Why hasn't the influence of the right-wing stopped societies from evolving?

[Hardkill]

I was just rewatching Leo's vid on Why Bernie Sanders Lost to further understand how voters and citizens in actuality choose their leaders within the society they belong to and why progress is not happening as fast as progressives and many other liberals out there want it to be. I totally get why America is still too far away from being ready to have a progressive POTUS.

However, what I don't quite understand is that even though every society around the world has always continually evolved towards becoming increasingly liberal in the long-run even still to this day, Leo still said in that Why Bernie Sanders Lost vid that even most people in 1st world countries, particularly more so with the great majority of those in the USA, have always been tradition-oriented and emotion-oriented to varying degrees and therefore vote predominantly base on fear, anger, how inspired and compelled they feel about a particular political candidate, religion, societal norms, nationalism, patriotism, pride in their economic system, need for security, survival, etc. That being the case then why haven't the beliefs in tradition and survival of the masses prevented their societies from progressively adding more and more liberal policies for their citizens over the long-run?

I know that Leo has mentioned before, especially in his How Society Evolves vid, that the main factors that cause a society to evolve include development of its economy and GDP per capita, development of infrastructure, improvement in levels of education improve overall for its entire population, younger generations of people continually replacing older generations, and more people living in areas that are more industrial and more ethnically diverse. I also know that Leo said that when enough people in a society suffer enough from the status quo, then there will be a sufficiently large mandate by the people for having some kind of positive significant change being made for the collective. 

Yet, regardless of the situation that is happening in their country or state, liberals have always made up the smallest percentage of people within its entire population,  and right-wing activists and conservative media around the world have always been more successful than left-wing activists and liberal media at persuading people emotionally. Furthermore, all of the right-wing media outlets keep getting more and more prevalent and more and more aggressive in each and every first world country in the world. Therefore, haven't the solid majority of masses always felt too afraid to either give up enough of their traditional beliefs or risk their survival and security or forgo choosing a political candidate who a good old fashioned and charismatic nationalist to allow any significant progress in society to occur?

Edited April 3, 2022 by Hardkill

[Yog]

Hm. Societies can be total far right-wing and Nazi and still develop economically, scientifically, even culturally. Even get ahead of progressive societies. I do not think that psychological evolution is needed for many societal developments.

Another thing would be that you do not actually need many people to do big changes. A handful of people can write a bill or a policy and a handful more will vote it, but it will influence the whole nation and ofc the next generations.

[Leo Gura]

Selfishness and low-consciousness is ultimately self-defeating and the universe is evolving towards higher complexity and consciousness, so even if you wanted to, you could not keep the status quo. Conservatives are always in a losing battle against evolution in the long-term. Conservatives only win in the short-term. In the end, if you don't evolve you die out so even conservatives are forced to change their positions.

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Selfishness and low-consciousness is ultimately self-defeating and the universe is evolving towards higher complexity and consciousness, so even if you wanted to, you could not keep the status quo. Conservatives are always in a losing battle against evolution in the long-term. Conservatives only win in the short-term. In the end, if you don't evolve you die out so even conservatives are forced to change their positions.

I understand that idea and I know you've talked about this before, but then why have conservative movements since around the 80s such as Reaganism and neoliberalism have been winning in the long-term when it comes to the economy, regulation, and freedoms? 

Also, Biden didn't win in a landslide during the 2020 election even after 4 years of Trump's incredibly disastrous admin. You said that it's because we greatly underestimated how under-developed the American population is, given how uneducated about 50% of the country is and how much all of those people are also stuck in a right-wing brainwashing alternative media echo chamber that has rotted their minds. You even said that the alt-media echo chamber was never going to go away with Trump and in fact these echo chambers have only gotten worse for the most part. That's why you said that you said that these things portend more troubling future elections for our country to come.

Or do you think that the masses are one day going to set totally sick and tired of Reaganism and neoliberalism after enough people in the USA suffer from it one day? What do you think will stop or control the toxic spread of the right wing media and all of the other media outlets out there that keep influencing the radicalization of all of American politics? Do you think that even though the vast majority of Americans are tradition-oriented that they have been and will continue to let go of their beliefs in American and religious cultural traditions?

Edited April 11, 2022 by Hardkill

[mmKay]

4 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Selfishness and low-consciousness is ultimately self-defeating and the universe is evolving towards higher complexity and consciousness, so even if you wanted to, you could not keep the status quo. Conservatives are always in a losing battle against evolution in the long-term. Conservatives only win in the short-term. In the end, if you don't evolve you die out so even conservatives are forced to change their positions.

https://youtu.be/TIAqh2o1Jf4

4:58

Musk redeemed himself with these words on this topic after that epic putin 1v1 tweet lol

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, Hardkill said:

I understand that idea and I know you've talked about this before, but then why have conservative movements since around the 80s such as Reaganism and neoliberalism have been winning in the long-term when it comes to the economy, regulation, and freedoms? 

1) Your thinking about this is still very short term.

2) Conservatives have lost a lot of ground since 1980. An 80's conservative would be considered a barbarian today.

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura How do you explain that the republicans were the first to pick a black man as a Supreme Court justice. 

[Hardkill]

13 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

@Leo Gura How do you explain that the republicans were the first to pick a black man as a Supreme Court justice. 

If you're talking about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, then he was actually not the very first black man to ever be chosen to be a member of SCOTUS. Thurgood Marshall, who was nominated by the Great Democratic president LBJ and confirmed primarily by the Senate Democratic Caucus, was the one who became the very first African-American US Supreme Court justice in all of US history.

[Leo Gura]

32 minutes ago, How to be wise said:

@Leo Gura How do you explain that the republicans were the first to pick a black man as a Supreme Court justice. 

Oh, you mean how to explain that they have one black friend?

Plenty of black folk are conservative.

[Preety_India]

6 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Selfishness and low-consciousness is ultimately self-defeating and the universe is evolving towards higher complexity and consciousness, so even if you wanted to, you could not keep the status quo. Conservatives are always in a losing battle against evolution in the long-term. Conservatives only win in the short-term. In the end, if you don't evolve you die out so even conservatives are forced to change their positions.

Isn't conservativism about preserving a certain way, a certain tradition that is meant to keep the society in a safe state from unnatural changes ?

Of course many conservative positions can be looked at skeptically because they could be harmful such as anti-gay narratives.

Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater too ? 

What I mean is that sometimes conservatism has its own benefits if a new change or trend is causing harm to the whole society, for example conservative positions on a proper family system is not such a bad idea and has its own merits.

 

[Leo Gura]

27 minutes ago, Preety_India said:

Isn't conservativism about preserving a certain way, a certain tradition that is meant to keep the society in a safe state from unnatural changes ?

What I mean is that sometimes conservatism has its own benefits if a new change or trend is causing harm to the whole society, for example conservative positions on a proper family system is not such a bad idea and has its own merits.

Yes, of course conservativism is necessary in the short term. However reality is always changing so in the long term you cannot preserve anything. Everything you try to preserve will die. Notice this.

[Hardkill]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

1) Your thinking about this is still very short term.

2) Conservatives have lost a lot of ground since 1980. An 80's conservative would be considered a barbarian today.

1) Valid point. What has been happening during the past 40 something years have been only a small time of history compared to the long term changes that have been made throughout all of US history. 

2) In some ways the 80s conservatives were a lot more backwards than  conservatives in most recent years. However, the GOP and conservatives seemed to be have devolved since the 80s for the most part. The 80s conservatives and even those up to the late 90s at least had way more dignity, civility, and principles. They also were much more willing to engage in bipartisanship with the democrats and liberals. The traditional never Trump Republicans have become so despondent over the fact that the GOP has devolved from the party Reagan to that of the party of Trump.

How do you think right wing media shows and personalities like Fox News, Alex Jones, Jordan Peterson, and even all of these New Age right wing conspiracy theorists out there will be stopped from spreading their infectious views around the world like a pandemic virus?

 

Edited April 12, 2022 by Hardkill

[How to be wise]

@Leo Gura In the cpac conference, Marjorie Taylor greene was publicly criticised for attending a white nationalist conference. Why would conservatives criticise her for that?

[trenton]

43 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

2) In some ways the 80s conservatives were a lot more backwards than  conservatives in most recent years. However, the GOP and conservatives seemed to be have devolved since the 80s for the most part. The 80s conservatives and even those up to the late 90s at least had way more dignity, civility, and principles. 

What I see is the same story with a slightly different spin.

During prohibition a common talking point from conservatives was that illegal immigrants smuggled bootleg alcohol over the border and we needed security.  After prohibition ended the drug trafficking stopped.  Then came the war on drugs and illegal immigrants started smuggling in drugs again.  Today conservatives say we need to secure the border using the same talking point.

During the 80's conservatives would gawk at you for putting homos in the military.  Today they would do that trans people arguing that it makes the military less effective.  This goes all the way back to reconstruction.  Anti black propaganda lead Americans to believe that blacks were sexual predators, degenerate, and needed to be separated from whites.  today conservatives site statistics suggesting that blacks are criminals.  In the 50's they conflated homosexuals with predators.  Today they conflated trans with predators.  It really is the same lie all throughout history.  conservatives also don't not want illegal immigrants coming over because they are rapists nor do they want refugees from the middle East because they are terrorists.  There are implicit racist biases, but with a different spin every time over the past 2 centuries.

The same story is always resisting integration through fear, hatred, and close mindedness.  This could be drugs, race, religion, moral relativism, immigration, or anything else.  What makes this challenging is that the same story is done unconsciously and automatically every time.

[DocWatts]

Conservatism : The fear that somewhere out there, those you've deemed to be your social inferiors may have the audacity to demand equal treatment.

[DocWatts]

Barbs aside, conservatism exists on a spectrum.

One one end, there are plenty of conservatives who are liberals 15 years removed, judging from the shifting Overton window on things like marijuana legalization and gay marriage.

On the other end, some portion of conservatives will end up supporting fascism. Not that they'll come out and say this, just that given the choice between progressive social democracy and fascism, they'll consider fascism the 'lesser of two evils.'

Of course the majority of conservatives will fall somewhere between these two poles.

[Leo Gura]

17 hours ago, Hardkill said:

However, the GOP and conservatives seemed to be have devolved since the 80s for the most part. The 80s conservatives and even those up to the late 90s at least had way more dignity, civility, and principles. They also were much more willing to engage in bipartisanship with the democrats and liberals. The traditional never Trump Republicans have become so despondent over the fact that the GOP has devolved from the party Reagan to that of the party of Trump.

1) The party of Reagan has been mythologized. It was never great.

2) There has been a general coarsening of culture and discourse over the years. Vulgarity has been on the rise as more common vulgar folk get more of a voice -- this is a counter-intuitive feature of greater democracy. Elites have higher standards, dignity, and civility.

3) As conservatives lose more and more ground, they become more and more desperate, forced to resort to shameless tactics to get their way. This has been happening on many issues because they refuse to admit any wrongness in their positions. This has made them shameless.

[Hardkill]

35 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

1) The party of Reagan has been mythologized. It was never great.

2) There has been a general coarsening of culture and discourse over the years. Vulgarity has been on the rise as more common vulgar folk get more of a voice -- this is a counter-intuitive feature of greater democracy. Elites have higher standards, dignity, and civility.

3) As conservatives lose more and more ground, they become more and more desperate, forced to resort to shameless tactics to get their way. This has been happening on many issues because they refuse to admit any wrongness in their positions. This has made them shameless.

I never believed that Reaganism was great at all. Though Reagan and everybody else back then who idolized and followed his philosophy and way of life I think were still better people overall than Trump and his followers. 

I see what you’re saying as to why conservatives and theGOP party as a whole have become much more crude and desperate. Sadly, more conservative morons are getting too much of a say in politics which makes things even more dangerous for our country.

At the same time, they are indeed fighting like hell to hold our country back from evolving as much as possible because of how upset they have become over the amount of necessary social changes and to some extent the necessary economic changes that have already happened over the past several decades. They also are scared of what might happened if or when many more liberal changes are made to America.

Do you think that there will be a time when most conservatives finally become much more moderate and reasonable than they are now or are they going to keep getting worse and worse forever? 

[Leo Gura]

24 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

Do you think that there will be a time when most conservatives finally become much more moderate and reasonable than they are now or are they going to keep getting worse and worse forever?

It's just a phase. We're transitioning from Blue/Orange to Green. It's a rocky transition that will last for decades.

[DocWatts]

26 minutes ago, Hardkill said:

I never believed that Reaganism was great at all. Though Reagan and everybody else back then who idolized and followed his philosophy and way of life I think were still better people overall than Trump and his followers. 

While Reagan was a terrible president whose brand of ideology is responsible for many of the problems we're experiencing today, I'll also agree that the level of narcissism and mask off authoritarianism among the American right has gotten much worse in the intervening decades.

The difference is that Reagan's ideology was a more straitforward Blue / Orange, while what we're seeing with the cult of Trump is Red taking advantage of and manipulating Blue for its own ends.

Edited April 12, 2022 by DocWatts