What is a good conservative? By that I mean: what is a good conservative in the mind of a good conservative? Just going by often repeated conservative talking points and opinions I'd say it's something like this: a good conservative is someone who holds high traditional values, is probably a good Christian, accepts existing power hierarchies as natural, aspires to be a decent, hard working person, holds up their hard work as a virtue, and despises the social safety net because it devalues their hard work; they're the ones who say "why should my tax dollars go to those who don't idolize hard work as I do?"
source: YouTube
I'm sure I missed some core conservative values and morals there, but I'd like to think I'm close. Here I'd like to concentrate on the conservative's relation to work, and their disdain for individuals and families who live on "government handouts". Especially in American culture, conservatives identify as decent, law abiding, hard working people, the backbone of their society, the salt of the Earth, so to speak. In their minds there's no greater goal in life than to have a job, preferably one that allows the man of the house to provide for their nuclear family with 2.3 children, so that the wife can stay home to take care of the little rascals. "Work", having an honest job, is for the conservative male what makes possible the realization of his traditionalist ideal. And as such, "work" is arguably the conservative's real religion.
In the conservative's mind, things are the way they're supposed to be on a grand systemic scale; their traditionalist mindset doesn't allow for there to be something wrong with the existing social, political and economical structures and power hierarchies. That strong belief in the status quo has as a consequence that the hard working blue-collar conservatives readily accept their place in the capitalist socioeconomic ranking. So far, so good. The problem and the confusion arises when the conservative performs all the tasks assigned to him (or her) by the traditional capitalist social order, but he isn't able to realize his traditionalist white-picket-fence-dream. You see, his strong conviction that there can be nothing wrong with the traditional capitalist power hierarchy, including its highly unequal distribution of income and wealth, prevents him from criticizing the capitalist status quo. And he's a hard working, God fearing man; it's not his fault either that his sweat and tears don't translate into the realization of "the American dream"...
So he finds one or more scapegoats. If it's not him, and if it's not the system, who's to blame? It must be all those lazy, free-riding welfare queens! It must be all those immigrants who steal all the good paying jobs, or maybe they suppress my wages because they send their income back home, where an American dollar is worth a fortune! Or is it all those women who refuse to stay at home with the 2.3 children every nuclear family's supposed to have? And it's most certainly those damned progressive politicians who cater to all of the above! I'm not saying this is all conservatives, but it's a valid generalization in my opinion. Racism, misogyny, gay-bashing and trans-phobia are much more prevalent among conservatives for a reason; they generally fear change of any kind. Conservative politicians and media exploit those fears to great effect; it's no wonder that Trump found his place in the GOP and not the Democratic Party.
It's a tragedy, really. Working class and poor conservatives always vote against their own economic interest by staunchly defending the systems and traditions that keep them down, capitalism being the main culprit. Their beliefs blind them to the simple and straightforward solution to their socioeconomic ailments; not the immigrants, but the capitalist business owner who pays the low wages, while he's easily able to pay higher wages, who is responsible for those low wages! And the capitalist has won when workers of all genders and skin colors are divided; when they see each other as the enemy, they won't see their true enemy. And it's not even the capitalist, but capitalism; business owners need to survive as well. Much fairer distributions are possible in capitalism, as we can see in the Scandinavian countries for example, but they don't operate in a vacuum; it's a capitalist world economy, and somewhere, someone is paying for the relative wealth in those countries. In capitalism wealthy nations exist because poor nations exist as well.
I'll leave you with an exploration of the conservative's mindset with regards to the "cult of work" in the below linked video by Renegade Cut; he uses an episode of "The Simpsons" that was written by a conservative to explain all of the above, and he does it much better than I could.
Frank Grimes - The Cult of Work | Renegade Cut
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