What is the Endgame for Conservatives & Liberals?

Do either of the squabbling sides of the political and social spectrum actually have a vision, a goal, an objective, something or somewhere to strive for? What is the endgame for their ideology?

How does America end up if conservatives dominate the future? How about if it’s the liberals? What would America look like if one or the other side pretty much got its way?

Liberals have a ready answer that they are eager to share with anyone who is interested. What liberals envision is a society that offers the optimal blend of the trio of essential American values: liberty, equality and justice for all. They want a multi-culture of integrity, intelligence, positivity, inclusion, care and concern, compassion, respect, a sustainable, not overly materialistic society, a realm of rectitude and reverence for the right things… i.e. ideals that promote the General Welfare, as stipulated in the Constitution, and ways of life that enhance the individual and families and communities but do not oppress others, plunder the planet or otherwise insult or injure a common human moral framework. America has never achieved this, but we are (or were) on that pathway. Conservatives are correct; the past century has been filled with liberal triumphs. And this nation has greatly benefitted from each of these positive changes. But we still have a long way to go. There are tough sinews of lingering corruption, injustice, inequity, stupidity and seriously damaging selfishness still built into our system. To finally reach that liberal vision will require more work, and sacrifice, including a little of one’s own “freedom,” so that everyone benefits. This liberal nation would be truly Pro Life, with everyone pitching in to ensure that no one is homeless, hungry, or without healthcare, educational opportunities and dignity.

That’s the nutshell version of the liberal dream. It is no secret. it doesn’t have to lie or cheat or distort or deceive. It accepts the founding fathers’ challenge to continually try to perfect this nation through the turmoil of constant change. It points to the future, with faith we can always do better, ever seeking that sweet blend of America’s threefold manifest: liberty, equality and justice for all. It is a nation of laws, but far more fairly administered than our current predicament. Though it reels it in, it does not destroy capitalism. It is not classic socialism, much less totalitarian communism, neither of which are, in the end, liberal whatsoever (indeed, they are classically conservative). This liberal nation is a win-win-win for everyone. There are very few, if any, abject losers in this society.

What would be the conservative dream? Or any kind of vision for the future? What is the rightwing endgame? As staunch conservers of the traditional and hideously unfair status quo, it would seem a tough challenge for conservatives to fully articulate, in polite company, what they hope this nation will become. Taking into account that conservatives fear and loathe the vast majority of Americans (not to mention foreigners), are always mad as hell at the various “liberations” that liberals are ever up to, and are always eager to conserve what they conserve— their own advantage, privilege and power — we are forced to presume that the conservative dream does not exist in the future, at all. It exists in the past.

Where in the past? Conservatives are very cagey and evasive about this. That’s why you rarely hear any conservative put forth any kind of detailed, or even loosely sketched (as above) “dream” for the nation. The stark truth is that they can’t. They know if they told the truth, the vast majority of Americans would be aghast.

Every 50 years or so, conservatives roll out the old isolationist “America First!” slogan, or something akin. The Nativist Party used it in the 1850s in a losing cause; Republican Warren Harding rode it to victory in 1920; Republican Ronald Reagan dusted it off in 1980. Donald Trump’s rally cry was a close sibling: “Make America Great AGAIN,” which has now morphed into the MAGA movement. What does this even mean? Well, if we couldn’t easily guess already, we found out during Trump’s administration and since: it means rolling back rights of both American citizens and those who — like the ancestors of most of those conservatives — are immigrants desperate for a new and better life in this once “shining city on a hill.” Rather than a call for unity, a way forward that acknowledges and respects all citizens, the clarion cry of MAGA is directed pointedly to a comparatively small audience, principally white, Christian, relatively affluent males (and any others who are foolish and selfish enough to go along for the ride). This constituency believes they have been badly mistreated over the past eighty or so years. It appears their complete ownership of society was taken away. And they want it back.

The obvious correlate to what conservatives conserve — their own advantage, privilege and power — demands that others are intentionally blocked from this very same advantage, privilege and power. Liberty, equality, justice for all is precisely what conservatives stubbornly, often viciously, oppose. Liberty is just for conservatives, themselves, not for anyone else. Equality is something they never mention because they have never believed in it, and never will. Thus, even among conservatives, there is great inequality. Only a few have real power… but the others might still cling to a sense of “winning” if they feel they are superior to most other people of the world.

True to form, we saw the Trump administration immediately go to work stripping hard-won rights from a wide variety of groups. In one of Trump’s earliest executive orders, transgender people were kicked out, en masse, of the military. This was not making America “great again.” It was classic bullying… impose your will on the weak person. The military brass was totally against it, and the nation lost key skills in the purge. It plainly harmed national security, not to mention spit at true American values. But Trump’s mob was giddy, and the template was set. Next, Trump and the MAGA agenda would target Muslims, Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, students, poor people, the rest of the LGBTQ spectrum, and women. His crowning glory was placing a hard-right political hack in Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice, ensuring that Roe v Wade would be overturned and women become, once again, chattel, controlled by the states in their most intimate and serious personal choices. What about the individual liberty and personal autonomy conservatives are always claiming for themselves? No, in official conservative dogma, that’s not for you either, ladies. If you are voting for these crusaders, you are some kind of stupid. Your daughters and grand-daughters will, rightfully, damn you for it.

Since Trump ingloriously skulked out of the White House, refusing to participate in the peaceful transfer of power and still deceitfully yammering to the hyper-gullible that the election was stolen (having spent millions of dollars searching in vain for those non-existent “fraudulent Democrat votes”), the drama has not eased up; it’s ramped up. With a lively batch of mini-Trumps angling for attention and possible political promotion, we have a full-out, unhinged, Republican jousting tournament to see who can out-Trump each other, and even Trump himself.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is furiously trying every angle: passing one of the nation’s most regressive abortion laws, passing a law that prevents schools from mentioning gay people from K-12, banning healthcare for trans people, banning books, rewriting history, manhandling public education, taking over liberal colleges, kidnapping immigrants in Texas and sending them to New England, kidnapping immigrants in Texas and shipping them to California, starting wars with Budweiser and Disney World, and warning migrant workers to stay out of Florida (to the great alarm of the agriculture, construction and tourism industries). Conservatives across America are reveling in the combative and punitive demeanor of this whirling dervish of a conservative elite (Yale and Harvard grad, Naval officer, military prosecutor, United States representative, governor, and great-grandson of Italian immigrants who would not be welcome in the conservative “dream”). This man is elite elite! It is difficult to square his stellar education and experience, the achievements he has recorded in his life, and the bountiful blessings this nation — as is — has bestowed him with the ruthless tyrant he is playing as governor and presidential candidate. Rewarded for his efforts at every turn by the “liberal” American system, DeSantis is now ready and willing to blow it all up. A Navy officer wanting to take away liberties, suppress the truth, and impose a hard-right, religious, value-system on all other Americans! Where did he go so wrong? Alas, DeSantis is but one of many brilliant minds and achievers who have committed to the conservative dark side, determined to fundamentally alter the fabric of this country, to be tilted, permanently, in their favor. DeSantis is not making this stuff up as he goes; he’s following carefully researched and scripted party talking points and strategies. He is calculating that his pathway to political greatness runs straight through this utterly toxic platform that will savagely divide the nation and hurt so many millions of citizens. But life is cheap for conservatives. His war on “Woke” means the “un-Woke” will rule. The conservative elite, about as far alienated from the teachings of Jesus of anyone in America, don’t ever worry about hurting anyone. It’s all just collateral damage, which will richly reward and empower them, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is pure conservatism. Play with it, and you play with not just fire, but a burning hurricane.

Yet, do most Americans approve of any of this? No way. Not even a majority of Republicans are real comfortable with the slap-happy sideshow that Trump, DeSantis and Texas governor Greg Abbott are conducting with reckless abandon. Still, the show goes on… with another chance at the White House and Congress in one year. But first they have to win the Republican nomination, and that requires out-crazying their rivals.

Note that the hew and cry arising like ten million sirens from the rightwing, is never about substantive issues; it’s all about wedge-issues, carefully sharpened to rile the ire of the “base.” Conservatives have no answers for any of the nation’s, or the world’s, real problems. The biggest problem humans have ever faced is Global Warming, and conservatives act as if its a liberal rom-com pairing Jane Fonda and Bernie Sanders; they have no interest in even opening their eyes to the spectacle. Besides, they are too busy bullying trans children and drag queens and kidnapping newly arrived immigrants.

Elite conservatives have long been aware that they have few ideas, really just that one — conserving their own advantage, privilege and power — though it comes in a million hues. And only a scant few individuals truly benefit from that one idea, and whatever pathetic laws and programs it seeks to enact. They know they must confuse, distort, deceive, lie, and, most importantly, divide the electorate to win elections. They cannot, under any circumstances, reveal all of their true objectives, well, until the nation has been subdued to their will.

So, with no real ideas, no answers, and no honest appraisal likely coming from conservatives as to what their “dream” or their “vision” is, or what timeframe in history they want to try to replicate with their “Make America Great AGAIN” motto, we are left to extrapolate from what they have done in the past, recently done, and are set on doing soon, to plot the course they are determined to take America.

We can map the conservative course out ourselves. We start with the knowledge that American (and world) history is replete with conservatives bullying, oppressing, rampaging, getting very violent. Remember? They’ve already started one civil war in this very country. They don’t like paying taxes. They don’t like these “socialist” programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, or any program that actually helps people (they do, however, immediately flip-flop on this issue when they need help). They don’t like regulation. They think the government should be drowned in a bathtub. They don’t like most other Americans. They don’t care about the environment. They don’t learn the lessons of history. They think liberals are terrible. But American liberals have never in their history sought to harm people; but that is something conservatives love to do. So that’s our historical baseline. It already points the way… straight to hell.

But we have more up-to-date data. Recently we have seen the shocking stripping of rights from at least 170 MILLION Americans (that’s right… women make up roughly 170 million citizens, and they have all lost rights under these conservatives… add to that the millions of non-female but also oppressed citizens and the real number soars over 200 million). More stripping of rights is sure to come! White, Christian, relatively well-off men are the only group that need not worry. That’s less than ten percent of this nation! That’s who all of this consternation and conflict is going to actually serve. If you are not in this cadre, look out. That includes you, not so well-off white men. You are being played. Women! Snap to attention. The conservative war on transgender people should alarm you greatly; it insists on a stark demarcation between women and men, and, just as in those “good old days” of conservative yore, you will not be considered equal in any way or form. This is the Patriarchy, in all of its manly arrogance and selfishness, puffing up yet again. You have enjoyed (and taken for granted) the feminist gains of the 1960s and since, but there is no way the conservative “dream” won’t crush those gains into dust. Blacks, Browns, Asians, Jews, Muslims, any non-Christians and atheists, immigrants, non-English speakers, disabled people, non-conformists of any kind… YOU are on the agenda for having your presumed “rights” ripped away from you as easily as transgender people lost the military under Trump and healthcare under DeSantis. All it will take is the snap of a conservative finger, and you will be under the thumb of self-righteous villains.

Concurrent with ripping your rights away, conservatives intend to impose their “values” upon you. Public education (long hated by conservatives) will be abolished or taken over, the curricula decided by a committee of rightwing Christian zealots. Liberal schools, colleges and institutions will be usurped and transformed into conservative bastions of indoctrination. Students will be force-fed rightwing and religious dogma. History will be rewritten to fit the conservative false narrative. The Ten Commandments will be placed in every school and public building (for all to ignore… except when punishing others). Towns, cities and states will require “faith commitments” in order to fully participate in community events and services. People deemed “incompatible” with the restored “heritage” will be forcibly exiled. The smart will get out early. Those who wait too long… well, you know what has happened under fascist conservative rule.

“No way,” you may think, “if conservatives start doing this crap, we will just vote them out!”

Alas, they are way ahead of you. A little historic note: the original American conservatives were the Tories. They didn’t believe in democracy. They fought the very forming of the United States of America. Snap back to the present: Guess what? The Tories never disappeared… every conservative in American history has been a Tory, one way or another. Modern Republicans have been busy for decades building a fool-proof electoral system. They call it “permanent minority rule.” Take a moment to think about that. Permanent. Minority. Rule. Each of those three words is outrageously un-American. That’s quite the opposite of democracy. Bingo! Yet this very thing is a major part of the Republican “vision.” Look it up.

To achieve this permanent minority rule, conservatives have been playing the long-game. This has been a dream of theirs for at least 50 years. It’s not some new MAGA thing, though Trump and his evil minions have kind of ripped the curtain off it, to the chagrin of establishment conservatives. The scheme involves taking over as many state legislative houses as possible. That accomplished, Republicans have grotesquely gerrymandered states they control. This wouldn’t matter much in places like Montana or Oklahoma, which are 80 percent red no matter which way you slice it, but it can literally steal a purple, or even blue state, like Michigan or Arizona or Texas or Florida. To make the process even more effective, Republicans concoct onerous voting rules, unfair distribution of polling places, restricted hours, even laws banning anyone bringing food or drink to those standing in lines for hours. Clearly, conservatives don’t want you to vote. The lower the turnout the better for them. They are well aware they have lost seven of the last eight presidential popular votes. So they try to make low turnout a self-fulfilling prophesy. Conservative states are now acting to take over the electoral process in blue cities! The State of Texas is doing this to the fourth largest city in America, Houston (and also wants to take over Houston’s entire public education system!) And, get this, after all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Trump and his sycophants following the 2020 election, Republicans in all the states they control are passing laws that will “legally” allow them to steal elections by throwing out election results that don’t suit them! Again, that’s not democracy; it’s a banana republic. “Perfect!,” say the conservatives.

Besides controlling state houses, which can rig districts, which serves to rig elections, which can stack the House of Representatives, the conservative permanent minority rule vision requires the take-over of the nation’s judicial system. That goal, too, is close to complete. By luck, and crook, conservatives now have solid hold on the Supreme Court, and a vast army of judges deployed across the nation. You’ve heard conservatives complain about “activist liberal” judges for ages. Well, those judges were at least generally expanding rights for citizens, true to the real spirit of Americanism. We are now in totally bizarre territory in American history with un-American, “activist conservative” judges gleefully ripping away rights, tearing down established law and willfully flaunting their political bias and moral corruption (hello, Clarence Thomas), all after lying during their Senate confirmation hearings about how they would rule. It’s a colossal betrayal of the American people, and American ideals.

Please, please, do your own due diligence. I wish I was making this up. The schemes conservatives are busy at implementing boggle the mind. It doesn’t seem possible in the nation we have all known. Yet, at this very moment, American conservatives are conspiring to take over and impose their will upon this nation. Only one thing stands in their way: liberals combined with whatever “moderates” and “conservatives” who can figure out what side they are really on.

This is the direction our map sketches out. It is crystal clear. How far back into the past conservatives want to push remains foggy. Certainly, at least to the 1950s. Goodbye women’s rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, disabled rights, environmental protections. consumer protections, and so much more “liberal progress.” Would they want to push back to the 1920s, long before Social Security or pretty much any safety net; the heyday of unregulated business and finance… and food and medicine? Or the 1880s, before the union movement and workers’ rights… and women in pants? Antebellum (pre Civil War) society still whispers sweet nothings in the ears of a wide sweep of American conservatives, particularly down South. Might they actually restore slavery? Or a king? Conservatives rarely give up on one of their trusted ways to conserve their power (it took them 50 years to revoke legal abortion); slavery is condoned in the Bible and worked great (for a few) for thousands of years… why would they not? The potential backwardness of conservatism should never be underestimated.

This, my friends, is terrifying. It’s dystopian. It’s diabolical. It’s insane. But it is thoroughly — through and through — conservative.

Do I mean to be “alarmist?” Hell yes! The facts demand every alarm bell in the nation to be loudly rung. I am saying nothing here that you can’t look up and verify. There is nothing spelled out here that is not already happening to American citizens.

This conservative “dream,” which is the road they are on, will spell the end of the United States of America as it was conceived. This will be a nightmare for the vast majority of Americans… and for the world. But it will be a great triumph for conservatism. The Dixiecrats, the Confederates, the Tories, the Inquisitors, the Crusaders, the Romans, the Persians, the Sanhedrin will all be smiling… up from hell.

It may strike you as perversely ironic that, since the Cold War, conservatives have long feared and expected an invading horde to attempt to conquer America, which they would bravely defend — as the nation’s “real Americans,” you know — with their well-stocked gun closets, thousands of rounds of ammo, survival gear and underground bunkers. No invading army has ever come, and none is ever likely to. Maybe conservatives have just gotten tired of waiting for the Red Dawn, so might as well just sack the country themselves. Rome did that to itself a few times. And who are these modern conservative elite but the corrupt Roman nobility? Who also had no real vision for the future, just that same one idea: conserving their own advantage, privilege and power, all too willing to sacrifice everyone and everything else to get it.

It turns out Abraham Lincoln was right. There will be no real threat from the outside; if America falls, it will be from inside. He, the first Republican president, was glaring straight at the conservatives of the day as these words left his lips.

The Republican Party started as the most liberal — by far — major political party in United States history. It is now quite the opposite, the most dangerous conservative party in American history, filled with Confederates, Tories, white supremacists, racists, power-drunk intellectuals, and other assorted thugs that those original Republicans swore to tame. More pathetic irony is in the Confederate flag waving at Republican events… and even inside the U.S. Capitol when invaded by… conservatives. So there’s that, which proved, again, that conservatives only believe in “law and order” or “America” when it advantages them.

You may have noticed something.

Conservatives actually have long had a vision of the future. It’s a “vision,” a “dream,” a “prophesy” that, according to a 2022 Pew survey, some forty percent of Americans (and fifty percent of Southerners) hold dear. We might as well get it on the table, as well. That would be the End Times, the Rapture, when Jesus will return… with vengeance. A select few true believers will be suddenly yanked up to heaven, given new bodies, and live in eternal happiness. Those billions left behind will be thrown into hell to suffer for eternity and the planet burned to cinder. Or, according to a more hopeful interpretation, those left behind will inherit a “new Earth” cleansed of its wickedness and ruin brought upon those “ruining the Earth” (yep, Revelation 11:18). A king, of course, will rule this new era of humanity.

The End Times are fancifully frightening, but conservative elites, including pundits and politicians, think-tank conspirators, pastors and priests don’t buy into a kernel of that hoohaw. They don’t mind profiting from it, or riding its completely unhelpful do-nothing-because-the-end-is-near attitude toward any of our many serious contemporary problems. But these people don’t fear the rapture or the reaper… there is money to be made and power to be grabbed. Let the Jesus suckers believe. They will take over, and it will be too late for anyone — liberal or conservative — to do anything about it… without extreme violence. Trump, DeSantis, Abbott, McConnell, Hawley, pretty much all Republican politicians stink of this subterfuge. They are about as “Christian” as Punxsutawney Phil. Will the true believers and the conservative militias come to our rescue? No, they are all-in on the coup.

So take your pick of conservative “dreams.” The End Times. Or Fascist Dictatorship. They both involve terror, mass death and destruction. One or both are fully endorsed by millions upon millions of American conservatives. Other millions of conservatives may be dismayed by the cruel, savage tactics, but will watch in conformist acceptance as it transpires. Just like urbane, sophisticated, advanced, modern, nice, Christian Germany did 90 years ago.

There is Another Way. As an alternative that is actually all-American, and actually values truth, love and life, there is the liberal vision. The real American Dream.

What about you? Don’t you think it’s time to, finally, pick a side, and step up for it?