Telling a conservative they're being hypocritical is like telling them they're violating Sharia Law. They do not care, and they might even take pride in it. The concept of operating according to a set of principles or a standard of morality is completely foreign to conservatives, and they think other people are stupid for worrying about that crap. Anything that increases their rank in society (whether real or perceived) is good. Anything that harms others is good.
https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/its-not-hypocrisy-youre-j...
> Kennedy responded. “That is not happening in my agency. We don’t do that. It’s done, we think, by DARPA,” he said, referring to the Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. “And a lot of it now is coming out of the jet fuel. You know, those materials are put in jet fuel. I’m going to do everything in my power to stop it.”
Enabled on a show by fucking Dr Phil.
It's not an original thought - but we are really, truly in a fucking idiocracy.
Apologies for my language, but how we ever got to this point...
Source: https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2025/what-is-darpa-str...
That list bit is the encouraging part - only 30% of American adults voted for Trump in 2024. The discouraging part is the majority of the remaining 70% couldn't be bothered to vote, which is idiotic in and of itself.
These views are usually opposed, but people who are not philosophically grounded might flit between them without realizing.
The traditional Republican definition of "small government" has been something like Norquist's: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
Until Trump, I don't think there had been any Republican support for the "few people with a lot of authority and no oversight" definition. Now it seems pretty widespread, though.
Well this will make China and Europe real happy since this will speed up the US brain drain. Off to obscurity the US goes.
We will be like Ireland was in the 70s, people go to Univ. then leave Ireland for better pastures. Now people in the US will be begging to go to Ireland, I know a couple of Irish people who came to the US in the 80s, now they are back home.
mylons•8mo ago
palmotea•8mo ago
IIRC, RFK is not a small-government conservative at all. He's a big-government liberal vaccine crank. He's the HHS secretary not for any kind of conservative ideological affinity, but because of a quid-pro-quo for throwing is support behind Trump during the election.
The Trump administration is weird.
mylons•8mo ago
taylodl•8mo ago
selimthegrim•8mo ago