Mildly Interesting

A whole lot of words to say, simply. They don't believe in democracy, they believe in god, and anyone who they identify as different, should be cast out, and their rights stripped. They're racist, uneducated, ruled by fear, and are easily manipulated by people stoking emotional appeals to fight against anyone who is a different race, of a different opinion, or is educated past high school.

You cannot get through to people who validate their claims by faith. You can't logic someone out of an opinion they didn't use logic to arrive at. They are lost, forever. Only through vast investments into our societies education can counter act this, and thus it is something every conservative politician rails against. This is why they refuse to expand public education, and demonize teachers, teachers unions, and the cost of education in all it's forms.

Case-in-point

I mean I have been saying for 25 years that most US conservatives fundamentally do not believe in democracy. I know because I was raised as one.

So have others said this, such as arch neocon David Frum:

Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.

This study relies on ethnographic research sustained immersion in people's homes, lives, and communities through extensive interviews, observations, participation, and relationship-building.

Key findings

Most consider America a constitutional republic, not a democracy, and view this distinction as fundamental rather than semantic.

Sarah put this directly, "I don't value democracy, because we wouldn't be heard. Wyoming's the smallest state on the map, right? If we were a democracy, then we wouldn't have a voice.".

Kyle (mid 20s, WY), a delivery driver, extends the logic: "Every single small town would be outvoted by every single city. We wouldn't be able to feed people cows. We'd all be eating seaweed."

Patricia (50s, SC) offered up a common conservative metaphor: "Democracy is two wolves and one sheep deciding who's for dinner. I hate that word [democracy]. I mostly hate it when people who think they are educated about our style of government use it to say, 'Save our democracy.' No, there's no democracy here. Praise God. If there were then California and New York would make all of our electoral choices."

• Several participants struggled to answer when asked whether Democrats had morality, and a few said directly that they did not. Individual Democrats were sometimes extended the benefit of the doubt, more commonly characterized as misled than evil

• Participants believe the slide toward “too much democracy” is well underway. They see a coordinated effort to lock in a permanent left-leaning majority: the creeping elimination of the Senate filibuster, and most viscerally, what they believe is a deliberate reengineering of the american electorate itself (e.g. voter rolls they claim are kept full of dead people and non-citizens, and an immigration policy they read as a pipeline to Democratic votes).

Patricia (50s, SC) jumps immediately to themes of corruption when prompted with the word: "elections." "We have known for decades that there is corruption within the registration system," she says. "The Biden administration gave social security numbers to 3 million different illegal aliens who then got voter registration cards."

• For most participants, Faith is the foundational pillar of their moral foundation.

They hold God as the ultimate authority and lone source of a single, objective truth sitting above the Constitution, democratic consensus, and public opinion. Rights, in the view of many of our participants, are not granted by the government; the government merely recognizes rights that are already God-given.

Patricia (50s, SC), an eighth-generation Greenvillian, traces this idea directly to the country's founding: "Our framers Thomas Jefferson specifically said this style of government only operates well within a faith-based community. When you remove faith and faith-thinking people operating within those systems, you got a problem. Mayday!"

• In all three counties, social norms are tightening

The cost of political expression has risen, and public disagreement has come to feel like a character trial. Terms like "RINO" - Republican In Name Only "liberal" and "Marxist" are now regularly deployed as insults by conservatives to refer to other conservatives.

More moderate conservatives in our felt censored and alienated, highlighting how the RINO label collapses any partial disagreement into total moral failure. For example, when Matthew (40s, SC) and his pregnant wife chose distanced seating at their church during the pandemic, their congregation labeled them liberals

The public norm in all three counties is increasingly political silence; the private reality is sorting, figuring out who can be trusted to say what can't be said openly.

Linda (late 30s, SC) describes Greenville politics as "everywhere, nowhere" - yard signs combine with a selective silence in a culture where open confrontation increasingly carries real social and reputational costs

• The church is stepping in as a primary civic institution

How politics is messaged inside these congregations varies widely. Some participants told us their church leaders had endorsed specific candidates or positions directly from the pulpit. Others told us their church discouraged any political talk within the congregation.

When we attended a Sunday service with Matthew (40s, SC) and his family a 500+ person congregation gathered in a modern, recently-renovated building - we observed his pastor avoiding overt political or partisan messaging while building a narrative that Christianity is under threat, both abroad and at home.

Couched in between prayers for a sick parent, a newborn, and a high schooler waiting on a college decision, we prayed for persecuted Christians in Libya, for a local crisis pregnancy center, and for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to rule "constitutionally," and not be swayed by worldly, non-Christian judgment.