Just so we're not forgetting this:

The "conservative" mindset (i.e. one that pervades conservative politics in all of its forms, globally) is one of fear.

The fear that their "things" will be taken from them (taxes etc).

1/hopefully small n

The fear that if they acknowledge any systemic obstacles that they will also have to acknowledge their own luck (all our luck, but I digress) in avoiding some of those obstacles by no virtue of their own.

2/n

The fear that if they acknowledge historic or present injustice they will have to do work to address it.

The fear that if they acknowledge inconvenient facts they will either have to do something about them (e.g. climate change) or acknowledge their lack of "specialness".

3/n

There's more, but at its core conservatism is only and forever the mindset of the inadequate.

Oppression and ego do not require strength, only force.

Generosity comes from strength. Acknowledging one's limitations comes from strength. Humility comes from strength. 4/n

Those in thrall to this mindset fight against, for example, climate change because they fear that they will have to do something about it.

Acknowledging reality is somehow a compulsion to act. Logically, philosophically it isn't, that would be fallacious. 5/n

But they fear the facts would dictate actions and those actions would somehow deprive them of what they deem is theirs and theirs alone.

Acknowledging systemic difficulties and advantages (in ADDITION to personal and individual ones) robs them of a portion of ego.

6/n

It exposes the lie that fortune also plays a part in success or achievement or wealth. Not the only part, *a* part.

The fight against education, intellectual curiosity and honesty is done precisely to stifle these realisations. They fear them. 7/n

This lack of acknowledgment, this fear, is based on the unconscious belief that, were someone else in their position, they themselves would be treated as poorly as they treat others.

Whether or not that is true, the lack of imagination that alternatives exist limits them. 8/n

No matter how "educated" or "intellectual", the conservative mindset is fundamentally, at its root, the view of the deeply stupid person. Everything after that is post-hoc rationalisation.

It contains nothing more than a paucity of empathy and an utter failure of imagination 9/n

The older I get, the more I see, even the more I have (therefore the more vulnerable I am to those things the conservative mindset fears) the less conservative I become, the more I despise those ideas with a fury that scares me.

The more I read, from Smith, and Locke etc 10/n

The more this realisation grows.

And I started here. These ideas were my ideas. I grew up not questioning these things because everyone around me thought them. I'd never even bothered to think about it. 11/n

I was very old (i.e. not some teenaged rebel) when I first realised that these ideas were bad, i.e. mapped poorly onto reality. I was even older before I started to understand what underpins them.

12/n

And the more I read, the more I think, the more people I encounter the worse it gets.

That is very unusual for me.

I am wrong. I am always bloody wrong. I quite like it!

Usually I think a thing and discover it's not a very good idea. I joyfully change my mind.

13/n

This isn't happening with anything I read about this subject and that scares me. Firstly, I'm not used to it, and secondly it exposes the horrors of humanity in an ever starker light.

I can't look away and what frustrates me is that I have no idea what to do.

/end

P.S. I was reading something the other day about the "far right militia" culture in the USA and how it is arming, training itself etc.

I thought that there is no equivalent on the "left" (not that there should be). There's no communist militia of similar size or prominence.

P.S. part 2

I'm certainly not advocating for such a thing BTW.

Largely what the "left" seems to consist of is bien pensant people like me, twittering or railing from the middle class pages of middle class newpapers.

Obviously that is the surface stuff because there are trade unions, activists, left politicians etc, i.e. people actually doing something. But where's the revolution? Where's that coming from?

Where's the spontaneous uprising of the proletariat?

It's not happening.

That scares me because there is no real opposition to the status quo even if that opposition is in error, even if it's counterfactual, badly thought out.

There isn't anything of substance out there that I am aware of.

And meanwhile we have fascist enablers in positions of power