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Comment by obpe | Hacker News Reader

I would say the opposite is true. Brokenists see America as so broken it is not worth fixing and instead should be burned down and built anew. Status quoists see America as flawed but worthy of being fixed.

On the other hand, liberals and conservatives are basically the same these days. Since the only thing I hear from either of them is how the other is your enemy, trying to destroy your way of life, grooming your children, stripping your rights, policing your speech, etc.

To be clear, I am a liberal and do think conservatives are "worse" in this regard but you would have to be pretty willfully ignorant to not see the liberals doing the same.

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Your definition ("Brokenists see America...") really helped me to understand what brokenism is.

I am a Christian who is both theologically and politically conservative, so we have divergent understandings of what an ideal America would look like. But I would think that even an impartial observer would agree with me that whatever the faults of the left and the right might be, the faults of the left are much more likely to be imposed on us inasmuch as liberals in 2023 have "control" of academia, the media, and corporate America. The extreme flank of conservatives tends to be rather marginalized -- and deservedly so.

And because of the greater cultural influence of the left, I don't see how a conservative could be a brokenist. If everything is "burned down and built anew" what arises from the ashes will not only be more liberal than what we have now, but will also lack the conservative underpinnings (such as the Constitution) that we now have. It seems to me that the conservatives only win out in cautionary dystopian novels like The Handmaid's Tale.

I am an atheist and a Canadian so we definitely share divergent thinking.

I agree the left is dominant in those areas of our culture. I think this is due to the highly concentrated populations of liberals versus the vastly spread out conservatives. And this mechanism is shown in another area of important cultural power: government. I would say liberals and conservatives are pretty equal in this consequential area. I worry about conservatives controlling our governments because I don't think they would try to compromise.

I just watched Pleasantville; another great liberal take on the conservative mindset.

Interesting theory about conservative power being diluted by being spread out geographically.

I think in history cultures tend to get more and more liberal until the society collapses. Then when something else arises in its place it is brutal and uncivilized and, I suppose, what we would call conservative. And the process starts over again.

I'll have to check out Pleasantville. Thanks for the exchange.

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