The last couple years, especially, but there always seems to be some stupid fucking pop culture “thing” that American conservatives just universally latch onto. I’m not talking about them complaining about BLM or CRT, which I at least understand why they’re complaining about, but it seems that every few months there’s some IMMENSE outrage over something stupid like the plastic potato’s implied gender or stopping the print of some Dr. Seuss books no one was buying or Aunt Jemima or now a fictional character claiming to receive a COVID vaccine. There always seems to be some cultural lightning rod for conservative outrage that NEEDS to exist, no matter how frivolous or stupid the concerns are. Why is this? Why do American (though I could imagine conservatives elsewhere do the same, I’m just speaking from experience) conservatives feel the need to latch onto and be offended by SOMETHING?
so they don’t start thinking as to why they don’t have healthcare
Feel free to ask the guys pissing and shitting themselves in apoplectic rage over in the thread about pumpkin spice lattes.
- Culture War mobilizes conservative rank-and-file to do political things
- Conservative leaders have absolutely nothing to offer the American people policy-wise besides perpetual outrage
- Conservatives are pissbabies who are basically just Birchers who react angrily to whatever they see on TV
This isn’t new, it just intensifies over and over again because the Culture War is inherently unwinnable, they get angrier and angrier about how they aren’t winning it, and it’s that way by design because a perpetual martyrdom complex is intrinsic to American evangelical Protestantism and continuously keeps the rubes motivated.
I’m in my late 30s and it’s been going on since I was a little kid (and before then too). It’s remarkable how the lyrics are a little different each time but the song is exactly the same. I posted something I distinctly remember in the news. It’s from the mid 90s (cw: homophobia). The moral panic here is that an openly gay teacher was teaching kids. That’s it, that’s what they were upset about. When they can no longer maintain one outrage due to public opinion, they just move on to the next one.
