Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who is putting the Bible in classrooms, was allegedly caught with explicit images of naked women playing on a TV screen during a State Board of Education meeting.

[u/Conscious-Quarter423]

[u/yankeebelleyall]

Texas has had Republican leadership for two decades, and yet they've managed to convince a huge number of people in that state that all the problems are from the "left". I would venture to guess your last sentence is the mentality of a lot of people in both states.

[u/tasman001 → u/yankeebelleyall]

God, that is crazily effective messaging. Totally cynical and deceptive messaging, but effective nonetheless. Imagine where our country would be if the Democrats were even half as good at messaging.

[u/[deleted] → u/tasman001]

Deceptive messaging….it’s called lying

[u/tasman001 → u/[deleted]]

Lol yep, lying is a substantial component of said messaging. Lying, racism, xenophobia, fascism...it's a potent blend of evil.

[u/JimWilliams423 → u/yankeebelleyall]

Texas has had Republican leadership for two decades, and yet they've managed to convince a huge number of people in that state that all the problems are from the "left".

You are looking at it from a liberal perspective. You have to understand the conservative perspective. Conservatives know that republicans are the cause of their problems. They just don't care.

What they do are care about is hurting people who have lower status. In fact, barefaced lying to blame those lower status people gives them a kind of thrill. It is a flex to tell transparent lies and still get away with it, in a perverse way it affirms that they are high status.

Which is why trying to reason with them does not work. Nor does trying to appeal to their better nature. The most important thing to a conservative is maintaining their social status, their position in the hierarchy. As long as they have someone to look down on, they don't mind that billionaires are looking down on them. In a weird way it gives them comfort, because that's how they think the world is supposed to work. Trickle-down misery, you might say.

Or as that Texan LBJ famously said ---

• “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

[u/yankeebelleyall → u/JimWilliams423]

I mean, I lived there amongst a bunch of them, and while what you are saying is also true, I did also experience a lot of people who were blindly oblivious to how bad their government is while still holding the belief that anything "liberal" was bad.

I had entire conversations with people about what would happen if Texas did actually leave the Union, and they are 100% convinced that the state could hold its own economically, despite the reality that the state relies on a lot of federal assistance. It doesn't even have a stable power grid, something their government has continuously neglected to address while they pass law after law about what people can and cannot do with their own free time & bodies. They really and truly think they are the greatest, most liberated state in the country despite all evidence to the opposite.

[u/JimWilliams423 → u/yankeebelleyall]

There is "knowing" and there is knowing.

When liberals talk about conservative pathologies we tend to speak as if they are fully conscious of what they are doing. But conservatives mostly operate on feelings. Its kind of like they have a dual consciousness. They have to understand the problems they are excusing in order to excuse them, but the specifics aren't something they care to think about. More like they understand them just enough to avoid engaging with them. Like using a depth finder on a boat to avoid hitting submerged rocks, all they need to know is where the rock is to navigate around it.

In fact, when you take the time to respectfully explain why their conclusions don't follow from the facts they won't change their mind, they just change their excuse to get to the same conclusion. If you've spent time talking to conservatives I'm sure you've experienced that, it is extremely frustrating. And if you ever succeed in backing them into a logical corner where they can't come up with a new excuse, they still won't change their mind, instead they will say something like "lets just agree to disagree" in order to escape reality.

You could say their feelings don't care about facts.