this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Some friends I just can’t shake

hard enough

around the neck

with a firm grip

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[–] [email protected] 237 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Somebody that's actively trying to end my existence isn't a friend.

[–] [email protected] 81 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I love that they excuse their vote as anything else.

I just want a tax cut. (and don't care about the republic or my friends' lives)

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Aw come on... they're not trying to end your existence. They just don't want to be alive or exist.

Okay wait actually some DO want to end your existence directly. But most wished if you just died.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Most of them would be fine if you just denied everything about yourself that didn't conform and pretended to be just like them.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Editors note: This only applies if you’re a white man. Other demographics are not allowed to conform.

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[–] [email protected] 118 points 9 months ago (5 children)

It's ok not tolerating intolerant people.

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[–] [email protected] 115 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'd be fine with them if they weren't constantly shoving it in our faces. Think about the children!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

And then they put that stuff in classrooms! How disgusting

[–] [email protected] 101 points 9 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I have [a] conservative family.

To be conservative in 2024, you have to dismiss that some people in our community are miserable and every day we leave them to their fate is heinous.

In the US, a failure to vote [against] any given Republican (by voting [for] an opposing democrat) is another step towards autocracy and genocide. Every Republican in office is a force towards the Heritage Foundation's 2025 project, by which they will unmake the meager democratic features and civil rights that remain in the US.

Conservatives believe, by the natural extrapolation of their positions and behavior, I have no right to exist. (Curiously, this includes my own father, who simultaneously facilitates political efforts seeking out my extinction while expressing a dissonant interest in my well-being. He doesn't dare connect the two in his mind.)

[–] [email protected] 33 points 9 months ago

I'm so terribly sorry.

You both deserve to exist and most likely rock out loud :)

[–] [email protected] 98 points 9 months ago (3 children)

A conservative you are guilted into seeing occasionally? We call that family

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[–] [email protected] 79 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I don't have Muslim friends who preach for all out jihad and the destruction of American democracy.

I don't have conservative friends who preach for all out insurrection and the destruction of American democracy.

Some choices aren't difficult.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I wouldn't say "preach" but I do have conservative friends that openly tell me that being gay or trans is wrong. (I'm trans, and they know this). I'd love it if they kept that shit in the privacy of their own homes

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

These people aren't actually your friends

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 79 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The paradox of tolerance says if we tolerate intolerance, then intolerance will dominate. Or something.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The social contract solution is pretty solid. If you are intolerant of other people first, you lose protection of the contract and others will be intolerant of you without penalty.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The problem on Lemmy is that this gets combined with overgeneralized binary thinking, and all loosely "conservative" people get strawmanned as the intolerant outgroup, which, when this happens, actually does make you the guilty party.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 9 months ago (8 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (7 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 9 months ago

I have friends

OK you don't have to brag.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 9 months ago (17 children)

I have a couple of conservative friends. We just don't talk about politics or the issues of the day. Surprisingly it's not that hard.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You know, there's so many people I have tried this with. They just won't stop bringing it up even when it is completely unrelated to what we're doing. One of them told me he feels smart because when that comes up I usually walk away to avoid the endless drama and he took that to mean that his position and opinions had so confounded me that leaving was my only way to respond.

Stuff like "yeah I think religion should be enshrined in the Constitution and everyone should have to live by our rules" and "if women don't want to have kids they should keep their legs closed".

Like, even if I thought engaging had any chance of working it's just such braindead regurgitated Fox talking points that I wouldn't engage anyway. Just waiting for these people to get everything they want and suffer for it.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The point is to not be tolerant of intolerance...

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago (7 children)

The primary difference is, I can throw a party, I can have my trans friends gay friends Muslim friends black friends, and Latino friends All in the same room. Then I can leave the room to go take care of something and not have to worry that any one person in the room is going to say "you people".

To be very honest I do have some somewhat conservative friends, They mostly worry that legislation will even the playing field and all their lifelong hard work will be for nothing. Which is still a pretty shitty outlook but I can understand it. They spent 10 years of their life putting our kids through college and all of a sudden colleges free.

[–] [email protected] 77 points 9 months ago (1 children)

"I had to suffer, so everyone else should too." is NOT a valid reason to push back against progress.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yep. Falls into the "Fuck you I got mine" category.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Every time I hear that I'm like, "So YOU made your car, home, smart phone, EVERYTHING, yourself? Without the help of any other human being? Congratulations on being so self-sufficient, clearly you don't need money, or to see a doctor, or to hire a specialist for anything, you can do it all!"

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

You don't choose sexual orientation, race, nationality, body you're born into.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Conservatism is a choice! And it's arguably the wrong one

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

I don't have conservative friends because I'm not friends with toxic people. I wish them ~~well~~ all dead

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

I don't care what you believe or what direction you lean politically. I won't be friends with jerkoffs and assholes.

That being said, all my friends are left-leaning. 🤷‍♂️

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I don't agree with the fascist lifestyle. I think they should keep it behind closed doors. On another planet. Not this one.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Not even that moldy tbh. just not cracked and deep fried enough for non mondays.

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