To be fair to him, back in the 1950s that's what being "conservative" actually meant - high taxes, high welfare spending, and anti-Communism. The world, and America with it, have moved on since then, but Drlee hasn't. He's like a time traveller from a bygone era, looking confusedly around himself and wondering what the fuck happened.... 
I hope you are kidding.
I am not for "high taxes". I am for a balanced budget. There is no way to get there with the current tax rate on the wealthy. I am a nationalist. I was an anti-communist to the extent I cared at all but the USSR was just the bogeyman under the bed. Annoying, ever present but imminently trustworthy. Russia and Putin are not trustworthy.
I know exactly what happened and here it is. IT is also why Trump may well win this election. Deep breath.
Americans have a very high opinion of themselves. I was raised on a diet of American exceptionalism. It was pounded into our brains at elementary school. Schools that were very disciplined. Acting out, vulgarity, poor manners and divergent political opinion were not tolerated. We had an 'away' to throw people to in those days. It was called Vietnam followed by manual labor. We flirted with higher purpose during the hippy era but the real deal is that the few progressive ideas that we drug addled hippies toyed with were a mere sideshow. As was the hippy movement entirely. Under this façade of liberalism was a nation that elected Nixon twice.
The republican party then was the civil rights party and the progressive party. But the changes from that time are far more than just a hemispherical swap between the republicans and democrats. The overarching source of pride in America was the middle class. We referred to and believed in "an embarrassment of wealth". Our wealthy were mostly old money or slowly acquired new money. The wealthy kept to themselves and were not much flashy at all. God forbid someone was labeled "nouveau riche". Anyway. We idolized comfort and security and not flash and conspicuous consumption.
So the change that I see in some 50 years of adulthood is far more subtle and nuanced than the obvious infatuation we have with hyper wealth these days. Check this out.
I said I would show the path for Trump's win. Here it is. If you watched the democratic convention last night you saw them double-down on protecting "our children". That old saw will likely not work at all. My generation and the one that followed showed very well that when it comes to matters of money and education we do not give much of a shit about our children. We allowed their schools to fall into disrepair and become undisciplined daycare centers. The standard for public education reached is apotheosis in 1969 and few today could meet that standard. We refused to pay and or hold the schools to a high standard. When Reagan came along and said that we could keep a lot of our tax money and nothing bad would happen we all said, "oh yes, please sir". But we still cared about "our children", right? Well. No. We allowed them to embrace frankly disgusting social standards. Gangster rap being just a really stark example. We gave lip service to teachers while putting the importance of babysitting our kids while we (both) were at work over the kids performance in school. We simply were too lazy to hold our children to the same standards to which we were held.
Economically. We drank the cool aid. We shouted about American job loss overseas and "good paying" union manufacturing jobs. But we were not willing to pay for them. When I was a kid a starting washer and dryer cost the equivalent of $2500 today. So when the overseas manufacturers offered this for half price we conveniently said, "fuck those overpaid union workers" and ate the cookies. We became besotted with cheap stuff from overseas and this cheap stuff made lower wages and reduced benefits more tolerable. We were sold a bill of goods about free trade and blithely believed it.
Back to our kids. We sold them down the river when it came to college educations. Rather than pay as generations of parents had tried to do we simply got the government to loan them money. So we bought a new Hummer with the "education fund" and let our kids amass debt. And in doing so we removed any motivation on the part of the educational institutions to keep education affordable. Charge what you want. The government will just guarantee more money. And boy did it. The entire gross domestic product of Russia could not repay them in a year.
So lets screw the kids some more. How is it that the Republican party went from the environmentalism of Nixon to denial of global climate change? If you think the student loans are bad, just consider what it will cost our children just to defend our cities from flooding. There was a time when parents would err in the side of caution rather than risk their kids future. No longer. Fuck 'em. They'll figure it out and besides. I really want a new car.
Oh. And on Nixon. Some operatives of his campaign broke into the DNC headquarters and we forced him from office. Not for ordering it. Just for covering it up. Bush and Obama have tapped everyone's phones, computers and even cars (look it up) and we think it is just fine. Now we have a convenient email leak to smear the democratic convention. How odd that it would just happen to come about on the day before the convention. Talk about coincidences. The word is that Putin is behind it....snicker.
So I get that someone like me who believes in caring for the next generation, privacy, tough social standards and an educated (really educated not STEM drones) can be seen as anachronistic. There are very few people like me left around. And if you think that Trump is the answer for someone like me because he claims to be conservative you are mistaken. We will see as the campaign progresses.
When I mention my disdain for the parents of this and the last generation I get puzzled looks all around. People simply do not see it. Two or three generations who would not think of putting little Aden in the car without hermetically sealing him into a car seat have 'deliberately' sold him and his entire generation for the comforts of a high deficit (it would skyrocket under Trump) a destroyed environment, an ineffective school system and morally bankrupt society.
So we'll see. Trump will probably win. All the evidence points to the fact that a great many if not most people just don't give a rats ass about anyone but themselves. And that is right in Trump's wheelhouse.
- By QatzelOk
- By Fasces
- By FiveofSwords