I was watching a video by Georgia Dow in which she talked about a study showing how fear drives people to be more conservative. What that reminded me of was the rationalization I keep stumbling upon almost every day lately: “the alternative is worse”.
We are mostly not revolutionaries willing to die for a cause. We just want to live our quiet lives, so we pay the thugs that offer us protection from themselves. The alternative is worse.
I can’t criticise people for trying to survive, but I think it’s important to be honest with ourselves. It’s all bad and the good option is really hard and a scary risk with too many sacrifices.
And let me get personal to drive the point home. Anxiety and depression are just my reality. I’m very isolated and avoid interactions as much as I can. I’m in a bad place and would totally tell you with great conviction that out there somewhere is worse. I also believe it could be amazing, but the chances of me suffering, actually, the certainty, makes me think it’s not worth it even trying.
Anyway. Be kind kind to yourselves, be kind to all the others, but be honest.
Importantly, the golden age is mythological. Since evidence is irrelevant to conservative beliefs, rather functionality is relevant, the narrative of a golden age is appealing because it is achievable since it was already achieved in the past. What I mean by functional is that it is important that their beliefs serve a purpose but it is not important whether their beliefs are based in objective evidence. This is why conservatives who are fully aware of the complexity of US history want to propogate a sanitized version. They believe the sanitized version instills correct values while telling the whole story would influence people to perform those bad behaviors. It makes sense if you don’t think about it, and thinking about it is inherently traitorous.
It IS mythological as in, there never was an age without turmoil and unrest and inequality. I know they think that a “golden age” is one where we live by the “old rules” of former times, but there’s good reasons why those former times and those rules were left behind and/or changed.
Their version of what ‘correct values’ are, is totally different than mine. They have a saying here, “Utah values,” by which they mean values that favor big families, religious beliefs, and capitalist goals. That’s fine, but those aren’t the values I want for myself or my family.
So they can try to drag the U.S. backward all they want, but I’m not going along, I’ve come too far to go backward.