Republican looking to understand a Democrat's side of politics

by CaptainHaHa
I have been raised a Republican and have a very difficult time understanding the democrat side of modern day issues. I would like to expand my understanding and knowledge so please post the democratic view of modern issues.


Response by captainpixstick

I think Republicans get so much hate because a lot of liberals can't imagine what the "conservative" end game is. It just seems to be, I got to get me mine, fuck everyone else. Take for example Health Care reform. The only salient point conservatives made against it is that it costs money. But somehow spending 10 times that amount to depose the leader of, let's face it, a pretty small-potatoes country is? The rest of the arguments against Health Care were either false, as hypocritical as the money issue, or just downright unimportant to the conversation. Couple this with the fact that progressives can't begin to wrap our heads around WHY conservatives are against something like Doctors for Everyone and I think you start to see the reasons why we are so angry. I do not know if you have ever lived without health insurance, I am right now, and it boils my blood to see well heeled folks talk about the success of our medical system. While getting elective cosmetic teeth whitenings. Covered by their health plans... often times run by the state.

Progressive politics strive to make life better for all people. And over the last 10 years, our conservative counter parts seem to have no real agenda other than to obstruct those aims. Sure, there are some social policy stuff thrown in, like blocking gay marriage and abortion, but those are so obviously just tactics taken by conservative leaders to get people to the polls. When they are in power they don't seem too interested in them anymore.

The crutch many progressives in GOP-clothing seem to use is this notion of Fiscal Conservatism. I feel this is a load of shit. All FC means is that you don't believe in living beyond your means, be it personally or nationally. News Flash to the folks making political ads: all adults feel this way! Politicians get elected by making promises and bringing money to their districts... all of those on Capitol Hill claiming to be FCs, do any of them stop bringing home the pork to their state? Nope. The FC thing is just marketing tool, and one that works well. Despite the fact that the only people who seem to be able to balance the budget in the last 50 years were Democrats.

On that note it strikes me as ludicrous that conservatives are still backing the Bush Tax Cuts when literally every single economist not on the payroll of a republican think tank or Fox News says these cuts are what helped push our economy to the brink. The man that helped shape Reaganomics has come out and said trickle down does not work. We have actual examples to learn from of previous and foreign efforts to jumpstart failing economies, all them leaning heavily on the spending power of large government. Yet... here we are. I shudder to think where we would be as a country if the Fiscal Conservatives of the 1930s had their way...

Now look at the tone of the conservative movement. I can't believe any conservatives want political office as it seems they hate nothing more than Washington DC. When I grew up we looked to DC as the place where what made us great as a country was done. Contemporary conservatives seem to regard it with as much bile and venom as Osama's cave... How can I be comfortable with leaders who actively hate government and have no respect for it?

• Republicans speak of the virtue of hard work, but they focus their actions on rewarding special interests who seek extraordinary concessions from the government as shortcuts to profits.
• Republicans want to shrink government, but they consistently promote expensive military action around the world at the drop of a hat.
• Republicans claim that they want America to be more competitive with other countries in the global marketplace, but they frown upon expenditures for education and discourage immigration of talent from other countries.
• Republicans are adamant in their opposition to intrusive government regulation, but they have no problem having the government inject itself into the privacy of bedrooms and of doctors' offices across the country.
• Republicans say that job creation for Americans is important to them, but they do nothing to remove incentives for outsourcing American jobs overseas.
• Republicans urge the need for innovation and technological advances in the United States, but they rarely miss a chance to take an anti-science position on any given issue.
• Republicans say the rich are job creators and deserve tax cuts, but the corporations have been sitting on over a trillion dollars. And didn't use any of it to create new jobs in America. They don't deserve any tax cuts. The wealthy use their money on investments and luxury purchases, which do not create jobs. Many investments are electronic speculation requiring no workers in the sense that smaller businesses do. To create demand there must be consumers. Without disposable income, consumers cannot consume and stimulate growth. That is evident, yet we continue to hear the shouts for more trickle on economics which has never proven itself to be a valid economic model. It's just a smokescreen to enrich the already wealthy further, but if it is championed through the right wing noise machine enough there will be millions of people parroting the lie.

Americans have been hornswaggled by a bunch of Conservatives in $2,000 suits who convinced us that we needed small government, free enterprise (except for unions), local businesses serving local customers, family values, a flag-burning amendment, a sanctity-of-marriage amendment, and respect for traditional Christian beliefs. So, all the hayseeds went out and voted for these hucksters who gave us nothing resembling what was promised. What we got was lower wages and no benefits. Our jobs were outsourced. Our local businesses have been run out of business by branches of global corporations. Our friendly neighborhood banker has been replaced by the neighborhood branch of the global megabank. Our nation is dependent on a fragile global economy with its long chains of supply that often originate in nations that hate America. All the food we eat is made from corn. All the shit in our house is from China. All the oil we use is from whatever country we invade.The goal of America's global corporate employers is to kill their competition, pillage and extort countries for resources, buy politicians, and pay their employees as little as possible and work them as hard as possible. It's socialism when it benefits the poor and capitalism when it benefits the rich. Prisons are for people who can't buy their way out, etc.

They privatize the profits and socialize the losses. They run their firms into the ground or to the brink of ruin and then cry to have their "too big to fail" companies bailed out by the taxpayers. We relent because "too big to fails" is French for "Gun to the head" of the average American, so we give them their bailouts which are against the very principles they espouse to justify no regulations. And what do they do with it? They shower themselves with lavish bonuses for doing nothing more than moving and leveraging capital. They move it offshore and they leverage it against the consumer. They make NOTHING of value except themselves richer. They create no jobs, no useful products, nothing of any real tangible value. They can't even argue that the average citizen benefits in any way from what they do. They've created a corporate culture that sends jobs and profits off shore and forces average working class citizens to take on massive debt just to keep their heads above water for the sake of their families. They live like sultans and kings while America's bridges and infrastructure crumbles beneath our very feet.

Beyond that, for me personally, I look at history and all I see is progressiveness. One generation thought the world was flat, the next changed that. One generation thought owning people was cool, the next changed that. One generation thought that excluding certain colors of people from the political process was ok, the next changed that.

When someone tells me they are conservative all I can think of is the Dodo bird... you and your ideas are going to be dead, whether you like it or not, in time. Who knows how long. And there is an aspect of this that affects me. Lots of stuff I hold dear is going to change. Opinions will shift. But then I do not define my political being by holding true to the past so perhaps it affects me less.

Thanks for taking the time to ask, I hope you didn't read this as an attack. I am always down to discuss what it is to be a conservative or liberal, it just makes so little sense to me (and I have voted republican once upon a time) Most people I know (and I know a lot) who identify as conservative are good hearted people who feel strongly about a few key issues that the major money interests of this country have most successfully co-opted for their own gain. Divorced from those social issues all I see are rich people trying to concentrate as much of the money, power, and opportunity in the top 10%, the rest of the country be damned.