May Contain Nuts

I really don’t get how much cognitive dissonance there is in conservative ideology (and, by extension, policy). Here’s a few examples with obvious counterpoints, both taken straight from conservative talking points:

1. “Government should stay out of people’s personal lives!” / “Government should ban gay people from getting married!”
2. “Government should have no say in your medical treatment!” / “Government should ban abortion!”
3. “Everyone has a right to privacy!” / “Why be upset about warrantless wiretapping unless you have something to hide?”
4. “Taxpayer money shouldn’t go to pay for abortions, which is murder!” / “OMFG MILITARY SPENDING ORGY!!!!” (I may be slightly exaggerating the counterpoint, but not by terribly much…)
5. “Respect the Constitution!” / Warrantless wiretaps, destruction of due process, shunning of international treaties, which the Constitution says are the law of the land once ratified. (These are not quoted because I can’t think of a witty way to write them as though they’re being said by a conservative… this is just too hard to snark about.)

I could probably think of more, but it’s almost 4 AM at the moment, so my thinking is a bit sluggish. Besides, these are plenty enough to make me want to smack the next person I hear saying either one.

Further, it continues to boggle my mind just how little thought seems to be put into the actual policy positions of conservative politicians. Everything seems to be tailored to being said in the fewest number of syllables possible. Perhaps this is why conservatives seem to be so good at arguing via Twitter… none of their policy points are longer than 140 characters. Examples:

1. Drill, baby, drill.
2. Smaller Government.
3. Tax Cuts.
4. Privatize medicine (since that’s working so very well right now… *ahem*)
5. Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran. (I don’t think I could conceive of a less tasteful policy position…)
6. The aforementioned “respect the constitution!”
7. Less regulation.
8. American exceptionalism! (you do know this is not a policy point, right?)
9. Obama is a Kenyan Muslim socialist nazi fascist communist witch doctor Chicago crony! (This actually isn’t a policy point, but it seems to be pretty popular on the right side of the country… and there’s still room in there for “nigger” before you run out of room on The Twitter. Not that a black guy running the country rubs anybody in the Southern-dominated Republican party the wrong way or anything… they even have a black guy of their own running the RNC! He’s the black guy every Republican can say they know, so they aren’t racist!)

Almost without fail, I have been unable to engage a conservative-leaning individual to elucidate on these policies or approaches to government beyond the basic 140-character talking points themselves. My efforts to elicit responses in a previous blog post netted me exactly one comment, which consisted of the typically vague “smaller government” and “respect the constitution” nonsense, with no justification, specifics, or detailed analysis.

It’s as if there are no policy positions or thoughts on governance in conservative thinking, but rather that their entire political ideology is bent on dismantling the government entirely. Seriously, what do Republicans do besides complain about government being the problem, and government not doing anything, while simultaneously doing everything in their power to grind the gears of the legislative branch to a halt as frequently as possible? What actual legislation have they proposed in the last 3 years? What positive actions have they supported? I mean, when you can’t even get beyond petty partisan politics when voting to strip government contracts from companies that prevent rape victims from having their day in court, what exactly are you even doing in government besides acting as a complete hinderance to progress?

Also, while I’m raving like a lunatic, can I ask what the hell is up with this American exceptionalism crap? America is not inherently better than every other country by virtue of it being America. We as a people are not some god-anointed civilization gifted with superior anything, for the purposes of accomplishing anything.

Given how willing we are to trample all over our own founding documents (by initiating warrantless wiretaps, making it possible for the President to have anyone in the country detained indefinitely without cause, and torturing prisoners) because a few guys managed to get past our absurdly lax security precautions and fly a couple of planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and how eager we seem to be to deny basic rights to those in our society who are different from us (be it gay marriage or health care for poor people), we have no moral authority to speak of on the subject of human rights or equal treatment. Our economy nearly collapsed last year because of our inability to properly regulate it, our infrastructure is about a hailstorm away from collapsing at any given moment, we rely so extensively on foreign energy that our national security is constantly at risk because of where that energy overwhelmingly comes from, our interactions with foreign governments are strongly biased toward whether or not they’re selling us said energy (tell me why else we didn’t bomb Syria, where most of the 9/11 hijackers were from), our status as a scientific, economic, education, public health, and human equality champion is nowhere near first in the world, and our production of greenhouse gases is very probably second-only to China, to whom we are so massively in debt that we couldn’t even get them to let us keep one of their pandas at the National Zoo in DC.

What, exactly, is so exceptional about America anymore? I mean, besides our obesity rate and the sheer mind-crippling scale of our national debt and military budget? For crying out loud, we can’t even get morally indignant with Switzerland for banning the construction of minarets in their country, considering how awfully we’ve been treating Muslims in this nation since 9/11, and nobody in our government has said a damn thing publicly about the horrific law being proposed in Uganda to permanently jail and/or kill by hanging anyone who is caught (or better yet, turned in) for being gay.

How exceptional of us.