Another contradictory idea is that the government should not
be handing out subsidies or freebies to poor people because it is an
inefficient use of tax dollars that does not benefit the whole and creates dependence.
However enormous financial breaks systematically placed in the tax code for wealthy
individuals and large corporations is quite alright even if those subsidies
mean abandoning previously stated ideals about the free market.
Neoconservatives generally feel that the words of the nation’s
founding fathers should be infinitely praised and relied upon for creating a perfect
Christian nation even though ‘God’ wasn’t added to our money or included in our
Pledge of Allegiance until the 1950s, they granted us the freedom of
individuals to choose their own religion in the very first amendment of the
constitution, and they wrote in passages about how the government they were
creating with their words will not always be relevant. For example, the one
from the Declaration of Independence that goes “…whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to
alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” meaning that the
founding fathers knew that at least some of their words would have shelf life and
would need to be adapted as society progressed.
Now, the predominant thought among progressives (people who
naively want to make the country great for everyone) about these contradictory
Republican viewpoints described above is that each is either a way to extract
money from the poor into the pockets of the ruling class, or a way to garner
the vote of uninformed, easily-influenced people, which really just serves to assist
the first reason. While it is entirely possible that this is the case I think there
might be a little bit more to it.
I would like to propose another possible explanation. Perhaps
the biggest difference is just that Republicans are pessimists, you know, about
how and when the world is going to end. They are doomsdayers.
Now there are obvious religious connections with the apocalypse,
and that certainly might be related to this idea, but there are many who run
the party that operate outside of the religious context. There are very smart
men who run the large corporations and know very well that business persists
day-in and day-out without the interference of a god. They also know we are
facing a doomsday scenario that will have nothing to do with deities. This is
about resources, specifically clean water and oil.
I don’t know if the world will run out of clean water or oil
first, and based on what we do as a society, we have the ability to affect that
outcome. It really doesn’t matter which one it is though. I’m fairly certain,
and there is a lot of scientific evidence to support this, that without drastic
changes in our culture we will run out of one of the two in the next 50 years.
Some mild wars have broken out regarding resource scarcity over the last
century, and really, over the last seven thousand years since humans invented agriculture
and city-state societies. But what happens when one of these two essential
items runs out? Society as we know it will grind to a halt and many, many
deaths will occur in the fallout. It will be the doomsday many have long-predicted.
The people who run the giant businesses, a large oil company
for example, have surely by now calculated how much oil is left in the earth
and based on current and predicted extraction and consumption rates how long
the oil is going to last. They know our current society is not sustainable.
But if they are so smart then why not do anything about it?
This is where my proposal comes into play. They are pessimistic that anything
can actually be done to stop it. The consumption needs of our American and
global society are too great at this point to reverse the trend we’ve started. So if that is the case then why bother with
environmental conservation policies? We should really just be focusing our
energy on putting ourselves in the best position possible when the resource crunch
takes full effect.
When that happens, would it be better to have the largest most
capable army on the planet? Would it be better to have American citizens armed
or not armed? Would it be better to have your American companies control more
or less of the world’s resources? Is it better to have a closely-monitored nationalistic
population that works hard and does what they’re told, or a skeptical lazy
bunch? The answers are obvious.
Meanwhile, progressives are proposing cuts to the defense
budget and diplomacy with foreign countries to work out differences. They want
to limit the powers of corporations and redistribute wealth. They are
discussing saving the environment, pouring wasteful funds into education, and
having more lenient immigration policies. All these things might be useful if
there was any chance that we could actually avoid this problem of resource
scarcity, but we can’t. If we reduce resource consumption, other countries will
get ahead of us. Since we can only convince our own population of the correct
policies half the time at best, why would we think we could convince other
countries to do the correct things with us? It’s a waste of time. The world is
going to become a literal resource battleground, so we may as well be ready for
what’s coming.
This is a possible explanation for the true reason for the
pro-gun, and pro-corporate, resource-pillaging policies of modern Republicans.
Either that or Neoconservative Republicans are really just the short-sided
greedy self-important bastards we already think they are.
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