A half-baked thought as I run off to campus to get training to teach my classes online...American conservatism has not been *opposed* to American liberalism as much as it's been a parasite on it, dependent upon it for life. motherjones.com/politics/2020/…
Fox News will spout its blather about how the virus is not such a big deal and the "private sector" will deal with it...meanwhile, our limping public sector is doing everything it can to keep it in check. If the virus is contained, Fox will say "see, it was overblown."
Fox and its viewers will benefit from the apparatuses of modern science and the modern state because its those systems that will prevent more of their viewers from dying, and those viewers will then live to vote for more Republicans who will attack science and the modern state.
Most white conservatives since the 1960s have claimed to be in favor of "racial progress and fairness," but they've opposed every movement for racial justice in the nation's history. They say "look at how much progress we've made," but hate the ppl who fought for that progress.
Contemporary, patriotic white conservatives need to believe that America is not a deeply racist nation, so they need examples that help prove this, and the areas of progress they can point to are victories won by movements they, at the time, vehemently opposed.
We've long known that it's the most Red states that benefit the most from federal government resources. There's nothing inherently wrong with this discrepancy in federal support...it's the ideological jujitsu the GOP uses that's so galling. washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-h…
GOP during election: "Hey, people working hard in Red states. You really resent your neighbors who can't get jobs and rely upon 'handouts,' right? Well vote for us and we'll cut that out."
GOP in office: "How dare you cut aid to areas hardest hit by 'the evil globalists?'"
GOP in office: "How dare you cut aid to areas hardest hit by 'the evil globalists?'"
One could perhaps write a history of American conservatism as an anti-modernist parasite that required the mechanisms of the modern state and modern science to flourish, but which eventually destroyed the host organisms (the state and academy) upon which it depended.
Here's hoping that this is NOT how this story ends.
Here's a thread from last summer (inspired by the great history podcast, White Lies) where I develop this theme of parasitic conservatism in a bit more depth.
