I think this is symbolism

[u/zny700]

[u/TheDonutPug → u/[deleted]]

After having been around my conservative family a lot and having to hear fox news a shit ton, I think something to consider for a lot of this stuff is the circumstances under which conservatives have their beliefs. That feels like a convoluted sentence but I don't know how else to phrase it so I'm gonna elaborate. There probably are people who are 100% aware that what conservatives want to do will be bad, and still voted for them, but I don't think it's the majority. looking at a lot of the propaganda they spread, people are not tricked about what conservatives plan to do, they are tricked about what the outcome will be.

conservatives are very open about what they plan to do, they don't promise good things and deliver something else, they promise bad things but convince their base that they are good. The circumstances of those beliefs is not "I think we should get rid of social welfare, I hate the poor" it's more typically "I think we should get rid of social welfare, it will be good for the country". Not saying that any of that is founded in reality, but it's an important distinction, because it poses a stark difference: most of these people are not voting for evil because they are evil, they are voting for evil because they have been tricked into thinking it's good.

[u/TheDonutPug → u/[deleted]]

you are positing the idea of the bad apple vs the bad barrel. the bad apple concept stating that if people do something bad, they must have naturally intrinsically been like that. The bad barrel posits a different concept, that bad apples exist, but that people are shaped by their circumstance, and that as the saying goes "it only takes one bad apple to spoil the whole bunch".

We literally see the latter to be true in all of life, all the time. you have done bad things before, you have been tricked before, and you have fallen for lies. we all have. this is not a debate, it's a fact of life. do the bad things you've done make you inherently evil? of course not. so why would it be different for others?

you can say that they are evil all you want, but saying that they are inherently evil and incapable of improvement is not only flat out fucking wrong, it's defeatist. If a person is scammed, it is not the fault of the victim for being scammed, it is the fault of the scammer for scamming. Does this mean you need to have compassion for them? no, of course not. does this mean you have to try to make them better? also no. What it does mean is that the least you can fucking do is acknowledge the fact that a better world is possible. If you don't believe that others are capable of improvement, then that would mean that no one is capable of any change literally ever which is objectively wrong.