Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

Femmephobia is way less useful as a critical concept than misogyny

Self-care is necessary but not thereby radically oppositional

Couching leftist projects in terms of resistance to neoliberalism rather than to capitalism risks a lot of reformist implications

― one way street, Thursday, August 4, 2016 10:52 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink]

looooool

women's sports are, in general, less exciting versions of men's sports

http://allproudamericans.com/paimages/does-duck-and-cover-really-work.jpg

I'll watch women's tennis from time to time but yeah

There are too many things that I massively disagree with posted here for it to be worth a fight on any one of them. I'm just wondering why the 'loool' at ows? Because those aren't really conservative standpoints? They kind of are in comparison to a lot of current radical discourse (I agree with all of them, though not entirely with the latter, but again, I kind of feel this thread is meant to be a dumping ground not a discussion ground).

women's sports are, in general, less exciting versions of men's sports

― have you ever even read The Drudge Report? Have you gone on Stormfron (k3vin k.), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 10:52 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sexual dimorphism of humans def means that a lot of sports are more exciting to watch when men are playing them but otoh a lot of women's sports are less commercialized and therefore less likely to suffer from rampant PED use endemic to men's sports and therefore likely to be more of a clean competition

also crowds at woman's sports tend to be less shitty

(emil.y i was laughing at the extreme relativity necessary to consider those "conservative opinions." i assumed they were posted tongue in cheek so thought i was laughing along with one way street, not at them, and wasn't critiquing the positions themselves)

Can't speak for sciatica but I lol'ed at ows' post bc it requires some, like, wicked fractal definition of conservatism within the queer anticapotalist left. but I get how all those opinions could be uncool rn

liberalism as many of my friends practice it is like a shitty religion that i want no part of.

they think of other people as needing to be saved, by them.
they make penance with speech acts, not real action.
they live their lives in constant guilt.
they live in cities that are only differentiated from other cities by being huge destinations for wealth, then they disavow that wealth while continuing to partake in the lifestyle it provides.
they blame rich people for all the evils of the world while ignoring that they are the 1%.
they prescribe how other people should be living their own lives.
they say things that have no meaning other than to reveal to others that they are members in this very sensitive club of good people.
it's nothing but performative.

Lol got xp'd

I must admit I like Republican President Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. But chances are, you also like Ike. Maybe everybody likes Ike.

xps to sciatica and flopson - yeah, both of those reasons are basically fair enough. I think I inhabit so many circles where these are topics for fierce debate that I took it w/ a completely straight face!

watching grown adults discussing rae sremmurd like it was literature is to behold the end of art

― imago,

links?

I must admit I like Republican President Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower. But chances are, you also like Ike. Maybe everybody likes Ike.

― Philip Nunez,

best Cold War president if you look past his championing of covert ops

just watch their latest video, 'set the roof' and listen to the lyrics, they're just the worst people in earth, i fucking despise literally everything they're doing

Lj on rap always sounds like thinly veiled racist uncle 'i like blk ppl...who pull up their pants' lol

There was some self-directed irony in my post (like, as a queer trans woman and a marxist, I realize I occupy a different milieu than some of you), but I do actually hold the positions in it, and they're generally unpopular in radical circles; but as e.mily said, this thread seems "like a dumping ground not a discussion ground," so I'll stay out of the rae sremmurd discourse.

*emil.y, I mean

if hating on vicious misogyny, shit beats and two little soi-disant alpha male fuckers is racist then

never listened to rae sremmurd but i see his/her/their name everywhere

just read the lyrics to set the off and stopped here:

Now let's fill up her head and let's see if she chokes

it's fashionable to call anything (thinly veiled) racism these days (oh my conservative opinion i guess)

Bill O'Reilly also quotes lyrics as if they made sense removed from arrangements.

if hating on vicious misogyny, shit beats and two little soi-disant alpha male fuckers is racist then

― imago,

you just wrote hating "on."

if you are comparing me to bill o reilly you should say so instead of hinting at it

I think I did!

[Pre-Hook: Swae Lee]
Flash her with cash, had to spazz on the waiter
She fucked up my order three times in a row, woah
I'm good on gas, I just filled up my tank
Now let's fill up her head and let's see if she chokes

so the double entendre is not done on purpose i guess is what you're saying

i don't actually think ur racist lj you just an fyi you sound like coded white supremacist

I think I did!

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 7:46 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and no, you didn't

yeah I quite like rap and rap culture so I appropriate its vernacular sometimes. doesn't mean I don't detest some of its practitioners though

and they're not as bad as anthony kiedis I guess

I see you flopson, I'm better about this shot these days but sremm are p much in the sweet spot of do not get

yeah idk they're like a fabulous marriage of Descendants and Kool Keith. They get away with their snottiness and for the moment they don't sound anomic or evil. But they can't keep it up forever and I can imagine hating them like The Weeknd and late Kanye.

doesn't mean I don't detest some of its practitioners though

― imago, Wednesday, August 17, 2016 7:50 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the thing

people take a band you don't like and make a lot of unwarranted generalizations about you

theres tonnes of good hip hop and rap that reads different than rae sremmurd

nah it's all good -- we're just zingin' late afternoon

zingin on hump day

ugh

s'all good

let's get back on topic

courses aimed at bright/curious state-schooled kids, such as those I help to run a few times a year, are not elitist

I think my uncool conservative belief is on a parallel with LJ's statement there -- I think drawing a line dividing quality work from mass market pulp and calling one side "literature" has its place

the line moves all the time, though, and things jump back and forth

spelling your band name backwards is straightup stupid

They get away with their snottiness and for the moment they don't sound anomic or evil. But they can't keep it up forever

This was basically my take on Odd Future when they first came out, but weren't they actually kids at the time whereas Rae Sremmurd are like proper adults? I like RS musically, but honestly I haven't really paid much attention to their lyrics, so... eh. I kind of don't want to go down that route but just imagine I wrote an incredibly long and interesting post about the conflicts and intertwinement of ingroup lexical production, culture, Cannibal Corpse and exclusion/alienation of marginalised groups. Seriously, this hypothetical post was the most brilliant and incisive thing you've ever read about lyrics and it's changed your worldview forever.

(sorry for continuing to turn this thread into 'Rae Sremmurd: Classic or Dud')

Fair enough. Cannibal Corpse have shit beats too though

rock has a rich and deep history of making garbage music (another uncool conservative opinion!)

the internet can't accommodate both privacy and anonymity, and given a choice between the two i pick privacy

it will never be ok with me when people use "unique" to mean "uncommon"

Marxism is dumb and bad.

Capitalist liberal democracy is the end point of Western civilization, it will never be superseded by a higher/better form of social organization, will only end through collapse.

Men should not have facial hair and people in general should not have messy hair.

― ælərdaɪs (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 12:37 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You know the Marxist view *is* that Capitalism will collapse, right?

permitting female facial hair is a nice lacuna in jim's conservatism there, rebounds to his credit

xp. I am very familiar with Marxism. This is probably the problem! Grew up in a house filled with books on Marxist theory. Literally was at a table with friends of my parents and an uncle who are all Trotskyists a week ago.

just need to repost this

nah it's all good -- we're just zingin' late afternoon

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 17, 2016 7:00 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't the marxist view that capitalism collapses after we have 3D printers that really work, and don't just make smelly, knobby statues of webcomic characters?

nah that's gene roddenberry, easily confused

they blame rich people for all the evils of the world while ignoring that they are the 1%.

never realized that liberals are 1% of the population

I think you need like $420K household income to be in the top 1% in the US. Maybe sleeping bag has a lot of rich liberal friends, but I doubt it.

global 1% I MEANT

barb is overrated

that is my uncool conservative belief

ps. thanks for mentioning Las Casas, really interesting figure

I just thought the claim that the concept of the "noble savage" was about elevating individuals or an elite sub-class within a group was off-base. Obviously that phenomenon does exist, but I've personally never seen the NS term used that way. A little pedantic, but reading it Kate's way would put the preceding posts in a weird light imo.

― rob

yeah actually you're right and the correction is appreciated!

idk, 18th century french philosophy is tough for me to get a handle on. voltaire predated rousseau, right? is rousseau's concept of the "noble savage" distinct from the leibnizian optimism parodied by voltaire in _candide_?

they were pretty much contemporaries. voltaire was kind of a shit poster whereas rousseau was much more of a treeship. voltaire was a deeply cynical person and he dismissed rousseau's ideas about human nature with as much acerbity as anything pilloried in "candide." i don't know too much about leibniz but my understanding of his "best of all possible worlds" was that it was more of a goofy theological deal than anything else. whereas for rousseau at least the "noble savage" was a kind of stand-in or intellectual exercise to theorize the human being before the institutions of culture and politics begin its work on him, the idea being that if there's an inherent goodness/empathy at man's core than it stands to reason that corruption and vice are social ills that can be overcome in the sphere of politics as opposed to being evidence of an inherent evil, in the theological sense, within the human condition. i think

having said that, Rousseau would be a great person to post on the "Uncool Conservative Beliefs" thread because he sure as hell had them in spades

ok here is an uncool conservative belief.

there are probably too many people on the planet.

i always see this countered with "but nazis". it's .. still true. the earth has limits for any population. whether or not we've reached that limit is arguable, but i don't think it's arguable that our population going down would be bad, for our own future or for the planet's.

is it conservative to believe that the earth is going to deal with "our" climate change in ways we can't envision? it isn't some fragile thing. it is in fact very resilient. we're fooling ourselves if we think the earth isn't going to roll with it, respond, and endure. part of its response will be to lower the population. we are subject to it, not the other way around.

― map, Wednesday, November 26, 2025 1:49 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

n.b. i think by far the best way to address the population issue would be widely available and valued birth control / vasectomies. and maybe starting a mandatory earth cult to go with it all. j/k about that one.

― map, Wednesday, November 26, 2025 1:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

the global population is already set to peak in 60 years and then decline, with many countries birthrates already below replacement level, and the forecasted date of the peak keeps getting closer and closer. china's population has already plateaued, japan's is decreasing and 30% of people are over 65. the population minimizers don't really need to do anything to address the issue, ya'll are already winning

great news!

I'm contributing to the falling birth rates.

So all these good posts here had me going back to the Graeber/Wengrow book I mehtioned. Quick tl, dr of what the chapter on Rousseau says:

Basically the initial assertion is that even in Rousseau's times Europe was not isolated from other cultures, though its historians were very eager to downplay any foreign influence - they actually cite Leibniz as an example, saying his interest in Chinese govt structures lead to some of these being adopted in different countries, but that's a tangent.

What the book is more concerned with is the dialogues between Europeans and (native) Americans. They begin by pointing out that, while European accounts of Americans varied greatly, American takes on European civilisation seemed quite consistently to be "you guys are fucked up, props on the tech I guess but you live like shit". There were many such accounts written, and Rousseau would have had access to them, which obv doesn't make him an expert or anything but neither would he be theorising in a vacuum.

What then happened, the book suggests, is that most native narratives were dismissed as forgeries by white men projecting their values onto the natives (I'm guessing the historical example of "barbarian" texts actually written by Romans might have had some influence on this line of thought). This was not at all done via modern journalistic or historian means; often the reasoning was the simple racism of "a native wouldn't have such sophisticated thoughts". Somewhat more credible is the argument that many of these reports portrayed different tribes and cultures as far more utopian than they were - to which the authors respond, do we not believe native american ppl would be capable of self-romanticising their culture?

Anyway not saying I'm sure the book is right or anything but it def made me suspicious of some ideas I had previously taken for granted.

interesting, thanks for sharing that. i'm looking into this and will maybe post a response later! i haven't heard of Lahontan

also, kate, i just wanted to say i enjoyed your post yesterday but haven't been able to formulate a response i'm happy with. except to say that my reaction to realizations along the lines of "humans always do this and will never stop doing this [bad thing]" has sometimes been a kind of (conservative) nihilism but has, at other times, helped me to understand that i am not the first human to feel paralyzed at contemplating the totality of human selfishness and complacency, and i won't be the last, and so perhaps there's a lesson there about humility and about scale, and an opportunity to set parameters for your own life that are realistic about the impact you can actually have, and the happiness you can effect in yourself and in others

i love that graeber book!

the global population is already set to peak in 60 years and then decline, with many countries birthrates already below replacement level, and the forecasted date of the peak keeps getting closer and closer. china's population has already plateaued, japan's is decreasing and 30% of people are over 65. the population minimizers don't really need to do anything to address the issue, ya'll are already winning

― flopson, Thursday, 27 November 2025 bookmarkflaglink

There are places in the global south (thinking of Africa) where the population is increasing and yet those will be some of the most affected by climate change. Some of the population decreases will be 'enforced'.

i feel like there is a perceived disagreement implied by your post but i can't grasp what it is

fwiw, the demographers who forecast population growth include africa in their models, so the decline in global population is inclusive of africa. so even though the population of africa will increase, the population of the world will still decrease (pleasing map)

this isn’t mine in particular, but my spouse has been pushing which hands are the proper ones for eating and it’s something I never would’ve conceived them to care about. Worse yet- I’m left handed and have unintentionally been doing it the “proper” way all my life!

xp: less disagreement than filling out the detail that you did not mention.

also, kate, i just wanted to say i enjoyed your post yesterday but haven't been able to formulate a response i'm happy with. except to say that my reaction to realizations along the lines of "humans always do this and will never stop doing this [bad thing]" has sometimes been a kind of (conservative) nihilism but has, at other times, helped me to understand that i am not the first human to feel paralyzed at contemplating the totality of human selfishness and complacency, and i won't be the last, and so perhaps there's a lesson there about humility and about scale, and an opportunity to set parameters for your own life that are realistic about the impact you can actually have, and the happiness you can effect in yourself and in others

― budo jeru

aww, thanks, i'm hoping so :)

rousseau-as-conservative is interesting because of the way the idea of the "noble savage" exists in tension with the hobbesian view that the state of nature is the "war of all against all". i don't think either is true, honestly.

graeber's stuff is the 21st-century leftism i'm most familiar with. i'm not a big reader so i'm mostly familiar with the ways it's reflected in the world around me. i can't help but note that the causes graeber advocated for in his lifetime were pretty spectacular failures. when it comes to conservatism, i definitely lean towards hobbesian pessimism. is there an argument to be made that graeber's ideas might be put into practice in a way that leads to a better world?