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I don’t consider myself a conservative and I never have. Most of my social and economic views coincide with centre-left liberalism. Yet in the recent couple of years I have found myself agreeing with a lot of opinions deemed ‘conservative.’ Apparently it is suddenly conservative to ‘believe’ that there are only two genders. It is also apparently conservative to be against modern feminism or black lives matter.
I am not pro-Trump, but I don’t ‘hate’ him, yet for some reason having a neutral view on Trump makes many go ‘WHAAAAATTT?’ I don’t care enough about Donald Trump to hate him. In order to hate or love something you have to care passionately about it, and Trump is not someone that evokes strong emotions in me. Politicians in general don’t interest me much; I see them as actors pandering to the public in order to win votes. I care about their policies, but there is no politician that I feel super strongly about the way I feel about Alicia Keys or Stephen King.
‘Counter-culture’ means a culture that goes against the traditional or the norm. Conservatism represents traditional views so describing it as a ‘counter-culture’ seems oxymoronic. However, the current mainstream culture in the media and in our day-to-day lives is a new brand of militant leftism. H&M can’t make a simple advert without it generating outrage from people.
Thus being a conservative in today’s Western socio-political climate seems to be going against the viewpoint of the majority. In the UK there are two major parties; Labour and Conservative. I have always supported the Labour party, yet in my sixth form (which was uber liberal) I happened to not disagree with a few Conservative policies. For a while there I was Satan.
I don’t really understand why left-wingers are so outraged by conservative policies. All it is is a different way of thinking, and I believe we need a balance of the two viewpoints. A lot of them cross over anyway. For example, I support capitalism, but I don’t support free-market capitalism. Communism has proven itself to be a terrible system that leads to fascism, but there are some aspects of socialism, such as a national healthcare system, welfare system and high taxation, that I support. The region of the world that currently supports most of my political views – secular social democracy – is Scandinavia. (Wouldn’t be surprised if in the future I move to a Scandinavian country; realistically I feel like that’s the only place I would live besides Britain).
Naturally there are conservatives who are crazy and stupid and radical. But there are plenty of rational conservatives who actually aren’t all that far from my views on some things. One of my favourite YouTubers is Hunter Avallone, a conservative American. I disagree with his views on abortion, but I agree with his views on feminism, black lives matter, the LGBT movement, and this sudden ‘one hundred genders’ phenomenon. Hunter is not racist, sexist or homo/transphobic, yet because he is a conservative Trump supporter there are liberals that will automatically label him as such without even listening to his content.
It is no wonder then that people like me who identify as liberal are starting to find more identification with conservatives. How can I possibly have a rational conversation with someone who won’t listen to reason? If they will automatically label someone as a ‘Nazi’ just because they don’t support the idea of Gay Pride Month? Again, of course there are people on all sides of the political spectrum who have no interest in anything other than shouting about how their views are the pinnacle of truth. My last post was about gender and someone on Google Plus commented (after a brief attempt at discussion) that they were right and I was wrong. They had no interest in having a conversation; all they wanted to do was prove that I was wrong.
And really, that is what the main problem is with the current political climate. It isn’t about whether you’re conservative or liberal. It isn’t about whether you think abortion is a right or feminism is cancer or university should be free. It’s about the fact that everyone is so busy yelling at one another that they would rather just spend all their time trying to prove that the other person is wrong rather than trying to listen to the other person’s points of view and understand them. People are far more concerned with stroking their egos and insisting that what they think is right.
I believe that very few things in this world are objective facts. In the matter of politics, there probably aren’t any facts about what is the best way to do things. There is simply reason, and weighing up the pros and cons in order to come to the conclusion that best suits the context of the situation as well as the people involved. (e.g. some people are against gay marriage, some are pro gay marriage, and both views are different, but the overall conclusive view is that there is no logical reason to not allow two men or two women who love each other to marry any more than there is to not allow a man and a woman to marry.)
