Conservatism

Basically, each person is intrinsically about as powerful as any other, but having huge wealth allows individuals and small groups to be much more effective in their agendas.

Money is tokenised value and has allowed a huge expansion in trade, but also a lot more opportunities to be more socially mobile. However, when people have more opportunity, they can rightly choose not to be exploited and suppressed, making this mobility a serious threat to the privileged in societies, whose extreme wealth relies upon people not really having a choice but to succumb to their needs.

The implicit assumption of conservatism is that money is more important than [other] people. Tokenising the value of people enables the wealthy to dismiss others as people with lives, but instead see them as commodities and thus expendable if they are more of a problem than their assigned worth dictates. We have seen this with immigrants, who were useful as long as they could be exploited, but considered a liability when they needed to be cared for.

In this regard, the wealthy are psychopaths as they really don't care about people, but only their own wants, and so are willing to suppress, exploit, dehumanise, delude and even kill, by proxy of course, anybody they can. Of course, they usually cannot appear to be so ruthless, so they will spin it in economic terms, which gets others to also tokenise and thus dismiss those people.

However, money and such notions of power are only as powerful as the value we place on them, individually and collectively. Collective or coordinated action has been shown to be effective at countering the propaganda, so we can write and take actions that help to refocus other peoples' thoughts and action towards less dependency upon the wealthy.

Importantly, we can elect politicians that are committed to more equity in laws rather than towing a party line, which are typically heavily lobbied for by wealthy self-interests. We can change government for the better, but it requires more diligence that just voting.

Personally, we can use our spending power to avoid exploitative businesses. We can also be much less caught up in conspicuous spending which only feeds the wealthy and accelerates the destruction and pollution of our planet's environment. We don't need to be replacing technology and clothing as often. These may affect employment in the short term, but the aggregated effect will force governments and businesses to toe the line and structure more equitable and less consumptive societies.

Governments define what happens in their societies, so it is important for the rich and powerful to limit what they can do that can adversely affect them.

Conservatives over the last several decades have been fairly successful in limiting the effectiveness of government to provide for the wellbeing of their citizens, so much so that serious threats to society have shown up just how much government is ill-equipped to respond. The mechanism for the sabotaging of the early phase of democracies was that the same powerful people before the change were able to weather the changes and retain their wealth, power and prestige. Modern democracies are still being attacked by the same type of wealthy and powerful cliques.

Together, all these measures shepherd societal thinking towards their agenda to further their accumulation of wealth.

The whole purpose of all this well-funded and coordinated propaganda and sabotage of government is to make it extremely difficult for people who don't drink their kool aid to actually change public policy. In former times, this was the status quo, and while thoughts of democracy have created some opposition, their centuries of manipulative culture has given them the tools to successfully launch their modern assault.

Of course, we don't have to toe the line, and we can challenge them at all levels of society. It is the sum total of focussed individual and collective actions for equity and human and planetary health that will win out. They have been successful because they have been peddling a set of consistent lies, while everybody else is trying to work out what the truth is. We do know the truth, but we have to find ways of building it into a powerful and consistent narrative that blows away their clouds of lies.

The main overt way that conservatives derail rational public discourse is to direct discussion to topics that are tangential or unrelated to the issues at hand.

The mainstay of conservative discourse is to emphasise cultural differences rather than the real and substantive differences. For example, in a pandemic, while the main emphasis for wearing masks is to minimise transmission, conservatives will cite freedom of choice to wear a mask as more important, thus spurring those who have followed them to not wear masks. This undermines effective preventative measures, as well as furthering their psychopathic agenda in endangering their own followers.

Freedom is a common catch-cry for conservatives, as it emotionally stirs up their followers to rally around them and support their policies, even though freedom is not necessarilly the issue at hand, as in the mask wearing.

Conservatives encourage selfishness with money, as it justifies wealth disparities, in that a person is hardly likely to complain about billionaires' excessive wealth if they themselves know they are being selfish with their own money. This money cultural difference has been pushed so far that it has become the major driving force behind peoples' life choices, from work to lifestyle and spending. Advertising relies upon this as the subtext, if not the main point, behind their messaging.

The other significant cultural trigger used by conservatives is patriotism. It is used to marginalise those who would oppose their main policies, such as tax cuts for the rich, lower government spending on social welfare and excessive government spending on the military. Typically, the catch-cry will include a word like un-countryname, just to alienate the opposition in the eyes of most people.

A particular example of the conservative use of patriotism is to resist gun control in the US. It rallies their supporters so that they ignore the innate destructiveness of having too many arms around. This gun fervour suits small arms manufacturers because it results in larger sales within the country, but also across borders through the smuggling trade. This is an egregious use of patriotism as it is patriotic to question the extent that the second amendment should apply or even if it should be repealed, as that is allowed under their constitution in regard to any amendment.

The military budget seems to be the most significant departure from the conservative push for lower government spending. That is because many billionaires are involved in the military-industrial complex, and would lose significant income if governments were to lessen military spending.

A recent example of cultural division by the conservatives is to cite them being victims of the cancel culture of their opponents, even though they themselves consistently try to cancel their opposition in any way they can, typically through the use of conservative mainstream and social media influencers. For example, conservatives don't like having their social media accounts being suspended for breaking the platforms' terms of service, while extensively abusing the platforms to spread misinformation by the extensive use of bots.

The latest cultural deflection being used by conservatives is to posit teaching Critical Race Theory as a form of indoctrination against white people. The theory is really a set of discussions around the history of deliberate and systemic discrimination that has resulted in substantive disenfranchisement of racial minorities. By disparaging use of the theory, conservatives are trying to avoid examination of exactly the types of social and economic manipulation they have been using for centuries, not just against other races, but against anyone who would oppose them.

The very latest barrage is called the The Great Replacement Theory that posits that white people are being systematically replaced by non-whites to bolster support for their opponents. This is using racism to gather supporters around them that will then readily allow further consolidation of their power and wealth while creating disarray and distraction for their opponents.

Of course it was the racist and exploitative policies of the rich and wealthy that created the destabilisation and destruction of many peoples' home lands, forcing them to want to leave their countries for those that seemed to promise greater opportunities for them, only to be exploited in low-paying labour jobs, let alone the importation of slaves and the takeover of the lands of those they now decry as their enemies. They are trying to avoid looking after those they have exploited by now labelling them as parasites and criminals.

Accumulating more wealth than they actually need has severe consequences.

This exploitation existed from the birth of large commercial organisations. The British East India Company sold opium in China to fund its tea operations in India. Of course, this created huge drug and corruption problems in China, eventually leading to the Opiums Wars between England and China. Exploitation with government backing began early!

This trade exploitation continues to this day with wealthy and powerful corporations using cheap labour wherever they can find it in the world, effectively keeping wages low around the world. The only way out of this situation is to bring all countries to a similar standard of living. Of course, that standard cannot be the excessive consumption that the wealthiest countries rely upon.

Shell research in the 1980s showed that fossil fuel consumption would lead to exactly the temperature rises and pollution we have today. Instead of changing their business model, they hid the evidence and spread false propaganda to undermine those who also knew where the climate was heading. This followed the playbook used by tobacco companies to protect their lucrative but deadly business.

Large wealthy corporations sold goods and machinery to both sides in the second world war, growing rich off the mass suffering. The military-industrial complex still pushes expensive military equipment to the world armed forces and now police departments, while funding anti-gun law organisations.

Fossil fuel companies have successfully lobbied governments to roll back environmental protections, by contributing huge amounts to politicians' campaign funds, leading to us still producing increasing levels of greenhouse gases.

Companies and their funded policy organisations also influence governments by providing their own experts to write government policies and laws, all fitting in with their overall agenda of stifling democracy and ensuring their enduring wealth. This happens at all levels of government, from federal down to local.

When voting, avoid those candidates that seem too eager to promote industries that are destroying the planet, or even willing to allow them to pollute longer. To reverse the current destructive trend, these industries have to stop their practices as soon as possible. Vote for candidates that are willing to close down these industries in the smallest possible time frame, while supporting policies that look after their workers.

Conservatives seem to generally have some anti-social tendencies, like inflicting pain and suffering on those they have power over, or at least not caring if they do so.

Historically, the privileged have only been concerned with their own wants and desires, and not caring about the suffering and deprivation their selfishness created in those they had control over. They were unashamedly certain in their own superiority and entitlement. This is classic narcissism and psychopathy.

To maintain their lives of privilege, conservatives will oppose any societal or government pressures to alleviate the suffering of the many, especially if it increases government spending as that will usually entail increasing taxes. They oppose increasing the social safety net, universal healthcare, unionisation or other collective social action that betters peoples' lives.

They don't mind sending the disenfranchised to die in trumped up wars that overwhelmingly benefit them. Of late they are having no problem supporting measures that put millions in danger of being infected, all to keep their money machines in motion. This makes them sociopaths/psychopaths, as they either don't care about the suffering they create, or like that they are able to manipulate and control people to that extent.

These are not people that should be allowed to hold positions of power and influence, just because they abuse and destructively manipulate too many people. Their values are the antithesis of those of a fair and just society. Unfortunately, with their money and nefarious actions, they have many convinced that they should be left in charge, despite the obvious danger they pose to their supporters.

Conservatism is not a set of isolated ideas, but a coordinated effort by several wealthy individuals to undermine democracy through politicians, lobbyists, policy foundations and media organisations.

This juggernaut must be broken down through laws, publicity of their nefarious activities, and resistance to their economic doctrines of unbounded expansion. The earth, and thus our evolution, requires that we do this.

There is a certain amount of urgency to the current conservative campaigns, as they only have a short window of opportunity to permanently damage democracy before resistance to their efforts gathers too much momentum. That window is the amount of time between their irreparably sabotaging efforts and when their voters will wake up to their lies or die.

At this stage, any losses of support will tend to be permanent, as their cruelty becomes more and more obvious, so they must get in place legal and administrative measures that will be resistant to subsequent change, like gerrymandering has been, but only more insidious.

Their current followers are not the type of people that they really want in the long run, as they are too far removed from rational functioning to be useful for an ongoing exploitative labour force. Conservative leaders are probably happy that those nutty followers will be far more likely to die in great numbers from deadlier viruses. However, they have to succeed before it gets to that, so that is the race.

Governments need to be more resilient to coordinated efforts at undermining their duty to serve the best interests of their citizens.

It is not enough to leave society up to a few powerful and exploitative people. Government has to be strong and free of sectional influence enough to be able to maximise the opportunities for all citizens without prejudice. Meanwhile, we must support those who truly have humanity's best interests at heart, so that they can be more effective. Of course, we must be diligent, as many who have had good intentions have succumbed to the temptation of the rich.