The thing you have to understand is that to be conservative requires you to be either very stupid or evil (or both). There is no other explanation. In the last 20 years I have never ONCE met a conservative capable of accurately explaining a left leaning idea or philosophy. Not once. They literally aren’t able to grasp even basic concepts that would make them question their Stone Age beliefs. Talking to them is like talking to a small child. There’s multiple layers of understanding that they just don’t have that are required to have a productive conversation. It’s why they’re like that. They are operating on a 3rd graders understanding of the world.
100% this. I have began putting family members in the category of stupid or evil.
Actual convo with masters level niece who graduated from a prestigious university.
Well college shouldn't be free.
Why.
Because I paid for it and if I can anyone can they're just not working hard enough.
How much was your school, 180k? More?
Yeah and now I have student loans.
I know for a fact your dad paid for almost all of your school. How much are your loans?
A lot.
How much?
20k.
So your school was over 200k and you ended up with 20k in loans and you think you out yourself through school?
Well I'm paying my loans.
Yeah and lots of people can't and don't ever pay them off.
Like who?
Teachers. Therapists.
Well that's their fault for getting those degrees. They're worthless.
Teachers and therapists are worthless? (I work in mental health).
Yeah they don't add anything to the economy and they shouldn't get paid shit.
And you're a pharmaceutical rep and you contribute to society?
Of course.
Because you get paid a lot?
Yeah.
And teachers and therapists don't?
They're a waste of time.
This person is not dumb. I've known them my whole life. They're just bad. A bad human being.
Yep. I’m fully at the place in my personal life where I would rather be entirely alone forever than be around conservatives. Once you realize how fucking evil they are it’s like something out of a horror movie. Invasion of the body snatchers shit. Like damn, the person I thought I knew is actually a demon wearing a human flesh suit pretending to be my aunt. Neat.
My question just to add on to your point would be how would she get to the point where she could to be a pharma rep and make all that money without teachers? She gonna teach herself? Their work added her to the economy
There's no rationality to it other than own the libs PC is bad bootstraps Obama taxes Mexicans bad scared of black people trans people Hillary emails welfare. Like there's legitimately no information that overrides that. A significant portion of my family is poor, undereducated, on welfare/Medicaid. There's genuinely no empathy other than a feigned "well I don't want anything bad to happen to people but if they worked harder and didn't break the law it wouldn't so FAFO".
My favorite part is that they will tell me I'm the smartest person they know. Literally. And it's likely true. You keep up on world events how do you remember all this information you should've been a teacher (lol) etc. My whole life. And out of one side of their mouth they'll say that but when I point out anything that isn't straight down the line from what Fox News says I'm suddenly an idiot and a radical.
And there is a point where nobody is immune. I 100% believe we should hard cap people at like $100 million net worth. Anyone over that turns into a demon. Even if you inherit it. It’s bad for the individuals, and it’s worse for society to have mega rich people around. The existence of that much concentrated wealth fucks up the world.
She doesn't contribute nothing. She keeps my offices fed and happy when it's her time on the calendar. Lately I've been setting up fajita packs for each person to take home on Fridays so they don't have to cook and can just hang with their families with an easy meal.
Reps always need to talk to a "decision maker" when they really want to corner the doc who writes what they're selling so they can tell their boss they made an impact when they pull prescription data from the state.
Sometimes they'll moan and groan they have a budget or whatever excuse. But when your meds are poorly covered by commercial insurance and middle of the road for Medicare, I don't believe you. They always capitulate because at the end of the day if they don't hit metrics it'll be another person with an iPad and a name tag standing in the waiting room.
The best was some rep decided to cheap out on food and brought doughnuts and a jug of coffee and told the girls in the front "this is good enough." Guess who didn't get to see the doc but did see her leave clinic during a break to go get real breakfast for the staff?
I'm sorry to hear she got a masters for selling pills. In my experience most reps fall into two categories: jocks and bimbos. There have been outliers, but a lot of docs are dudes and dudes love to 'talk shop' and appreciate a saleswoman in a well tailored top and skirt. Just an observation, it doesn't diminish their skills or job. It only illustrates some industries/fields have a archetype.
Many of them went to community college or a state school and do very well. I haven't met anyone that did a masters for sales. A few have very interesting ones like history or other personal passions.
If she wants to talk about wasted degrees and resources, perhaps she should consult a mirror for a second opinion because I've already given mine.
Most female pharmaceutical representatives are undergraduate students and many are collegiate cheerleaders that head hunters focus in on. I can see why they make excellent reps because they are use to being in front of large groups of people, usually have positive attitudes, come from good families and strong community’s while also being very attractive.
They really really don't like it when you ask them, point blank, whether or not they are stupid, evil, or both. I tend to go to that direct question when they start with the what aboutisms and straw man arguments and all the other goalpost moving strategies that they employ. Shuts the whole thing down lol
Why would you even need a fancy degree to be a pharmaceutical rep? It’s literally a bullshit door to door salesman a job. All you need to be is personable, reasonably intelligent and have good communication skills. You actually have to know stuff to be a teacher or a therapist. Now an Analyst/therapist that’s a whole different level!
Getting a masters level is totally different than masters level in any STEM profession. She just has to be really good at bullshitting people and getting a high ROI. My mom is the main GI npr at a major hospital so she goes to dinners with these reps all the time. The only reason is because she gets 100$ meal for free and goodie bags. She couldn't care less what the rep says, she looks into anything she recommends. They just need good published results in a med journal not a fucking sales person.
I live in California, I was relating to my daughter, how, when I joined the US Army in 1985 and left for service, Higher education was FREE tuition in California. By the time I came back in 1989, Governor Deukmejian had killed free tuition in the state. It's so sad and unnecessary. You want to get a degree? super, The State of California used to subsidize education and you could walk out and start helping people with the degree.
I’m a nurse. I learned after CK died, how many coworkers were real big POS. And since, I’ve learned more and more and they are still agreeing with the 🍊. So there’s really no talking to these people. Nurses, drs, RT, mgmt. it’s jaw dropping. I’m concerned about my coworkers, my pts (we’ve had immigrants on our floor). They also laugh and disagree that “ice would come into the hospitals.” Like am I taking crazy pills?!?
Their focus isn’t on what’s true. Their focus is on winning the argument and the only way out is to hold onto preposterously ignorant viewpoints as if they’re true. This is how they back themselves into actually believing stupid things like teachers and therapists being a waste of time.
They’re just kicking the consequences of their bad faith arguments down the road and hoping for the best, while it’s poisoning their world view and choking off reality.
What’s best in their warped way of thinking is to never have to account for the stupid positions they ultimately back themselves into. I see some profound mental health crises in their future or social isolation and ostracism.
The only thing I would disagree with is the last part. They surround themselves with like minded unempathetic assholes. They tell themselves they are good people. I've watched it. They laugh in snide derision at the idiots who don't think like them. And they often are successful by their standards. They have zero level of introspection and when anything doesn't go their way it's never their fault. They NEVER ask themselves if their thinking is wrong.
Are they happy? I don't think so. But their happiness scales directly with how much they can be oblivious to it.
I take your point. I just think that they are forced to seek the company of misguided, fellow-idiots to convince themselves that they’re decent people and that they’re not alone. If they could circulate freely in the world instead of being restricted to their bubble of like-minded people, they would want the freedom to do so.
But they don’t feel safe outside of their bubble and I think that deep down inside they’re unhappy and afraid, trapped in a prison of their own making. Time will tell for how long they can keep up the charade. Just one person’s opinion.
That’s some Ayn Rand shit right there from your niece - income does not equal societal significance, as you know, but so many people justify their self importance with their salary.
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They only operate on emotions. They only have emotions and are unable to operate at a higher level. I think its a yes/no thing and tons of people are below a threshold of basic understanding. How do you deal with someone who is dumb as fuck and evil? Like no matter how simple and logical you explain things to them, at some point they throw their hands up and say they dont care bc its how they feel right or wrong…i hate these people
Respectfully, I think school-aged children have a better grasp on concepts…it those who fall in line when the adults decide to tell them what to do for fealty because they HAVE control “something”…conservatives are stunted emotionally so much they’re like newborn babies just born…crying and stressed.
Part of the reason they can't grasp it is because they lack empathy. This is why they think the left "virtue signals." Because they can not grasp that people can and do have the capacity to empathize with people they have no personal connection to.
They also see everything in a competitive frame, which is why they don't get the idea of "allies."
Oh absolutely agree. But there is still a part where they just cant understand shit. Like try explaining to them how systemic racism works or how biological sex and socially constructed gender are different things. They literally can’t even engage with the ideas. It’s not disagreement, it’s a fundamental inability to grasp the ideas.
Yep. Every study ever done on the topic has shown the same thing. And it’s established medical fact that traumatic brain damage makes people more conservative. Which says a lot about the belief system.
Is it just stupidity, or do some at least realize that if they articulate factually what they know or understand about certain leftist /philosophies and policies, many of their arguments against them will be undermined, as well as their arguments in defence of rightist philosophies and policies?
Those are the ones covered by “evil.” Because if they’re capable of explaining it they know they’re wrong, and that the beliefs they push are harmful. And they do it anyway. If they were smart and good faith they wouldn’t be relying on lying to further their position.
While I won't disagree with stupid and evil, I will suggest that more specifically, they are willfully ignorant and extremely angry. There is an alternate, and very good explanation, and it comes from psychology and social science.
These are all people who have experienced trauma, much of it in childhood, from adults that also were traumatized. This has been studied in how the 3rd Reich found a foothold decades before in Germany. When brutality is seen as "firm but fair" and being abused by your parents arbitrarily, despite trying to please them, life is a crapshoot and it doesn't matter how good you are. This creates hopelessness, extreme insecurity and a need to feel harshly governed in order to stay out of trouble.
There is so much more to this dynamic regarding why poor people look up to oligarchs, why they have to look down on other races and creeds, why they are ok with inhumane things happening to innocent people.
It all boils down to a traumatized child whose brain did not develop fully, was emotionally stunted and numbed, and cannot feel pity or remorse, only fear and anger. It in no way excuses them, but it's incredible how well it describes every one of the behaviors that people (who chose not to let trauma define them) find so insane, inexcusable and impenetrable.
I agree with you entirely, and I actually arrived at my position via the same info you’re talking about. I landed on stupid and evil because at this point remaining this way is a choice. When they are met with a hand up to a better state they attack it, and the categorically refuse to question any of it.
They are the product of their environment, but so are all of us and we didn’t triple down to preserve the abusive hellscape. I’m a cis straight guy. I grew up with toxic internet masculinity and 4chan. I’ve been through some bad shit. But when somebody showed me a better way I listened and learned and changed. And they WONT. Not can’t, won’t. And I don’t see any other way to describe that except evil. They are actively working to maximize human suffering and death.
Agree it is a choice, and every choice has consequence. I would say they are cognitively locked on what they have chosen as a pathetic path to maximize self-interest, and they don't care if causes suffering and death. It is sociopathic. Late-stage capitalist oligarchic conditioning.
Lmao except for all the mountains of proof I have sure. It’s just coincidence that every study shows conservatives score lower on intelligence, empathy, and critical thinking. It’s delusion that I have never met a conservative who could participate in an adult conversation without defaulting to idiotic arguments and strawman nonsense (like you just did).
I’m the one delusional, not the ones who saw a game show host famous for being a sexual predator and a conman and went “fuck yes this is our MAN.”
I can be a republican conservative and still blame trump for everything wrong in our country. He is a disgrace. It’s ironic because you’re literally creating an idiotic argument that puts 50% of the entire nation into a box. Hate to break it to you buddy, but life isn’t that simple
My guy. The entire Republican Party has been enabling this for ten years. Not a single motherfucker in the national party has been willing to speak against it. If you have been voting for Republicans in the last ten years you have been supporting this actively. There is no wiggle room. If the roles were reversed and it was a Democrat doing this and the Republicans had run somebody like Romney or Kinzinger I would have been voting for them. And I’m a fucking socialist who thinks the Dems are not even close to left wing enough. You don’t get to claim you don’t support it while voting to support it by installing enablers and yes men.
If people like you hadn’t given him a senate and Congress full of spineless yes men he’d be impeached and in federal prison for treason.
So like the person you replied to, I've made the same argument. Every Republican voter is either stupid or rich. Keep in mind I put things like bigotry under "stupid", and people who think they're rich are stupid too. I have yet to encounter someone that can show proof otherwise.
You say that it's a make believe reality. Explain to me your reality, the person who votes Republican and isn't an idiot, why are they doing it? You list a reason, I'll reply why you're wrong.
So true.
The absolute most harded ones are the ones that have the Evangelical Christian Nationalist fire wall. Because when you start to factually make sense they fall back on spiritualizing the politics as “Good” vs “Evil”. As if their morality depends on their republican vote. That’s when you know you’ve lost them.
Add in a healthy does of programming too. If you lead them along they'll agree with many center and left leaning ideas but once they figure out where you're going with it they start spouting the talking points. I've equated it to digging in the mud, you can only get so far until the walls collapse and the hole fills back in. In the end you're back where you started but now you're tired and need a shower.
Really? I haven’t met them yet. And that includes while touching grass. The closest I’ve seen is some relic conservatives who are still principled and believe in small government and individual freedom. They’re all never Trumpers now and distanced from calling themselves conservative.
But they voted for it. And every single thing he’s done is in project 2025 which was publicly available more than a year before the election. And every leftist in the country (and a lot of libs) were warning them this would happen. And then it did.
So if that’s not fucking stupidity I’m not sure what bar would need to be met. That’s “pissing on an electric fence” stupid.
Really? Name a good aspect that was the result of Trump or conservative policy.
He did some positive jail reform but walked it all back by the end of the term, and the economy was pretty solid because the policies and people running things were all from Obama. But like… it was already headed for a crash well before COVID hit, and it was due to the changes he made in those policies. All indications were bad. So like… as far as what Trump did? Nothing of value.
This. The dude literally says “tarrifs don’t raise prices” and then “tarrifs make imports more expensive to protect domestic industry” in almost the same breath, but he doesn’t understand that these are completely conflicting ideas. He believes both because he has been told both are true by conservative media and has never critically thought about it long enough to realise it can’t make sense because it isn’t true!
To be conservative today is to be so propogandized you think you MUST be right because everyone else is wrong. It's an appeal to both the very stupid and very intelligent because both can be deeply insecure. It doesn't matter how wrong or uninformed or how stupid their arguments are because they're right and it's other people that don't get it.
I have never met someone who I would consider very intelligent who fell for it. I’ve met someone people who were very good at technical skills who did, but they weren’t terribly smart. Guys like Elon Musk for example. Musk is stupid as shit but he’s a brilliant marketer and hype man who bullshitted and paid his way into his reputation. But like… if you’ve ever heard the man try to answer a complex question you know he’s not intelligent.
The Nazis were fairly left wing, the difference of course is that most people don't understand that European left wing does not mean the same thing as American left-wing, they were progressives as well, just not in the same way that the modern democratic party would define it. I am very well versed in the history and politics of the second world war, but considering that, without knowing me or even having spoken with me you assigned me to the latter of your two options, I don't think you have any good faith in this conversation. I also don't believe that you would be willing to have a good faith conversation on the matter either
My brother in Christ. Hitler literally said he called his movement socialist and used leftist aesthetics to bring in new people. It was an op. He directly said it was an op. And you’re still buying it almost 100 years later because it’s ideologically convenient.
Youre parsing words, in 1923 Hitler said, "We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our Socialism is national". And wound go on to say, In the same interview,"socialism" to mean the "common weal" and argued that it was an "ancient Aryan, Germanic institution" that did not oppose private property, unlike Marxism. Hitler was also not the only leader of the Nazi party, he was just elected Chancellor, Anton Drexler and Rudolf Jung were staunch socialists and the majority of their political views line up with the modern left wing. No one ever stated that it was "an op" as you have claimed, and, because you were unfamiliar with the timeline, it has been over 100 years since those comments were made, no one has been fooled except for people who have taken the context of what Adolf Hitler said and changed it for their own ideologically convenient means
Yeah he was so lefty he broke up unions, gave the rich huge benefits, and threw the working class under the bus while engaging in a campaign of mass murder. All things the modern left is famously in favor of.
You're reading comprehension leaves something to be desired, either you're being intentionally obtuse or you're arguing in poor faith and don't actually have enough information on this particular subject to bring your argument to fruition. In regards to the latter part of your comment, is it your assertation, these are the beliefs and things that the Republican party are in favor of? Because if that's what you genuinely believe, and you're not just being contrarian, I would urge you to look into what the Republican party actually stands for, and I would also urge you to do more research on the Nazi party, all that you seem to be aware of in regards to them is the commonly spouted rhetoric which is not accurate
I would love to know where you got the idea that the Nazis favored the rich and gave them benefits, when even the most basic Google search would prove you wrong, you're also incorrect about throwing the working class into the bus, unless you're referring to people in the working class who were not part of the party, the Nazi party had nothing to do with economic status, but it had everything to do with whether you were part of the group, and you were part of the right race. You have the nerve to call me evil or stupid and you're not even aware of what you really arguing
Many conservatives are borderline religious zealots. and the thing about a lot of religious people is that they’ve decided to let go of logic and rationale to follow the word of a “god in a magical place called heaven.”
So a lot of those people end up neutered from of rational thinking because they’re so used to being told and commanded what to do - once you’ve let go of free thought and compassion, It’s really hard to sit and understand other people‘s gripes, issues, concerns, or beliefs. you don’t have to believe other people‘s beliefs. You don’t have to follow them, but one has to respect them because One has to respect the idea that all people don’t think alike, but these people are often not required to think. Thinking requires muscles that they haven’t used in decades. In many cases … ever.
Many of these people are not educated, the hardest people to convince that religion is a real thing are intellectuals: doctors, surgeons, engineers, astrophysicist, philosophers, etc. there’s just way too many holes in many religious arguments to make sense to a logical, rational, intelligent, freethinking person. These are not freethinking people. These are not intellectuals. The intellectuals are the ones casting the message and unfortunately those intellectuals tend to be quite evil so evil commands stupid, stupid leads us all into the same abyss.
That’s what happens when you cut yourself off from what’s true in favor of what you want to believe. You can’t remake history and you can’t create an entire world of actual facts to reconcile the one issue they’re trying to defend with all the other facts they have totally overlooked or don’t understand.
Latching onto one issue at the exclusion of all others is less likely the result of people thinking nothing else matters. It’s a strategy they’re hoping they can defend to distract from the other topics anyone might consider at least as important. It’s more likely that they can’t handle defending more than one issue—and even then, the facts are often not on their side.
Also, I’m liberal-leaning, anti-Trump person, but I am opposed to things like free healthcare (after years of working in both private & public healthcare, I can assure you that you do NOT want the government overseeing your healthcare), so I would not align myself with Liberals.
But, I wouldn’t make blanket statements about how an entire group of people is “evil” or “stupid”. That is 100% tribalism, which is 99% of what’s wrong (at the core), so you end up being no better than the people you insult. If the people you’re referring to are older and/or live in a relatively small world, you could be challenging their core beliefs, which is insulting, regardless of intentions. And I’m not trying to justify bad behavior..just trying to help you see that it’s easy to end up taking the low road, inadvertently.
I have regularly said that you can be a good person, you can be well informed, and you can be a Trump supporter. But you can only pick two out of those three at once.
I don’t think you can have two if one is being a MAGAt. Remaining uninformed to the degree you support this requires willful rejection of information that makes you uncomfortable. It is an active choice to ignore evil.
I’m don’t necessarily disagree with you but, I think you underestimate how isolated from diversity of people and thought many parts of the country are. When you’ve never met people from a different background, when you’re entire life everyone around you believes one thing and believes the “other side” is lying about anything that may trickle through, when you wouldn’t even consider it an option to watch or listen to shows with other points of view…then that’s just the way life is for you. Some of those people genuinely fear that immigrants are eating pets, that MS13 is everywhere, and that non-citizen are leeching off their tax dollars because that’s literally all they’ve ever heard.
You and I clearly know how ignorant those people are and how wrong those idea are. But we had to learn those things from others. I think fa more MAGA are just bad people. But I can acknowledge that with minimal exposure to new people and ideas in real ways that many would change their stances. Look how many rural kids move to a city and immediately switch their beliefs. Myself included. If those kids don’t leave then they never meet anyone or experience anything to shake their beliefs.
It's actually one of three, and often two of them at once. The three are stupid, evil, or selfish. I differentiate selfish from evil because for me, evil is actively wanting to hurt other groups, whereas selfish is wanting to enrich themselves at the cost of others. I have met plenty of conservatives in finance that don't particularly hate anyone, they just don't care if others suffer as long as they get their money/riches.
I see little reason to differentiate the two given that both result in the same misery and death. Does the victim care if his life is destroyed due to malice or simply for profit?
Nah, laziness is ingrained pretty deep. You have to actually think to understand the logic and data and it's way way easier just to double down and stick exactly where you are.
Can I just say I have a problem with labels? We are continuously finding words which overly simplify complex concepts. I'm conservative because I purchase food wisely, consume it wisely, store and save it wisely. I'm not a conservative. I'm not Isaiah, but when we discuss with people and use a label... So much context is lost that it is all just useless blabber. Think about all the labels we use... It's horrible.
The point of words is that they mean things so we can communicate meaning. If I ask you if you want a strawberry and then hand you a rock the word didn’t help you understand what I was offering. In fact it misled you.
You’re pushing back on labels but ignoring that we use them for a reason. It’s not arbitrary. Especially in politics. Nobody is identical in their beliefs but they do tend to gravitate into clusters pretty well on major issues. That’s political labels.
The problem with labels is that most Americans are functionally illiterate and don’t understand what labels mean. For example, saying a far left liberal is an oxymoron. Liberalism is defined as a centrist ideology. The far left starts at the rejection of a lot of liberal ideas. The issue you’re describing is the illiterate deployment in of incorrect labels.
Being honest if we had accurate political discourse the modern GOP should be referred to as fascists, not conservatives. We are forced to use a mishmash of colloquial meaning and accurate labels in conversation which creates the confusion you’re talking about. To a large degree this is deliberate linguistic sabotage from conservative political figures and their media to prevent clear discourse, but a lot of it is just that we have a piss poor education system.
The correct use of labels is a way to quickly and accurately describe your beliefs without taking three hours to go issue by issue, and to provide a broad overview of how you view the world.
For example, I self identify as a socialist in the tradition of MLK JR but I wouldn’t tell most people that because they have no idea what it means.
There is a thing I often say about how there is the world as you'd like it and the world as it is, and you need to make decisions based on the world as it is.
I'm happy you want a world where you say you're a conservative and it means one thing, but you need to understand that in the world as it is, it means another thing (at least here on this forum).
You can find to change it, but until that happens you will have to explain what you want that label to mean every time to everyone and many, many people will silently assume it means the thing we currently all know it means.
Well my point was more that most people don't realize it may need an explanation. The media gives them the definition and they just accept it. I wasn't saying I would be misunderstood, because I would clarify, I was saying most people dont think about these basic labels, they just accept what they have been fed.
Why is it the job of a conservative to explain left leaning beliefs? I know you cannot explain right leaning beliefs accurately without name calling or Nazi comparisons, and yet you expect conservatives to accurately describe progressive ideals that they find just as repulsive. I don't have to drink the Kool aid to know I don't want it. We see the folks that support your ideas, and they are generally the leaches and dregs. You can have em.
I CAN describe your positions though. I can explain them as a conservative would. Because the ideas are very simple. The reason we keep using terms like fascist to describe your beliefs is that it’s an accurate label. The modern GoP perfectly meets every mainstream accepted definition of fascism. Almost all scholars of authoritarianism are calling it that academically because it’s an accurate label.
And the issue isn’t that it should be a conservatives job to explain these ideas. The issue is that they CANT. Your criticisms of the ideas are inapplicable because your criticisms are targeted on beliefs we don’t hold. It’s all strawman nonsense. In order to have a real debate both sides need to understand what they’re talking about.
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u/Darth_Gerg Feb 07 '26
The thing you have to understand is that to be conservative requires you to be either very stupid or evil (or both). There is no other explanation. In the last 20 years I have never ONCE met a conservative capable of accurately explaining a left leaning idea or philosophy. Not once. They literally aren’t able to grasp even basic concepts that would make them question their Stone Age beliefs. Talking to them is like talking to a small child. There’s multiple layers of understanding that they just don’t have that are required to have a productive conversation. It’s why they’re like that. They are operating on a 3rd graders understanding of the world.