I saw a short video shared on Twitter this morning, in which a young person asked conservatives what they mean when they say they love America, since they also seem to hate so many aspects of America. (Watch it here.)
The person who posted the video asked, "I’d love to hear someone answer this question."
I'm also obsessed with this question, and grew up in a conservative area, so I was interested to see what people had to say. I filtered through the obvious answers about white supremacy (which is definitely a key part) to see what else might be suggested.
There were a variety of responses.
As a former Republican I can answer this. When they say they love America, they love the America that only exists in the minds of children who haven't learned better. It's why they hate the left so much, because the left knows America isn't the greatest country in the world.
Kris @Kariodude
That reminded me of Stephen Colbert's great bit about how people tend to want everything to be like it was in some mythical past, which always turns out to be around when they were 8 years old. No matter how bad things were at that point in history (people who were 8 during the Depression think it was great, people who were 8 during World War II think it was great, and so on). It's because they were children then and didn't know how things really were.
I think this specifically is what they love. The “American” dream:
chickenjane
That one reminds me of George Lakoff's explanation about the strict father as the base of conservative morality. (Even more on it here.)
Oooh! Oooh! I know! I know!
1. Guns.
2. Being able to control a woman's uterus.
3. A community of citizens who look/act like me.
4. Guns.
5. A voting system that insures I'm represented by people who look and think like me.
6. The ability to never feel uncomfortable.
7. Guns.
Steve Turner
That point about never having to feel uncomfortable. That is definitely part of it.
And I'm trying to remember if I've seen a good analysis of how guns play into it. Something about penises and insecure masculinity in a culture of toxic masculinity? I know, it reminds me of that amazing article by historian Walter Johnson from 2018 about his life growing up around guns, which included these words: "guns are tools: tools for making emotionally stunted men feel whole."
The only real answers I have gotten from conservatives are:
1. This is a Christian nation and they like that (even though this is inaccurate)
2. They like the flag and think liberals are un-American for burning it (they seem to think this is a big hobby)
That’s it.
@og_seibways
I get the sense from a lot of material I've read, written by people who've left evangelical Christian communities, that this point about a Christian nation is even more true than I already think in all my fear of theocracy. Ugh.
My brother had a good answer to this question. He said they want to live in their small mostly white towns and not have anything change, ever.
Tyler Hendrick
This is exactly it. Even a change for the better! If that happens, then they're pissed that they didn't benefit from it for the first few decades they lived there, so it's not fair that others will benefit now.
@unhootchie
It's such a weird ideology like, while there's nothing wrong with being a bit weary of sudden change and what not, the way they go about it is like, almost parasitic in how utterly and aggressively stubborn they are of ANY change. Pretty much since the civil war, they've been the defacto opposition to any sort of societal change for the better, Ending Slavery, Civil Rights, LGBT Rights in general, Inter-racial Marriage, etc etc. Hell I bet they were the main ones opposed to ending child labor too.
@FellowOfSome
Oh, they were definitely opposed to ending child labor.
That complete opposition to change is one of the things at the core of conservatism. I think these three comments touch on some of the main aspects of conservatism, especially the loss-aversion angle, which we hear repeated all the time on topics like student-debt forgiveness. It's like freshman hazing or the continuation of child abuse: I had to live with it, so everyone who comes afterward must also... I turned out all right despite it, so you need to live through it, too. Or even the more twisted, it made me what I am today.
MAD, 1968:
@den_shen_onlen
Super Patriot and conservative are not the same thing, of course, but they often see themselves as interchangeable, and this 52-year-old MAD magazine page shows us that we are not making new observations.
But we already knew that.
__
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt ascribes conservatives' stances to the way conservatives vary in their feelings about six core forms of morality, compared to liberals. Other social psychologists look to the big six personality traits.
1 comment:
“He said they want to live in their small mostly white towns and not have anything change, ever”: where I live, that describes the mindset, exactly. But to make it work, you have to be willing to ignore the domestic violence, sexual predation, and meth and opioid damage on (literally) the other side of the railroad tracks, the empty commercial properties all along the main drag, the poverty rate, the lack of opportunity for young people, and on, and on.
And you have to invest heavily in local nostalgia. The local newspaper now has a habit of running photos and old ads from restaurants and stores long gone.
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