They're totally submerged in a system and media environment that gives them no other viable alternatives.
As the liberals see it: The debate is between liberals and conservatives. The most left wing position is a social democracy like the Scandinavian countries. That's the absolute limit of the left. Anything further isn't really "left" due to horseshoe theory, it's just various types of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Liberals care about the people inside the country and care about freedom but also want some government intervention (how much is necessary can be arbitrarily increased or decreased depending on what the media tells them the situation is like).
Liberals see conservatism - as a set of political ideas - as something that is different, but not foreign to their own belief system - you are supposed to be able to have a friendly, logical debate over these things as if things like healthcare expenditure and the military aren't things that actively kill people every single day. To them, the ideal conservatives don't want fascism, but as of 2016 they've had their minds melted by the increased influence of what they see as the completely uneducated hicks in the flyover states wresting a form of control over the Republican party. Why should they, who didn't even go to college, have any impact at all on the political system? They deserve all the poverty and immiseration they get for voting for their own oppressors in the form of the Republicans, and not their degree-bespeckled, means-testing saviors in the form of the Democrats! So they desperately cling to the idea that the "reasonable" Republicans who just a couple decades ago they hated can wrest control back of the party (e.g. the Lincoln Foundation) so they can start having reasonable, logical debates once again while the homeless die, opioids continue to ravage large swathes of the country, and foreigners get dronestriked.
Given that the treats keep flowing inwards from the global south and conditions remain fine - not necessarily good, but nothing worth considering actually risking your career over, much less your freedom, much less your life - there's no reason not to believe in this paradigm. They've been insulated from the consequences of the American lifestyle on poorer areas of their country and the rest of the world generally for decades. It's all just an idealist charade insulated from the rest of material reality to preoccupy and entertain people. If you become a "political" person, that rarely means that you go out and do stuff in the real world, it just means that you attempt to remember what you learned in history/political classes, read a few autobiographies, and go and argue with other people online about things to make yourself feel better about how meaningless your life is and burn off any excess steam that might have been put into real-world endeavours if they weren't allowed to be blasted out into the void of the internet. Purely affectation.
~edited to better describe the liberal view of conservatism
That's a good point. I think my initial idea was that the idea of conservatism is reasonable, just a different "vein" of thought that you can have friendly disagreements with and agreements with, rather than politics being the life-and-death contest between different classes that it really is in material reality, but then didn't really express that well. I'll edit to better convey it.
Great concise explanation. I know it's 2 full paragraphs long, but that's about as concise you can get it without it being totally misconstrued (I'm sure someone would misconstrue it anyway)
They're totally submerged in a system and media environment that gives them no other viable alternatives.
As the liberals see it: The debate is between liberals and conservatives. The most left wing position is a social democracy like the Scandinavian countries. That's the absolute limit of the left. Anything further isn't really "left" due to horseshoe theory, it's just various types of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Liberals care about the people inside the country and care about freedom but also want some government intervention (how much is necessary can be arbitrarily increased or decreased depending on what the media tells them the situation is like).
Liberals see conservatism - as a set of political ideas - as something that is different, but not foreign to their own belief system - you are supposed to be able to have a friendly, logical debate over these things as if things like healthcare expenditure and the military aren't things that actively kill people every single day. To them, the ideal conservatives don't want fascism, but as of 2016 they've had their minds melted by the increased influence of what they see as the completely uneducated hicks in the flyover states wresting a form of control over the Republican party. Why should they, who didn't even go to college, have any impact at all on the political system? They deserve all the poverty and immiseration they get for voting for their own oppressors in the form of the Republicans, and not their degree-bespeckled, means-testing saviors in the form of the Democrats! So they desperately cling to the idea that the "reasonable" Republicans who just a couple decades ago they hated can wrest control back of the party (e.g. the Lincoln Foundation) so they can start having reasonable, logical debates once again while the homeless die, opioids continue to ravage large swathes of the country, and foreigners get dronestriked.
Given that the treats keep flowing inwards from the global south and conditions remain fine - not necessarily good, but nothing worth considering actually risking your career over, much less your freedom, much less your life - there's no reason not to believe in this paradigm. They've been insulated from the consequences of the American lifestyle on poorer areas of their country and the rest of the world generally for decades. It's all just an idealist charade insulated from the rest of material reality to preoccupy and entertain people. If you become a "political" person, that rarely means that you go out and do stuff in the real world, it just means that you attempt to remember what you learned in history/political classes, read a few autobiographies, and go and argue with other people online about things to make yourself feel better about how meaningless your life is and burn off any excess steam that might have been put into real-world endeavours if they weren't allowed to be blasted out into the void of the internet. Purely affectation.
~edited to better describe the liberal view of conservatism
Disagree with this part, liberals see most conservatives as racist, uneducated hicks.
That's a good point. I think my initial idea was that the idea of conservatism is reasonable, just a different "vein" of thought that you can have friendly disagreements with and agreements with, rather than politics being the life-and-death contest between different classes that it really is in material reality, but then didn't really express that well. I'll edit to better convey it.
Great concise explanation. I know it's 2 full paragraphs long, but that's about as concise you can get it without it being totally misconstrued (I'm sure someone would misconstrue it anyway)