Anti-Capital Capitalists

Why are conservatives so fucking crazy?  And why do they think that we’re equally crazy?  I read this quote, via Atrios, from The Unknown Ideal:
"We are imitating the left. Left-wing social-political activists don't like capitalism. They hide behind human rights. We want to help oppose that."

That’s right.  Liberals don’t really believe in human rights.  We just oppose capitalism as a whole.  That’s what it’s all about.  We’re busted.  Because we’re just like the conservatives, and our stated goals must always be covers for our true objectives.  The only thing missing from that quote is the reason why we don’t like capitalism: We hate everything.  But perhaps that was assumed.

And for anyone who hasn’t already read that post, it’s in reference to a rightwing mutual fund which apparently picks companies based on how socially irresponsible they are.  This is intended as an attack on liberalish mutual funds which only pick socially responsible companies.  I’m not exactly sure how this plan of theirs is supposed to work; as I can easily imagine a world in which both socially responsible and irresponsible mutual funds live in harmony.  But whatever.

Perhaps if their anti-social fund trounces the responsible funds, that would demonstrate the foolishness of the responsible funds.  But that’s not the point of responsible funds; as their primary goal is to promote social responsibility, with profits as a secondary goal.  So their efforts would be the equivalent of someone comparing a business’s profits with that of a non-profit.  Sure, Exxon does seem to have a better bottomline than Goodwill’s; but it’d be pretty silly to suggest that this proves that they’re superior.  And even sillier to suggest that Exxon’s profits somehow undermine Goodwill’s goals.  

But even worse for them, the socially responsible mutual funds are apparently doing quite well, while the socially irresponsible-capitalist defending funds are doing quite poorly.  As one of the founders rationalizes, “We're not trying to be a high-performing mutual fund.”  So in order to defend capitalism, they’re willing to make stupid choices that damage their investors’ capital-raising abilities.  Which just makes sense, if we’re to imagine that anti-capitalist social-political activists intend to destroy capitalism by working within the capitalist system and raising more capital for their investors.  Perhaps the idea is that these investors will eventually tire of their profits and donate it all to communists.

But more likely, it’s another example of the conservative bizarro-world where words mean nothing and the true goal is some unstated fantasy where each conservative sits on top of the world.  A place where everyone benefits more when benefits are limited to fewer people, and where you have to screw people to save them.  A place so rife with deceit and treachery that the only remedy is even more deceit and treachery.  And a place where you can preserve capitalism by wasting people’s capital.  Which all fits into the idea that everything rightwingers want is automatically good and sound; even if it seems to have the exact opposite outcome as what they say should be happening.  

But then again, it’s equally possible that this is all just a ruse intended to deprive contrarian rightwingers from their soft-earned money; by playing to their liberal hatred to get them to invest in something stupid.  After all, what is more socially irresponsible than screwing over your fellow believers while doing as little work as possible?

But that’s always a long-standing question regarding conservatives and Republicans: It’s impossible to figure out who’s scamming whom or where exactly the con-game ends.  The whole movement is essentially a pyramid scheme, convincing folks that they’re all in the upper echelon of the pyramid, and will soon reap all the benefits; while one dude sits on top of the whole pyramid, laughing.