Why is the Republican party so content with denying healthcare as a human right, and trying everything they can to harm people who need any sort of assistance? Like… How do they do it? How much are we talking here when we speak about tax savings for them?
Pretend I am rich? Like how much money am I getting back by Republicans kicking men off healthcare or destroying insurance for those who need it most. It must be alot right?
In order to truly understand this, you have to tear yourself away from the Republicans and start looking at conservative ideology itself.
At the core of conservative ideology is the very American idea of “pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps.” This is essentially the idea that, no matter the circumstances of one’s birth, one can achieve anything. Historically, this was a rebellion against the classism of old Europe, which was structured around a class system. So, in that context, it was a very liberal idea. The problem comes in when you start to recognize that people are not actual born on a level playing field, financially, culturally, educationally, etc. Today, the idea that everyone can “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,” foments the lie that we are all born into equal opportunities in life, which is demonstrably false.
So, the core of conservative ideology is based on an untruth, and it has never reconciled this. Conservatives thus blame disparities in achievement in society on lack of individual effort, and don’t take into account differences in opportunity by birth circumstances. As such, when they see people who haven’t done as well as others, they attribute that to personal failings rather than circumstantial inequalities. When you see all outcomes as a result of personal effort, you can dismiss bad outcomes as the result of a lack of effort, and thereby justify denying the less fortunate help under the notion that it is unfair to the more prosperous because it rewards those who didn’t try as hard with the same outcomes who had to work for them.
Conservative ideology is simply outdated and uninformed by modern sociological research.
I’ll take a step back even further, and pontificate my own point of view.
Modern conservatism, at its core, is the natural set of beliefs that well-adjusted humans have.
With this set of beliefs, a human will fit in to any society and role they end up in; will work to support, grow, and defend that society; and will create as many children as possible. This is a fairly obvious blueprint for the evolutionary fitness of an individual, and the continued existance of a society. And this explains why conservatism is such a universal phenomenon around the world - it is the expression of our natural human instincts.
It is also why conservatives always seem to have a monopoly on “common sense” - a liberal’s common sense still requires you to think. A conservative’s common sense goes straight to your gut. And it explains why conservatives are so good at working together: liberals must find an intellectual basis of agreement before they work together; conservatives already know they should work together, since they see other conservatives have their same base emotional feelings. Plus they are part of the same in-group.
modern sociological research or… basic common senses? It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you start with 10x as much money as everyone else in a game of monopoly you’re almost certainly going to win that game.