Reality is a team sport, to some people.

What’s true today is handed down by people above you, and if they belong above you, they must be better than you. In every way. There’s only the one metric. People in this mindset don’t understand expertise as anything more than sounding real smart.

Someone clever can’t just be wrong, since that would require an objective means to evaluate claims. That is not what claims are for, in this tribal worldview. They can only be accepted or rejected based on interpersonal trust.

And they think that’s all you’re doing, because they think that’s all there is.

This is why every argument you have with these people is frustrating nonsense. They don’t have a stable set of beliefs you can interact with. They have slogans. They will freely shuffle through them to win the conversation by finding plausible excuses. Consistency means less than nothing. It’s an obstacle to making good moves in this stupid word game.

This is what defines conservatism. This is all there is to conservatism. It’s the Oops All Hierarchy worldview. There is no other force in that moral universe. They can claim high-minded ideals, but they’ll flit between contradictory bullshit with zero self-recognition. So either they’re somehow champions of individual rights while viciously enforcing tradition and also the Confederate-loving party of Lincoln and also free-speech-loving censorship nannies and also stalwart capitalist bailout-sucking union-busters or else they’re just fucking lying. They’re just… shuffling cards.

The only reliable predictor of what they’ll say is whether they’re talking about the ingroup or the outgroup. They will make whatever mouth noises protect and elevate the ingroup. They will make whatever mouth noises attack and denigrate the outgroup.

I understand why they don’t see this division. What the hell is our excuse?