May 9, 2021

Conservatives are social engineers. They use social engineering as their method of logic.

An economic analysis with its tax blather is not an economic analysis to a conservative; it's social engineering. Conservatives don't evaluate the dollars and taxes for what dollars and taxes do; they evaluate the sociology surrounding the subject.

Cutting food stamps is not about food stamps; it's about making Eagle Scouts out of the lower classes. Food stamp recipients are supposed to be out looking for work, which means social engineering.

At this time, state government conservatives are refusing to use federally appropriated money for unemployment benefits, because they claim businesses are having difficulty getting enough workers, so hardship is supposed to force workers to seek employment.

The logic doesn't work the way conservatives claim, because there are a lot of reasons why businesses have a shortage of work applicants. The main reason is because those unfilled jobs are mostly minimum wage jobs, where the income did not keep up with expenses, particularly increased housing costs. A worker can't go to work at a job that doesn't pay living expenses. That problem existed before the pandemic, as businesses were putting up help-wanted signs right and left for two years before the pandemic. It means robbing the unemployed persons is not going to fix the problem.

In other words, conservatives use indirect logic. They don't directly address the issues at hand; they go off onto tangential side issues. There is always a social logic which requires absurd and oppressive results. The social logic is supposedly aligned upon family values and moral character.

What conservatives are missing is that they are not in any position to be social engineers. They don't properly study or represent the social issues that they argue. On top of that, the experts who do study those subjects do not use that information to disrupt and design peoples' lives. Knowledge is not that imposing. Knowledge is supposed to give people freedom through increased choices. But conservatives are forever trying to take away that freedom by making peoples' choices for them.

That's why liberals talk about opportunities instead of personal intrusions. Liberals used to define liberalism as promoting equal opportunity, until conservatives took over the world in 1981 and did the defining of liberalism in other terms. Since then, liberals needed to hide their liberalism, unless they were so peripheral that they had nothing to lose in being scandalized by conservatives for being liberals.

Opportunity means people make their own choices. Government is supposed to be in the opportunity business. It is supposed to be giving people more choices instead of taking away their choices.

So-called helicopter money does that. Helicopter money is what conservatives have been calling social assistance. Giving people money allows them the opportunities to make their own choices about their lives.

But conservatives are in the business of placing restrictions on peoples' lives. They don't use government programs to increase opportunities; they use government programs to push people around.

Such is the nature of the conservatives' meddling in every issue they encounter. They are totally incapable of properly evaluating a situation, because they have never studied the subject matter and are not in contact with the issues. All they are doing is meddling. Conservatives use meddling as a harassment tactic.