so, there's a thing I've been thinking about and this is as good a time as any to explain it.

Systemic injustices: eg: injustices perpetuated by means of the system in which we live rather than by acts of individual peoples.

There's been a lot of discussion where conservatives reject the idea and people on the left tend toward embracing it, largely because we believe it's true.

But, I'd also propose that it's a matter of understanding the idea properly, which many conservatives don't.

(This isn't to say that the problem is mere ignorance because there are people in all parts of politics who get it but choose not to do anything about it either as a result of apathy or because they benefit from it).

But, I think a lot of people on the left could do with some understanding of what conservatives HEAR when we talk about systemic racism - coming from how *I* thought about it when I was conservative.

The first thing you have to realize about conservative ideology is that the individual is prime: individuals exist largely in a vacuum, not in a society when a social contract applies, but instead as an amalgamation of their individual choices.

Therefore, groups of individuals are just convenient labels (men, women, etc) and not actually meaningful beyond the individual. They believe this is how they see the world, despite institutional influence and support obviously privileging many and punishing others.

So, when conservatives hear about a "system" of, say, racism, what they hear is that a large group of individual actors all conspired deliberately and intentionally to punish black people for being black.

They think that each individual makes independent choices with their own specific intentions, so the idea that individuals within a system would produce a result that is racist is impossible if those individuals had good intentions.

Take it this way: a court system in a city consistently sentences black defendants to longer sentences than white defendants for the same crime. A liberal looks at that and says "the system is racist." A conservative wants to find the individual in the system who is racist.

I remember being told about "the patriarchy" as a conservative young adult, and imagining some conspiratorial cabal of bad men who somehow have power over everyone - and dismissing it because it's a ridiculous idea, framed in that way.

But when I read feminist writers who framed "patriarchy" not as some secretive cabal of sexists but rather as a form of conditioning that everyone undergoes just because it's how society develops, I could see more of my own position in that.

So the next time you run into a conservative who thinks the idea of systemic injustice is ridiculous, remember that it's because they believe we are all independent individual actors, rather than beings shaped and conditioned by society to behave in certain ways.

This inability to see the individual as part of a societal project of conditioning and shaping and instead seeing it as this independent, world unto itself thing, is a large part why there is such a disconnect between conservative and leftist thinking.

If everything's the result of an individual's independent choices, then we as a society don't need to change. We're all just individuals who happen to live in the same area. But if some things are the result of the society in which we live, then we must change. There's the rub.

When I tell my dad that I'm marginalized and have to rely on the courts to grant me rights as a queer person, he sees it, in some way, partially my fault for choosing to be out and obviously queer. He believes, perhaps not even consciously, that people in trouble deserve it.

And that's the dissonance, the struggle to have an actual conversation, because there's a fundamental disconnect between how liberals/leftists believe society works, and how conservatives do.

Once you start noticing this, things like the conservative response to COVID start making sense. "Personal responsibility" becomes about whether or not you get sick, not whether or not you subject people around you to your illness.

This is a major part of it. I believe it would've been nearly impossible for me to become who I am now if I'd been assigned male at birth. I would've grown up with tons of privilege, and I wouldn't have experienced the sexism that made me explore feminism to begin with. https://twitter.com/untapped_talent/status/1314292921668173825

This is a good question, too

I think for a lot of them, they love the narrative that they are hard workers who built their own lives themselves and are completely in control of what happens. To think they aren't is terrifying. https://twitter.com/nbrink77/status/1314294823533322244

I'm also thinking, too, about how their fervent religious belief fits into this, and I think, largely, it's a matter of them believing that following the rules of the faith makes them the best. They say they're letting God take control, but really what they get is power.