I’ve seen it. You’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it before. You can scroll through your Facebook or Twitter timeline, usually daily, and come across some article lamenting the difficulties the younger generations are facing. The comment sections on these articles are always more telling than the articles themselves because it gives you a glimpse into the public’s mind regarding a given issue. I was recently scrolling through the comments on a Fox News article regarding the student loan debt crisis, and I must say, it’s not very hard to see why the younger generation is abandoning conservatism, given what it has become.
I am not going to go into all the ins and outs of why the student loan debt is a crisis or who is behind it, but this will serve as a great issue to examine the conservative mindset and why it does not help.
Let anyone post a comment giving an honest critique of the status quo or say something along the lines of “Yeah, this is a big problem,” and I’m sure you can guess the reaction. “What do you want a handout SNOWFLAKE?!?!!1!” or “Why don’t you get another job? Oh, you have a second job? Then, get a third one!” or “Well, I paid off my student loans in 1972 through hard work, the situation must be the same for you. You’re just lazy” or “Well, you shouldn’t have had those kids if you couldn’t afford to pay your student loans” etc. All of these are exaggerated for emphasis, but sadly, they are not that far off from what I actually read.
A large problem within the Left/Right dichotomy is that of the responsibility vs.compassion issue. You have one side (the Left) that is all compassion and no responsibility, and the other side is all responsibility and no compassion, sort of par for the course considering the stances of the two parties. With one, you get better social safety nets and taking on big corporations (in rhetoric only), but then you get endless immigration and homosexual death squads. With the other, you get job creation and fiscal responsibility (also in rhetoric only), but then you get endless wars in the Middle East and capitulation on every social single issue.
The Right, if it ever wants to win, is going to have to learn this key fact: sometimes people really are victims.
No one in our circle enjoys the victimhood culture that is prominent today, but you must learn how to play the field as it is, not how you wish it to be. Sure, some people make themselves victims, but looking at the student loan debt crisis, I would surmise that is rarely the case. A person who majors in African American Studies or Art is going to have a rough time finding a job and paying back those loans. However, I know plenty of people who got degrees in things like Business Management or Engineering who are also having the same problems.
Case in point, my cousin got his degree in Engineering. He has dated the same girl for three years now. She was lucky enough to find a job in her field, but he is working in a factory for $10 an hour because he cannot find work around here. They want to start a family but cannot. Now, what will the Conservative, Inc. tell them? Here’s how I would imagine it would go, along with an Identity Dixie rebuttal.
Conservative, Inc.:“Why don’t you just move to where the jobs are?”
ID Rebuttal: “Sure, I’ll uproot my entire life and won’t see my family as much, assuming I even have the money to move just lying around.”
Conservative, Inc.: “Why don’t you just get another job?”
ID Rebuttal: “Yes, because everyone’s job is to job-hop from job to job on the prospects of working 60+ hours to keep their head above water. And, if that is what is necessary, then doesn’t this sound like the symptom of a larger issue?”
Conservative, Inc.: “Be smart and don’t have kids until you can afford them.”
ID Rebuttal: “Recommending for someone not to fulfill their biological function, along with the prospects of parenthood, until they’re pushing 35 and possibly won’t be able to have children seems like a pretty tough sell.”
Do you see how all of this can sound a bit heartless?
This problem stems from a few larger issues, but the modern neoconservative (illustrated by Conservative, Inc. above) is plagued by a host of issues. One of the main ones is how the neocon (or normiecon) frames his arguments. He fundamentally does not understand how people operate. Your typical normiecon loves the rhetoric of controlled opposition types like Ben Shapiro and his oh-so-famous, “facts don’t care about your feelings.” And, while I’m sure it is fun for his fans to watch him BRUTALLY ASSAULT A DUMB LIBTARD SNOWFLAKE, it actually does not gain them any ground. Conservatives have been sold the lie that facts beat feelings every time and that, somehow, if they could just show these liberal pansies the facts, the liberals will care about border security, fiscal responsibility, or the like. Here is the problem: feelings don’t care about your facts.
If facts mattered, you would not see beer commercials with people partying on boats, laughing, smiling and dancing with the allusion that they are all going to go home and get laid. Car commercials would be a series of engine stats, not a car rolling up to a social scene and the driver being swarmed like a celebrity. The mainstream media uses the same tactics when they show you pictures of dead migrant children washed up on shores or when they use children like the Parkland teens as the mouthpieces for their anti-gun agenda. Believe it or not, but feelings drive human emotions and thinking.
The sad reality is that the Right does not know how to frame their arguments in a moral way in order to connect to people’s feelings. When people see a dead kid on a beach or a girl crying because her mother has been arrested, their first thought is not, “Heh, shouldn’t have tried to come here illegally” because that is a pre-programmed right-wing response and that is designed to lose. Your average normie’s first thought is, “Holy shit, I have to help these kids!”
Instead of opposing immigration because the immigrants are leeching off the system (which they certainly are), try opposing immigration because American business and political interests are destroying these people’s home countries and placing the burden on them to risk life and limb to seek out a better life here. Immigration into this country is not going to help these people long term and will only force them to lose their own culture and way of life to fit into our society, as well as, erode our own culture and way of life. Immigration is a lose/lose situation, and when everyone fights over immigration, they are really only squabbling about a symptom of the real problem. Free trade should not be argued from the stance that these companies are taking jobs away from Americans; it should be argued from the stance that these companies are exploiting Third World populations for slave labor (and they are).
The Right should frame their arguments in a way that gives them the moral high ground and makes their opposition look immoral. Facts should only be used to strengthen moral positions because unless you lead with the heart, you are just going to continue losing. I know that the Right likes to view itself as the paragon of facts and logic, but it is time to come down from that high horse.
It gets us nowhere. And, anyone who has ever criticized Israel, especially around normiecons, knows that feelings don’t care about your facts.
-By Imperator
O I’m a good old rebel, now that’s just what I am. For this “fair land of freedom” I do not care at all. I’m glad I fit against it, I only wish we’d won, And I don’t want no pardon for anything I done.
One of the big issues with the student loan crisis (and it most assuredly is a crisis, as you say), when you sweep away all of the clutter and get down to brass tacks, is one aspect of the danger of over-education. Not necessarily in your cousin’s case, nor anyone else’s in particular, but as a rule overall. You can flood the market with young persons with degrees in engineering, or whatever, but when the demand for engineers is met at any given point in time, it leaves a bunch of persons with a degree and a huge amount of student loan debt ‘out in the cold,’ so to speak. Probably not fair to your cousin in his particular case, but life isn’t fair so there ya go.
You wrote:
Well, I would personally venture to guess that “luck” had very little to do with it, and instead that “equal opportunity employment” (which is to say, preferential hiring practices) coupled with “jobs creation” to accommodate the career aspirations of the “fairer sex” had more to do with that. Here again, not necessarily in her particular case, but just playing the odds here. And btw, in the sense of “lucky enough” you mean a blessing or good fortune, I think your cousin will likely find later on down the road that this is more of a curse than its opposite. If he truly wants to start a family, career womanhood is and always shall be a big obstacle in his path.
Otherwise, there’s nothing wrong with a man working 60+ hours a week; it’s that “just to keep his head above water” part that ought to concern us. When I was younger trying to build a business in the construction industry, I worked a lot more hours than that per week. And, yes, just to keep my head above water, in a manner of speaking. I will just say in this vein that neither is there anything inherently wrong with struggling to make ends meet. It builds character, brother. And after all, “by the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread, all the days of thy life.” If that isn’t the case we’re probably doing something wrong.
Are boomers(who make up the majority of “conservatives”) void of compassion? Or are we just hardened by the abuse of having been the most compassionate generation in the history of western civilization? Why does this article come off as more of the same whereas Mr T Morris’ reply resonates with me? Why hasn’t the Student Debt generation expressed outrage at the corportists who give their engineering jobs to East Indians flooding this country? Why are we Southrons caught between two idealogies of which serve none of our interests?
How were the boomers the most compassionate generation? Everything was given to the baby boomers. What have they given back?
Their “ultra-compassion,” to perhaps coin a new term, was wholly misplaced, as many of them came to, or have come to, understand in their old age. My own father, who was a Boomer and a great man in his own right, had a seemingly unlimited supply of compassion for ‘the other’ that I myself could never quite grasp or buy into. To this very day I have no real idea what he was talking about in that vein. I love my own people above all others, and I am not ashamed to say so. He, on the other hand, seemed to be (ashamed to say so), at least until his latter years. He was also a big advocate for continuation of the female vote. Which I could never quite understand either. My dad’s thinking on that matter was something like, “good women will cancel out the votes of bad women.” My thinking, by contrast, has always been, “are you out of your effing mind?!” Of course I never said that to my dad in those exact terms, but I was damn sure thinking it.
And you’re a moron. Nobody gave me shit.
“American business and political interests are destroying these people’s home countries and placing the burden on them to risk life and limb to seek out a better life here.”
I’ve seen this argument lately from open borders proponents.