Conservatives scared of losing their jobs speak out
Is the only Qanon we need to fear the fear of Qanon itself?
All of these are emails collected in the last week from you, the best audience in the world of newsletters.
Qanon
I hear way more about people fretting about what Q people believe than anyone that actually believes in it talking about it. CNN and MSNBC give way more coverage to Q than any of the conservative/libertarian outlets and pundits that I watch.
I would bet that the amount of people buying into Q are people that found out about it by people raising alarms about it. It has a lot of the same feeling as the 9/11 truthers from the mid 2000’s, with the only difference being that they are getting talked about in mainstream outlets every day.
There are always people buying into crazy trash but this satanic panic over Q is giving them the Streisand Effect that will grow it. The fear of Q people will give us the Patriot Act 2.0, and I’m sure an expansion of power for “the deep state” I’m sure will make people that believe in Q realize they were wrong about the whole thing. - JAKE
COVID restrictions
I'm getting my second Pfizer shot tomorrow. Wife has already had both shots. Immunosuppressed Daughter is waiting her turn.
It's going to be a while before we're comfortable eating in a restaurant, going to a movie or to a baseball game, even when we've all been vaccinated.
But I'll feel a lot better about going back to work, which appears likely to happen in the near future. And actually going into the store to pick out my own bunch of bananas. - GARY
For the people who are afraid of Texas and other states removing restrictions, a few things to keep in mind;
They aren't telling people that they can't wear masks. They just won't ticket people who decide not to.
They aren't telling businesses that they have to open at 100%, they just won't ticket businesses if they decide to.
They aren't telling you that you have to shop at "non essential" businesses, they just won't ticket you if you decide to.
They aren't telling immunocompromised people to expose themselves to danger, they are just letting people assess their own risk factors.
You have the freedom to stay masked up, quarantined in your home, only shop the bare minimum necessary for life, stay away from all friends and family, whatever you need to do to feel safe.
If only we had other states that weren't in lockdown, so we could see how they did, and see if lockdowns actually made a difference.
I guess we could settle for looking at the 15 states that didn't have heavy restrictions, and that are not doing worse than the ones that turned into police states.
In fact the majority of them seem to be doing quite a bit better than the states that turned into police states infection wise, and way better economy wise.
And that's not just because their governors didn't go against all the science and put sick people into nursing homes with the most at risk and immunocompromised citizens. - ANDY
The reasonable push back on this IMO is that there is a baseline level of behavior that the government can enforce. Outside of rabid folks on Twitter I didn’t hear many people truly pushing for maskless people to get ticketed. But mask mandates were popular in that it showed the government also agreed that masks are important.
However, that shows cleavage in our understanding of governmental power. Is the emphasis on masks worth the actual weight of the government action?
Conservatives Who Don’t Talk To Pollsters Because They Don’t Talk To Anyone About Politics Because They Are Afraid It Will Affect Their Livelihoods
I used to participate in polls frequently. I believe I only participated in one poll this cycle and turned down numerous others. My main reason for not participating is a dislike of polling many polling organizations. I don't want to provide them with my little nugget of data. Although I'm sure by declining I provide them with a usable piece of data. I don't believe I would lose my job over my political views. However, I don't want to find out and have been pretty quiet politically in recent years.
I'm just your average PX3, DTNS, No Agenda, Scheer Intelligence, TWiT, Left Right and Center, Megyn Kelly, sports talk (lots), .... podcast listener type. I voted Trump in 2016, skipped prez selection this time. Straight line R down ticket. I live in Iowa where republicans significantly outdid the polling. Republicans Ernst, Hinson, and Miller-Meeks were significantly down in the polls, all won. I wasn't surprised about Ernst winning but was pretty shocked we flipped the two house seats. Hinson won pretty comfortably. Miller-Meeks won by 6 votes in the long time D district that includes lefty Iowa City. -Master of Science in Electrical Engineering
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I have a PhD and work in academia and would be nuts to be open about being a conservative at work. I'm not concerned about free market views or skepticism on the minimum wage- but losing my job over being prolife and other cultural issues. - PhD
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I am a GIS analyst for a large engineering and consulting firm. I know that my political beliefs are at odds with the large majority of my coworkers (at least in my department), so I am very selective in when and with whom I discuss politics. The longer I am here, and the more important I am to some of our projects, the more comfortable I am with having a differing opinion, but it can still suck if no one wants to hang out with you when everyone goes out for happy hour, so I try to keep away from politics, and when it comes up, I pick my battles. I suspect that I am not alone in my beliefs, but I am pretty sure I'm in the minority.
Occasionally, my beliefs come into play in the work we do. For example, when we are working on a roadway project, I try to make sure my colleagues remember the property owners who are having a portion of their land taken, rather than just focusing on the benefits of the project to the rest of the community. As a general rule, however, I try to keep my beliefs separate from my workplace because I know more liberals who would cut people out of their social circle for having different views, than conservatives or libertarians who would do the same. - Geographic Information Systems Analyst
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Personally, I work in the tech sector in town, and have supported the Republican party since I entered the majority. I wasn't a fan of Trump on a personal level, but was overall happy with a lot of the outcomes he achieved (populist trade restrictions notwithstanding). I would talk with several people at my job about politics, and never felt comfortable voicing my position on the issues. I'd join in the "orange man bad" jokes everyone would lev. Between public slack channels at work and our company leadership routinely weighing in towards the Anti-Trump side, there was / is a clear hostile environment towards any right-leaning supporters. - Tech worker
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The turning point for me was in 2014 when I needed to stop being a private account and go more public as an author. With all the ridiculous counter-posting and post scumming people were doing to my stuff, I had to just stop. Sometime around the same time, my flight chief (section supervisor) from my work (USAF active duty in a classified world) pulled me aside and told me some opinion I had shared was highly inappropriate and I needed to think twice and three times about the things I chose to share publicly. I don't remember the specifics, but his issue was with the conservative points it was making. He made it very clear my leadership was watching. Previously, I had scrubbed any mention of me being in the AF from my FB. Photos of me in a uniform got hidden or taken down. I removed all the details that could show it. I did it for OPSEC reasons. But I remember telling him then that he could go look and notice I don't show anywhere on my FB that I'm in the USAF. That nobody would equate my opinions with me endorsing things as a member of the USAF. He nodded and walked away, but I never felt comfortable again posting things.
Since then, I just don't do it if I can avoid it. - Air Force / Masters in History
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Regarding conservatives fearing losing their jobs I have two thoughts:
I work at a university, non-teaching so they don't ask about my affiliations, but it has become normal for applicants to be asked how they will uphold various tenets of what we may call progressive thought: how do you seek to broaden your curriculum outside standard western canon, which BIPOC texts will you include, how does diversity strengthen us and how will you create a space for it in your classroom etc. So it isn't crazy that not only is conservative thought being pushed out, but they are in many cases saying if you don't believe in our stuff hard enough you're not even a good applicant.
My wife is in a graduate program. Some students started a private discord, found that the professor had made some conservative jokes on his Facebook (not funny jokes, but not Nazi propaganda either,) and were openly discussing sending it to the dean as a ploy to get him fired because they thought he was boring in lectures. As far as I know they didn't and it was nothing more than shit talking from disgruntled students, but it at least shows that people think conservative views can be used against someone like a weapon for trivial reasons.
- University Employee
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And a word from the other side….
I work at the parent company for one of the flagship "liberal MSM" outlets conservatives are always complaining about, so if any workplace was going to show liberal bias this would be it. I've had to sit through more white male conservatives complaining in diversity training classes than I have any marginalized people. I know a man who would constantly bring up his support of Trump at work, even around or to his black female boss. Years later the boss has been forced out of the company and the Trump supporter has only ascended, and that's just one of many examples. The only time I've ever seen anything close to repercussions was when people were making actual racist jokes involving racial slurs, and that didn't even directly result in firing. In my experience so-called liberal companies are always very deferential to conservatives. - RICHARD
Based the volume of emails I got from closet conservatives (when I know my audience is not majority conservative) I would say your experience might be specific. But who knows, maybe there is no bias toward conservatives after all and the real issue is REVERSE bias.