CumEx scandal.
Conservatives only care about things that either affect them directly or their rule. Naming one good thing that one conservative has done while not mentioning that current conservatives are trying to undermine that very thing is disingenuous at best.
So we are just going to ignore all the pet projects of conservatives, for example Scheuers car toll, that cost the tax payer a huge amount of money while accomplishing nothing? Pet projects are stupid and shouldn't be a thing. I doubt you would find a progressive that disagrees.
And your opinion on that matter is the only correct one? How about we listen to experts that know what they are talking about instead of politicians that are heavily invested in a different outcome.
And I was talking about a particular breed of conservatives taking SH as an example. It's not my fault when you miss the topic.
From the very beginning I made it very clear that I was drawing a line between conservatism and regressive and reactionary politics. You saying "but regressives and reactionaries exist and they call themselves conservatives" in a million variations doesn't' exactly add to the conversation, yes everyone knows that those people exist. I mentioned them from the start.
One possible way to fight this would be to make sure Günther becomes the next chancellor candidate of the CDU. Of course, to do that one would have to be a CDU member. Are you friends with any which you could egg on to make that a thing? Or is your enmity so strong that you refuse to exert influence like that? How about talking to more centre-leaning people, convincingthem that a Günther-led CDU might be acceptable, whereas Merz is an absolute no-go? The CDU will try to get as much centre votes as possible, their preferences matter.
A Günther-led CDU is certainly more realistic than convincing a gazillion of habitual CDU voters that they shouldn't vote CDU.
...or at least someone out of that general corner of the CDU, just looked at recent news Günther seems to push Wüst (NRW) as he wants to stay in SH until (at least) 2027. Or maybe he's playing coy and/or hedging. Never believe a politician when they say they don't want a certain position.
Or maybe seeing things objectively leaves me not with a feeling of superiority, but a dispassionate knowledge of superiority. How come we're the poorest west-German state but still by far the happiest of all?
I don't think I've ever said anything positive about the CSU in my life. Not even parts of it. Not even a single politician.
District heating being better is what scientists say. In matters of shoes I defer to the shoemaker.
Well, there is a value in conserving nature and the environment. It's just that somehow conservative values generally contradict conserving things that are in danger, really.
Yeah, my mind has completely separated conservation with conservative. Most folks I know concerned with conservation efforts, are progressive. Most conservatives I know, want to watch the world burn to turn a profit.
Because the feelings of the people who would be affected negatively by progress are as valid as yours.
Okay but if progress means validating people who are made to feel invalid by a lack of progress, we're just in the tolerance paradox with different words.
Yeah, notice how you are now talking like "them".
Like who?
Who would be affected negatively by progress but the extremely wealthy?