why on Earth would anyone vote for these people.

I think I know the answer to this.

When COVID-19 first started flying on airplanes around the world, and very little was yet known about it except that it was horribly lethal, the slogan that immediately began to pop up was “We're all in this together”. But that didn't last long. Instead we began to be swamped by the very opposite message: don't trust vaccines, face masks are a violation of your freedom. Conservative governments rushed to hide statistics and bully public health advocates, to prevent collective and mutually protective action. The slogan itself was quickly retired.

Solidarity requires an understanding that other people's suffering is your suffering. Or more accurately, that there isn't “my” suffering and “your” suffering. There is only suffering.

Only then can people come together and collaborate towards healing everybody's suffering. Only when I feel there is no difference between your risk of getting sick and dying a horrible death and my own does it make sense for both of us to get vaccinated and wear a face mask. There isn't “my” risk and “your” risk. You and I are at risk.

Solidarity also requires understanding that there is strength in numbers. Hence unions and blood banks and pension funds and mammoth hunts. Cooperation and coordination work.

Conservatives hate the idea of solidarity. Once when I was out door knocking during an election campaign, a man asked me “why should I pay for somebody else's child care?”. I couldn't think of how to even begin to answer the question. If he was able to understand why, he wouldn't have asked it.

If there was a conservative motto, it would be something along the lines of “We're all in this alone.” You wear a mask and get vaccinated; I'll take my chances, and you take yours, you snowflake. For the conservative mindset there is always “my” risk and “your” risk. Distinguishing between the two is freedom. Cooperation is oppression. Why should I pay for your child care. Why should I get vaccinated to protect you. In the mammoth hunt, the conservative is the one trying to pay someone else with some coloured beads to get him a big piece of mammoth.

The Donald Trumps speak to this mindset. Is it really that surprising that they have such a following?

But they didn't create the mindset, they just exploit it. Who does create the “we're all in this alone” mindset? And how do we replace it with the mindset that leads naturally to solidarity?

#Conservatism

Those ads are written by marketing specialists who know how to sell anything: cars, cruises, beauty products. It's interesting to consider exactly how they do it with politicians.

Conservative messaging is simple:

• Your life sucks. Your country is broken, your economy is broken. You are angry, and rightly so. (See also On uncertainty);

• You are a strong individual, and your life wouldn't suck if you were free;

• Individualism is good, working together with others is bad;

• Your life sucks and it's somebody else's fault: immigrants, feminists, Justin Trudeau, Democrats, woke people, unions, gatekeepers, the World Economic Forum, the United Nations, muslims;

• If you elect the conservative candidate, he will attack those responsible for the fact that, remember, your life sucks. You will be free from them, and that's all you need to enjoy life again.

Argentina's self-defined anarchocapitalist president Javier Milei has a name for all the people responsible for your misery: la casta, the caste. The good guys, people like you, are personas de bien, honorable people.

A word about the idea of individualism in conservative messaging. You are an individual all right, but a helpless one. Look at all the people that are holding you back: immigrants, feminists, etc. You can't do anything about them. (Well, you can buy a gun and pretend you're doing it to protect yourself from them, and while you're at it get yourself as big a truck as you can afford. But really, you know you're helpless, and only Donald Trump can make your life great again).

My idea of an absolute individualist is someone who goes into the desert and builds a house with his bare hands out of mud, generates electricity by pedalling on a stationary bike hooked up to a generator, and grows his own food. This is the exact opposite of the individualism preached by conservatives. You are a helpless individual, attacked from all sides. Fortunately your local anarchocapitalist defender is here to help.

Helplessness is also built into consumer technology, perhaps not altogether coincidentally since the same marketing gurus are involved there too, but that's a topic for another day.

#Conservatism #Propaganda