Mastodawn

The truth is that you can't be "fiscally conservative & socially liberal" because if you're actually paying attention to the social issues, you will note that they are directly linked into structures of power—the same structures of power that create our "fiscal" situation.

Capitalist, colonialist exploitation depends on traumatized children. It all depends on traumatized children, & it always has.

The Epstein class fights us on "social" issues because the logical result of respecting all people would be a world where people become hard to exploit & even harder to convince to do someone else's violence.

Without suffering, the power structure collapses. The suffering is necessary to the economic system.

The statement "We are not free until we are ALL free" includes kids: the permanent oppressed underclass.

Look, I have done a lot of childcare in my life. I understand that children CANNOT be allowed to do whatever they please. I don't want feral, untended children, but I do want kids who feel a sense of ownership over their own bodies & lives.

So many cycles of violence start with neglect, abuse, manipulation, & control in childhood.

This is why the duped henchmen of the Epstein class lose their fucking shit over basic "therapy" stuff like boundaries.

They say conversations about mental & emotional health are "woo-woo" & "wishy-washy" & silly, but they are fucking TERRIFIED of that shit.

If children are not systematically abused & neglected, they will not grow into angry, reactive assholes looking for someone to hurt. They won't develop into fearful resource-hoarders. They won't be looking for someone else to project their self-hatred onto.

The Epstein Class knows that an attack on social structures of abuse threatens to topple the whole exploitation system, & that's why they've enlisted so many soldiers in this fight.

The whole concept of capitalism requires humans to be uncooperative with each other. Meanwhile, human civilization developed because we are really, really fucking good at collaborating.

The math isn't mathing.

If someone is "fiscally conservative", then ultimately they are saying we should all have to fight over resources, & in order to keep people fighting over resources, you have to keep prejudice, fear, & resentment alive, so... seems to me like being "fiscally conservative" means there is a need for people to abuse each other.

Healthy, happy people help each other, & that's what the Epstein Class can't tolerate. So they indoctrinate people to create the misery that their system demands.

It would not be inappropriate to respond to someone who says "I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative" with "who hurt you as a child?"

That person is living in fear of other people.

Maybe they WANT to be open & kind & fair to others. Maybe they know that's a better way to be, but they are so unwilling to trust anyone, that they will choose a world of infinite suffering rather than risk losing the *fantasy* of control over their life which "fiscal conservatism" allows them.

Trust is fucking hard.

But one of the reasons it's so very, very fucking hard is that we all learn AS CHILDREN (to varying degrees) that we cannot trust other people to care about or respect our needs.

It doesn't have to be that way.

We learn anti-social behavior from youth. We are taught it by the very adults who claim to be teaching us to "act right". "Tough love" is frequently just training someone that they cannot possibly trust anyone but themselves. It makes cooperation feel impossible.

To heal our world, we will have to heal ourselves.

This is why I don't consider my "mental/emotional health" posts to be in any way separate from my "political" posts.

It's all part of the same thing. Healing our trauma is part of healing our relationships with each other. And healing our relationships with each other is part of the process of dismantling oppression.

The oppression lives inside you. That's why we "decolonize" our minds, because our participation in systems of abuse starts there.

Author/book recommendation for self-healing in the context of activism & trying to change the world:

Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown

Historically, when colonizers encountered indigenous peoples one frequently recurring theme is basically "these people are so fucking trusting" (to which the response is inevitably murder & enslavement).

Here's the question: Why would people be so fucking trusting? Well, it seems to come up in cultures where the community looks out for everyone. It is possible for humans to live in trust instead of fear, & without outsiders coming in to kill & destroy, it seems like it can work pretty well.

I was reading a book about settler colonialism in the US (Not a Nation of Immigrants by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz) & she cited one of the concerns expressed by those planning the settler expansion of the US is that if they didn't remove the indigenous people, white folks might be drawn to their communal ways of life. Basically a fear of "the dirty commies", before "commies" even existed.

The architects of the current structures of colonial oppression recognized that there was another way people could choose to go, & they had to make sure that they removed that threat.

So right there you have "fiscal conservatism" backed up by genocide. In order to not have people question the social order or try to form communities of their own, you have to kill, remove, or forcibly assimilate all who would structure their society differently.

VANTABlack 3h ago

@artemis Isn't that basically what conservatives try to say communism is too? A system where you have to kill, remove, or forcibly assimilate all who would do differently?

Not saying this as an insult to what you are saying more as an interesting observation of conservatives.

Cedar Fen Farm Cedar Fen Farm 1m ago

@VANTABlack2000 @artemis

Actually, Marx does discuss removal and reducation. I think intoletance is a basic Euro intellectual mind set in some classes.

Ms. Que Banh 4h ago

@artemis Absolutely it's interconnected!

Just Tom... 🐁5h ago

@artemis - I am trying, oh how I am trying!!!

@tompearce49
Fortunately we don't do it alone. We get to support each other through it!

Weyoun 6 5h ago

@artemis I have responded with "so you support taxing the wealthy to improve the living conditions of all?". When they inevitably say no I tell them "then you are not fiscally conservative" thus removing that invocation for them to hide behind.

PetterOfCats 5h ago

@artemis when I hear “I’m fiscally conservative” what I hear is: “I’m selfish and I got everything I want from society and I’ll be damned if I let society do the same for you.”

Cassandrich 5h ago

@PetterOfCats @artemis It's so stupid how basically all the people who say this are already *set for life*, especially if they'd let the rest of us protect the systems that would take care of them in old age.

They could literally just *stop doing anything political or economic* and enjoy what they have.

Open Water Otter VE7GR🏳️‍🌈5h ago

@PetterOfCats @artemis The phrase; "for me, but not for thee" pretty much covers it all.

brielle bouquet v2 3h ago

@PetterOfCats @artemis i also hear the 90s and 00s version of "i dont actually know anything about politics or being alive or books or philosophy or the economy but i want to sound like i do in fact know some things"

you cant be socially liberal if you're fiscally conservative because fiscal conservativism is economic discrimination by race, sex, sexuality, etc, and it's the vehicle conservatives use to keep undesirables dying on the streets instead of building guillotines.

Daniel Lakeland 4h ago

Although this is definitely part of it. I also think there are a lot of self described "fiscally conservative" people who basically see corruption in govt and want to stop it by basically cutting off the source of funds. Suppose for example your local city council keeps sending construction contracts to some particular firm that's run by a friend of the mayor and gets contracts to replace bus stops for $2M when it's clearly a $200k job or whatever.

Daniel Lakeland 4h ago

People watch this stuff happen... schools getting renovated for $1M two years before they close it for underenrollment, or whatever, and they're tired of that kind of stuff... I say this because this particular subset is potentially ripe for Anarchist conversion. If you showed them an alternative way to cooperate together instead of power dynamics with small elected leader groups deciding what everyone elses money should go towards... it could bring more people to alternatives.

@dlakelan
Yeah, these are complementary truths. The lack of trust starts in childhood, but we live in an overall culture of fraud & abuse. We don't trust each other because the world that has been built around us is exploitative to its core.

And as we anarchists know: the tricky part is getting people to imagine alternatives.

Daniel Lakeland 4h ago

It's so true. Typically I think the "fiscally conservative" group starts out from a place of patriarchy and religious oppression or similar, and then sees that this is damaging to the psyche and so opens their mind to the "socially liberal" ideas. Usually not wide open but they at least aren't gonna join the Proud Boys anymore. But they see these corrupt backroom govt money deals or whatever and they just don't want to empower those people.

Daniel Lakeland 4h ago

Also Economics upholds incorrect ideas about how the world works. For example, it's never necessary for the federal govt to first tax people in order spend money on buying war machines and soforth. They literally print money! But modern macroeconomic textbooks teach a different incorrect model of how that works! So if you've been bitten by the idea that Economics has scientific truth to it, you'd want austerity to somehow remove power... even though it doesn't.

Daniel Lakeland 4h ago

Austerity actually *increases* govt power, because it invariably is pointed at the least powerful people, workers, single moms, children, whatever, rather than say the Marine Corps or Air Force or whatever.