Saturday, October 01, 2011

Conservative Problem Solving: Don't Dream It, Be It

The problem with conservatives is that they look at how they imagine the world *should* be, and then work backwards to determine the best way of making life work exactly like that; no matter how unrealistic that may be.  Moreover, the only problems they see pertain to how life doesn't match how they imagine it should be, and their solution is simply to deny the possibility that any other life is advisable.

For example, they "know" that Mexican citizens shouldn't be living in our country.  And so they develop all sorts of rationales for why they shouldn't be here; complaining about how they don't pay taxes and get lots of great perks that regular citizens don't get, and how they don't learn English and are lazy.

But of course, the easy solution for that would be to create a citizenship program which required immigrants to learn English and hold a job for a certain amount of time.  Problem solved.  They'd pay their taxes, learn English, and work hard.  And that's not such a crazy solution, as Obama's already suggested it.

Yet...conservatives can't endorse that policy because they aren't REALLY trying to solve the problem of lazy foreign parasites.  Their REAL problem is that Mexican citizens shouldn't be here, period.  If your solution doesn't fix that, then they don't want to hear it.  I mean, not that they're racist or anything.  It's just that...Mexicans just shouldn't be here, period.

No Teen Sex

Or like the problem of sex.  They "know" that no one should have sex unless they're married and ready to have a baby.  And they insist this is important because of the risk of unwanted babies, sexual diseases, and the sheer misery of having sex without God's approval.

But of course, we have easy solutions for that too: Pills, rubbers, and abortions.  And if you don't want to live with your god's disapproval, get a new god.  Problem solved.

Yet...conservatives can't support that policy because they aren't REALLY trying to solve the problem of unwanted babies and sex diseases.  In fact, they actually encourage such things, as punishments to the sinners and warnings to the others.  No, their REAL problem is that they don't want people to have sex unless they're married and ready to have a baby, and the mere suggestion that you can have sex under any other circumstance is abhorrent.

...unless you're the one wanting to have sex, in which case you can go ahead and do it, and then beg for forgiveness if you're caught.  But no one else is allowed to do that!  Only the special people for whom the rules don't apply.

The List Goes On

And you can go on and on with these sort of examples.  They believe that you can grow the economy by removing billions of dollars from it and firing lots of workers, and so their solution can only involve those fixes.  They think the free market should solve all problems, so their only solution is to go back to the days when the free market was screwing everything up.  They believe that regular folks are actually SMARTER than the people who understand what they're talking about, and so their solution is to get all the experts out of the way so the plain folks can institute their common sense policies and practical advice.

The list goes on and on.  Seriously, if you look at a conservative solution, you've already found what they were looking for.  There's no point in doing anything, besides aiming directly for your target and going for it.  You want a society where men are men and women stay home?  Then treat women like slaves and gays like outcasts.  You think drugs are bad?  Outlaw drugs.  It's all soooo simple when all you have to do is to act out your solution.

And these people simply can't see anything else.  To even *suggest* that we accept an imperfect world is to advocate for imperfect worlds.  And that's why they really do believe that we want Mexicans stealing our resources, doing our daughters, and enlarging our government.  We're looking for solutions that still permit these horrible outcomes, so these must be the things we want.

To conservatives, solving a problem is as simple as denying the possibility of any other outcome.  If you can dream it, be it; and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

1 comment:

mlf said...

This also applies to some on the Professional Left, I think.