So I grew up in a modest working-class household. I didn’t feel like I lacked anything, but I also wasn’t spoiled. Like most Americans I was witness to my parents struggling financially from time to time. Point is that when you grow up that way, and that’s the only world that you know, you don’t feel privileged.
Now politics is my career, and given how I grew up I naturally entered as a conservative. I think conservatism was initially a way for me to say that life is hard for everyone and no one deserves special treatment. And this definitely had a bit of racially motivated bitterness behind it. When this is your mindset, socialism just looks like a bunch of forms of special treatment. And I mean socialism basically as I understood it then which was big government social programs. So regardless of any flaws in conservatism or neo-conservatism as a philosophy you just can’t wrap your head around social welfare programs. Unrecognized cognitive dissonance just drives you right back. You don’t even know because you can’t let yourself admit that things like bitterness and jealousy and ignorance are behind your positions.
And this is where right-wing media and politicians keep pushing the button. Play right into the fear that they don’t even realize they have, and you’ll have them in your corner.
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