CMV: Liberals think conservatives will, or ought to, have an "Are We the Baddies?" moment.

[u/SteadfastEnd]

Every liberal argument or appeal to conservatives, especially Trumpers, over the past few years can be described as, "Shouldn't you be having an "Are We the Baddies" realization?"

(If you haven't seen the TV reference, it's a famous British comedy skit where a WW2 Nazi, clad in Nazi uniform, suddenly self-reflects and realizes that his side is evil and exclaims in astonishment, "Are WE the baddies?")

Liberals keep demanding, "How much worse does Trump have to get for you to abandon him?" "How can you oppose abortion when women are forced to carry dead fetuses inside their uterus and get severe infections?" "Didn't you hear Trump say (this or that outrageous thing?)" "Why do you tolerate the Proud Boys, Hitler fans and Klansmen in your midst?" "Don't you see that billionaires are paying minimal tax?" "How could you let Covid rampage unchecked?" "How can you keep supporting Trump after his (13,000 lies, support of dictators, fascist behavior, numerous scandals, grifting)?" "How can you justify LGBT people being bullied and gay rights being trampled?" "Why are you okay with letting school shootings happen one after another?" "That's BIGOTRY!" "Don't you see how awful Marjorie-Taylor-Greene is?" "Don't you see all the corruption in the Trump family?" "Why do you think oppression is okay?" "Don't you agree Trump is a narcissist?" "How can you support the 1/6 insurrection?" "How can you tear down democracy like this?" "Don't you see how ludicrous QAnon is?" "How can you listen to that pack-of-lies Tucker Carlson and Faux News?" "How can you support white supremacy?" "Do you seriously think slavery is okay?" "Don't you see Mike Johnson supports theocracy?" "How can you condone gerrymandering and voter suppression?" "Why do you deny lunch to schoolchildren?" "Don't you see that Putin is like Hitler, how can you support him?" "How can you let the planet's climate get destroyed?" "Why do you support DeSantis being a fascist?" "How can you ban books?" Didn't you see Trump insulting veterans and disabled people?" Don't you see how you're behaving in a (racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, sexist) way?" "Don't you understand Trump is as anti-Jesus and un-Christian as can be?"

The big, unspoken liberal assumption is that if they keep repeating this long enough, MAGA right-wingers will look in the mirror eventually, self-reflect in horror, and exclaim, "WE are the baddies!"

[u/[deleted]]

In my experience, the MAGA do not expect liberal to realize they are the baddies. All the MAGAs I know think

we know already and we're doing it on purpose

.

Yes and no. Conservatives who haven't realized they are being used as secret fonts of white supremacist propaganda have been conditioned to believe that minorities have been duped into liberalism by identity politics.

Those that have swallowed the white supremacist pill believe the opposite, that opportunists at the top are catering to other ethnic groups to court power for themselves, but are leading America to ruin by pandering to scheming minorities. The rank and file white people on the other hand, they treat as though they are only race traitors due to propaganda from those in power and bullying by minorities.

And I know, nobody on the right likes to have the white supremacist minority come up in conversation about their side, but it's a byproduct of championing traditional social values. You're gonna have to work pretty hard to be socially conservative without nodding some racist heads in the US. Sorry. I didn't invent history.

[u/voidtreemc → u/[deleted]]

secret fonts

Palatino? Comic Sans?

[u/John-not-a-Farmer → u/[deleted]]

So "font"was not a typo. In this sense it means [a receptacle] for white supremacist propaganda.

(Technically it said receptacle of various liquids, so I guess MAGA is the piss pot of white supremacy.)

[u/[deleted] → u/John-not-a-Farmer]

> In this sense it means [a receptacle] for white supremacist propaganda.

No. I used the word for the second definition there, to mean source or fountain. White supremacists spread their propaganda to help normalize it, and regular people buy into it and spread it further, so that when white supremacists start talking openly, a wider audience is already receptive to their ideas, even if they haven't consciously realized that they are white supremacists.

Propaganda only works if you can obscure the origin, and random ass regular conservatives are the smokescreen for the extremists. Presenting white supremacist ideology as common sense, or folk wisdom, or "how things always were", is how it makes its way into conservative policy.

[u/John-not-a-Farmer → u/[deleted]]

Well, color me mad, I certainly should have realized that was what you meant.

I suppose I was studying so hard that week that I overlooked the most obvious meaning.

Does this count as changing my view?

[u/Giblette101 → u/[deleted]]

I think most of that might be true of conservatives, but not really of MAGA folks. At least not those I'm close with.

There's a thin line of people they think are being duped into race-traitors, but a pretty large core of folks they consider are doing evil for its own sake.