As I've mentioned before, I spent just about my entire life espousing both views that were conservative and were more liberal at the time, but would be considered conservative extremism by today's standards. I called myself a Democrat growing up (Wisconsin doesn't require you to register for the party you intend to vote for), but I began openly calling myself a Conservative only in 2009, as I outlined in an earlier article. I am also a writer, and I share my beliefs on Social Media. It's no surprise that I've taken much more than my share of abuse online over the last 8 years. None of this is surprising. What has surprised me is this past year. I expected the usual hatred from Obama holdovers, Union Republican Haters, and the mainstreamed supply of Bernie Socialists who suddenly found themselves out of power, and I get that here and there. Shockingly though, both on and offline over the last year, I find myself getting screamed at and cursed out by Trump voters than Berniecrats.
Donald Trump held a lot of appeal for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. One of the first promises made was that he was going to repeal the ACA, which rang loudly with a lot of business owners and employees alike. His big business background made a lot of small-business owners confident that a business-friendly administration would relax some of the regulations that were making it hard to survive and hire. Down-the-ticket Republicans and people who were vehemently against Hillary Clinton respected the R next to Trump's name. But Trump was something of a unique enigma that made his message ring true in the middle American States that carried him to victory.
When I get into a social media exchange with someone who doesn't particularly agree with me, I always try to retain the moral high ground. The most severe name I call someone is "snowflake" (even though that name has really lost it's appeal. It got old). I try to use generally accepted names like liberal and progressive, rather than slurs like libtard. "Berniecrat" feels like a neutral term to me, as it identifies an opponent as an ideological supporter of Senator Sanders's message without using a disparaging supplement. I go high because the people that I engage with go low, and have for as long as I've been paying attention. One of the draws to the other side was the fact that the party I left was so well-known for striking below the belt, and I wanted to have more intellectual exchanges of ideas without hurling insults at each other. For the most part, that was the general attitude of almost all conservative politicians, and probably about half of the conservative online supporters. No matter where you go, you're going to get bullies and name-callers, but the people to the right seemed to more often be willing to ask a question rather than throw a slur. More importantly, our elected representatives tended to stick to the high ground at a more common rate than their online supporters. Many Republican voters would make sure the more crass politicians never made it past the primaries. Donald Trump came along, though, and changed all of that. A lot of people felt it would be easy to go low against Trump. With an R next to his name, it was assumed that there would be a standard that he would be held to lest there be no votes flowing in for him. And there was plenty to go low with against him. But Trump was willing, and even eager to go low back at anyone who brought a blow against him.
Trump's willingness to fight back seemed to put a change in the political landscape. It's difficult to pinpoint what changed, whether it was the people or the politician. I've discussed at length in a couple of previous articles that Mr. Trump is a lifelong big government classic Democrat. With the Socialist takeover of the Democrat Party, Trump's Liberal roots, along with the message of bringing jobs out of foreign countries stateside again, there is likely a large number of people in the Union wing of the Left that has jumped ship to follow The Donald. Since many of them were conditioned to be outspoken against any opposition who would seek to rob them of their jobs. Then there's the other faction. As I mentioned, there are bullies everywhere, no matter what crowd you are in. Conservative circles have always had a minority of people willing to go low against liberal combatants. They offered themselves up in place of their elected officials who wouldn't dish out the same verbal blows for moral reason. The rest of us have spent years trying to suppress them. While their views are often in line with our own, the delivery is at a level which we are not willing to engage at. But like it or not, we elected one of them, and they feel empowered by it.
So what are we running into by emboldening some of these people? At the mildest, comment threads have become...well, let's say more interesting. A new wave of more conservative keyboard warriors have been guarding the social media comment feeds and the feeds of every Fox News online article looking for a fight. That is a fight that Leftist and Socialist keyboard warriors are very willing to give them. They are not as prevalent in the feeds of more leftist sources, but a liberal use of blocking/reporting generally accounts for that. Conservative outlets tend not to block as often, as most of us are willing to at least hear the other side out. Also, the people reviewing the report generally share the ideology of the leftists assaulting conservative comment feeds, so reporting often gets a reply that boils down to "I didn't see anything wrong."
On a more severe level, Conservatives on social media have taken to some of the tactics of the left. I've seen physical threats coming from our more extreme friends wide out in the open on comment threads. More disturbingly is the doxxing. For the last 8 years, the progressives on the internet have been posting the home, work, and contact information for anyone that dares to disagree with them on the internet. The end result usually comes with a wave of protesters calling the person, or his work, or his mortgage company, or a host of other aspects of the victims life, generally resulting in loss of job or other primary aspects of a person's life. Over the last year, I've run across three instances of someone on the right doing it to someone on the left. The last time I saw it, I actually called the poster out. It's not right to dox people. When I brought that up, a left wing commenter called me a cuckservative and explained that the right never gets anything done because we are unwilling to get our hands dirty.
That leads me to the final change in the new right. In November, the majority of people on varying levels of conservatism and centrism banded together and united behind an outsider in order to remove a dynasty of socialism from the executive branch of the federal government. Some of us did so begrudgingly, but many of us did so with a proud excitement. However, now that Trump is in office with almost an entire year behind him, the discussion has changed. When our President does or says something good, I praise him. When he does or says something stupid, I vocally accost him. I have no desire to fall into the same pattern of idol worship that the followers of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders have formed within their camps. That thought is not universal among conservatives, though. When I vocally oppose anything the President does, I generally get comments like "You're just pretending to be conservative" or "RINO". The same goes for anything else that goes against their belief system. To cite my article on PragerU, my support for Google as the private company that it is rather than the Title 2 utility that Prager wants it to be was met with great hostility. "I too pretend to be a conservative when it suits me..." was the scathing comment that I was left on Instagram that inspired that whole article. It does seem that if you're not with them 100%, you're against them. It's an ideology that frightens me deeply to the core, because it's the ideology that the left espoused under the Obama administration. It's what the Berniecrats would have pushed on all of us if he came to power. While it's fictional, the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi ring loudly in these exchanges. "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." In real life, as well as in a galaxy far far away, an all-or-nothing ideology is a path to dark things.
Do you find yourself regularly accosted online by one side, the other, or both? Where do you stand on ideology? I always welcome comments and discussion both here and over on Twitter. My handle is @edsblogtw1tter if you want to follow me to comment or read previous articles from my feed. If you like what you've read, go ahead and hit that like button, and consider hitting the retweet button as well. That would be cool of you. Remember, never take the words of journalists, bloggers, or podcasters as Gospel. Find all the facts, and draw your own conclusion. Thank you for reading
No comments:
Post a Comment