As Congress considers changes to the Medicaid program as part of the budget debate, relatively few (17%) in the public say they want to see a reduction in Medicaid spending, with larger shares saying they want spending to stay about the same (40%) or increase (42%), a new KFF Health Tracking Poll finds. Support for…More
Most Support Adding Work Requirements to Medicaid, but Views Shift with Arguments Made for and Against
It will have to get really bad before people actually say it out loud. There are probably already a significant number of people who are thinking it, but to actually admit they were wrong or shortsighted?
The American conservative machine is built on always doubling down, never admitting you’re wrong, never conceding, and never expressing doubts. Admitting you’re wrong is “losing.” They might vote in accordance with the belief that they were wrong (though more likely they’ll just stay home), but they won’t say it out loud.
This makes more sense when you look at conservatives as a whole. They’re by far the largest consumers of sports, sports betting, and are hyper-competitive - they’ll do anything to win.
Just go to any youth sports event and just observe who is doing what. The parents that are doing nothing but positive cheering for their team (and even congratulating the other team on a genuinely good play) look like your stereotypical NPR mom/dad. The ones screaming, coaching from the sidelines, complaining the “ref is fucking us”, are all the same stereotypical conservatives sporting a goatee, karen cut, oakleys, and tacticool tshirts promoting warrior mentality.
For them, loss is weakness. Aggression is strength. The only way they’ll even come close to admitting they fucked up is couching in a way that lets them save face. They’ll blame someone or something else. Never themselves.
You can’t lose if you never accept the final score.
Yeah, having grown up in a very deep-red area of a deep-red state, and the moving to a blue dot in that state, I have seen this in both majority and minority positions: and where it’s the minority, I will say that the conservatives are much quieter about needing to “win.” Maybe they’re quietly seething, but they aren’t shouting as often.
But there’s something even more insidious that’s cropped up more recently, which wasn’t there when I was a kid: not only do “they” have to win, but someone else has to lose. It went from the assertion that the world was a zero-sum game to the almost-gleeful insistence that it be one. In your youth sports example, you can see it in the fact that they’re still shouting at the refs even when their team is winning handily. “It’s not just our right to win, but they have to lose and be stomped into the dirt.” Basically, the bullies got older, were told that they were actually being bullied, and became MAGAs.
It will have to get really bad before people actually say it out loud. There are probably already a significant number of people who are thinking it, but to actually admit they were wrong or shortsighted?
The American conservative machine is built on always doubling down, never admitting you’re wrong, never conceding, and never expressing doubts. Admitting you’re wrong is “losing.” They might vote in accordance with the belief that they were wrong (though more likely they’ll just stay home), but they won’t say it out loud.
This makes more sense when you look at conservatives as a whole. They’re by far the largest consumers of sports, sports betting, and are hyper-competitive - they’ll do anything to win.
Just go to any youth sports event and just observe who is doing what. The parents that are doing nothing but positive cheering for their team (and even congratulating the other team on a genuinely good play) look like your stereotypical NPR mom/dad. The ones screaming, coaching from the sidelines, complaining the “ref is fucking us”, are all the same stereotypical conservatives sporting a goatee, karen cut, oakleys, and tacticool tshirts promoting warrior mentality.
For them, loss is weakness. Aggression is strength. The only way they’ll even come close to admitting they fucked up is couching in a way that lets them save face. They’ll blame someone or something else. Never themselves.
You can’t lose if you never accept the final score.
Yeah, having grown up in a very deep-red area of a deep-red state, and the moving to a blue dot in that state, I have seen this in both majority and minority positions: and where it’s the minority, I will say that the conservatives are much quieter about needing to “win.” Maybe they’re quietly seething, but they aren’t shouting as often.
But there’s something even more insidious that’s cropped up more recently, which wasn’t there when I was a kid: not only do “they” have to win, but someone else has to lose. It went from the assertion that the world was a zero-sum game to the almost-gleeful insistence that it be one. In your youth sports example, you can see it in the fact that they’re still shouting at the refs even when their team is winning handily. “It’s not just our right to win, but they have to lose and be stomped into the dirt.” Basically, the bullies got older, were told that they were actually being bullied, and became MAGAs.