Conservatives vs progressives throughout history

[billvon 3,170]

Progressives have a long history in the US.  Progressivism in a political sense means a liberal movement that attempts to improve the human condition through social reforms.  Some examples here were the abolition of slavery, granting women the vote, legalizing interracial marriage and more recently legalizing gay marriage.  These changes are generally opposed by traditionalists, who conversely are strongly tied to conservatives. They feel that traditional social roles are better and tend to resist changes to them.

Progressives generally support technological progress as well - specifically technological progress that improves the human condition.  Vaccines, for example, which have saved millions of lives in the US alone.  Condoms, birth control and health education to prevent the spread of STD's and unintended pregnancy.  Public transit system that allow people to move around without the cost and resources of a car.  Water systems that provide safe drinking water.  Sanitary systems that process sewage and garbage to prevent epidemics.  Things like emissions controls, that regulate technological advancements like cars to reduce the harm their exhaust does.  Museums so people can easily learn about history, technology, art, ancient cultures etc.

Trump, who is now a conservtive, has been dead set against such things, calling them socialism, communism, wastes of money etc.  He is anti renewable energy, and has cancelled roughly 100 gigawatts of sorely needed new power projects in the US.  He's opposed EV's (with one exception when an EV billionaire gave him huge amounts of money) and has opposed emissions controls.  Instead he advocates for going backwards - coal power instead of renewables, fewer and later vaccines for kids, gas cars instead of EVs.  As with many conservatives, he yearns for the days when (they believe) things were simpler.  He wants tradition over progress.

Which made me think about how he would have dealt with all the technological progress in the past - each of which was opposed by the conservatives and traditionalists of the past.  Perhaps something like this - 

Trump, 1830: "This Carolina Railroad Company nonsense is . . . There's nothing wrong with horses.  Everyone loves horses.  They get the mail delivered, they take you where you want to go.  Strong, reliable, beautiful horses.  And they want to replace them with - what? - trains.   Trains, they say.  Railroads, as if you can put rails on a road.  And they run on fire.  They're on fire, all the time.  Burning up the people.  It's insane.  And they say that women can't even ride them, that their uteruses will be destroyed by the speed.  They're sick individuals, wanting to kill women like that.  I'm writing an executive order now to ban trains and save our beautiful, beautiful horses."

Trump, 1844: "Telefaffs are sick.  I know, they really want to put wires all over our beautiful country and replace the Pony Express with useless wires.  People are saying that those Morse degenerates are shooting Pony Express horses in the head, to you know, make the telefaffs more successful.  Shooting a wonderful, fast horse in the head, shooting all the horses, all the horses everywhere.  And those telefaffs use electricity.  So when the Indians pull down those wires, and a beautiful little child touches them?  No more child!  We are going to ban those dangerous things whenever some sick liberal tries to ram them through our cities near our innocent children."

Trump, 1903: "Now the liberals are pushing this airplane thing that the loony lib Orville Wright invented.  I invented that a long time ago, you know, and it didn't work.  You can prove it.  That's what they say.  My uncle was a professor at Harvard and he had Orville Wright as a student.  Orville says "I can build this thing because I believe all those progressive lies."  My uncle tried to set him straight but he was too stupid.  So we'll let other people try to build those airplanes and lose all their money; the US will be wasting zero taxpayer dollars on military airplanes and airports."

Trump, 1939: "I just received a letter from a Jew, a Jewish person - can I say that? - yes, a Jewish person.  He said he had a way to build a bomb like no one's ever seen before, a big bomb that's atomic.  Our military has all the best bombs right now.  No one has ever seen the kind of bombs that we have.  Just the best, and the power is just . . . power, that's what we have.  We don't need some Jewish loon interfering with our brave military, the best in the world.  He's an ungrateful immigrant who just wants to upset the applecart and try to make himself famous.  Is he even legal?  We'll check into that. Go back to Germany, I told him."

Trump, 1965: "So there's a government agency - ARPA - that's spending all this money.  They're wasting it, just throwing it out the window, giving it to illegal aliens.  I heard of this thing they are working on called the ARPANet that is spending tens of thousands of dollars to connect a few universities with wires to send letters and numbers and things like that.  I said, a stamp costs eleven cents!  But no, these dumb progressives want to waste your taxpayer dollars on a disgusting, useless bunch of wires to send nonsense to each other.  I have told my people to cancel all ARPA funding for anything like that."
 

[nigel99 682]

Only problem is that Trump hates animals. Seems that for English horses the feelings are mutual. 

On the other hand slaves, why are they so ungrateful? They got a free boat ride over from their shit hole countries.

[GeorgiaDon 405]

At this point I wouldn't be surprised if he orders a return to hunting whales for their oil.  Also an order to remove all those " communist" warnings on tobacco products, along with banning doctors and scientists from using the word "carcinogenic".  Why do they hate freedom loving American farmers and tobacco  companies so much?

Edited Monday at 11:32 AM by GeorgiaDon