Conservatives are Dying
By T‑Paine
Published: 01-28-2026
In my experience, there are two types of conservatives:
The first type are the obvious ones, they made a lot of money at the peak of the financial boom of the 80s and 90s (whether they're millionaires, multi-millionaires or billionaires doesn't matter, they amassed a great deal of wealth) and they vote for the candidate who promises the lowest tax rate for them, the most protections for their assets, and will encourage wealth growth via corporate subsidies, incentives, and breaks. This is evil in its purest, be damned what policy or people get in the way, line go up.
These fuckers are your enemy until they've lost every last penny, and even then they may still fight you to the bitter end if they think it'll make them money. I flinch to even refer to them as "people" any more. The fascism is always brought about to satisfy these fuckers: the elite families in Italy, the bankers industrialists in Germany, military and imperial leaders in Japan. Fascism is always the end result of conservative capitalists who will amass wealth at any cost.
The second type is the scared ones. The intellectually incurious ones. The ones who the first group paid a lot of money to brainwash. These are people who didn't put any value into being knowledgeable; they stopped asking big, tough questions the minute they got their high school diploma.
They do take up an interest in learning things but it tends to be things like the pure history/numeric of stuff; fighter plane designs in WWII, how many roman soldiers made up a legion, what the Knight's Templar was. They like data points, but don't trust analytics. Can probably solve a semi-complex math problem in their head but ask them to write one line of a poem and they short circuit. Could tell you how many German soldiers fought and died on the beach of Normandy but couldn't be bothered to know about the propaganda that got them there. The humanities are stripped away in their minds and history and civics become something you can quantify.
The intersection of these two groups creates a volatile, desperate feedback loop. The first group realize that the line can no longer go up through traditional market growth because they’ve already cannibalized the middle class. The second group sense the instability but lack the sociological tools to understand why their world feels smaller and more precarious. When the elite can no longer provide "the good life" to their base, they stop selling prosperity and start selling protection from ghosts.
This is where the pivot to authoritarianism becomes inevitable. Fascism is the "break glass in case of emergency" tool for the capitalist class. When the masses begin to notice that the hoarders have taken everything, the hoarders point to an "Other" (the immigrant, the academic, the marginalized) and tell the second group, "they are the reason your numbers don't add up anymore."
Comic by Denis Lushch
It is a scorched-earth policy. They are burning the institutions of democracy because those institutions, however flawed, eventually become hurdles to the immediate extraction of remaining wealth. They are like a landlord setting fire to the building for the insurance money because they know the foundation is rotting.
Conservatives are "dying" not because they lack power, they have plenty of it, but because they have run out of future. An ideology built entirely on looking backward and consolidating what remains has no way to innovate or solve the looming crises of the 21st century.
They are lashing out because they are losing the culture, the youth, and the long-term economic argument. This isn't the beginning of a thousand-year Reich; it’s the frantic, violent thrashing of a beast that knows the light is fading. The danger, of course, is that a dying beast is often at its most lethal right before the end. We aren't just witnessing a political shift; we are witnessing the terminal stage of a century-long ego trip.
The question for the rest of us isn't whether they will fail, they are already failing, but how much they’ll be allowed to break on their way out.
If the conservative movement were an honest business, it would have filed for bankruptcy decades ago. They aren't winning the argument; they’re just rigging the scoreboard. The hoarders know that the only way to maintain a minority rule over an increasingly hostile population is to lean on a series of historical "cheat codes" that bypass the will of the people.
Consider the reality: if we lived in a true "one person, one vote" democracy, the modern GOP would be a footnote. They are currently an occupying force governing without a popular mandate. Through the surgical weaponization of gerrymandering, they’ve turned red states into laboratories of minority rule, "cracking" and "packing" voter districts so effectively that they’ve rendered the ballot box decorative in half the country.
To keep the the incurious agitated and loyal, the architects have built a digital ghost army. It is much easier to feel like you’re part of a "Silent Majority" when your feed is curated by an algorithm fueled by foreign interests.
Recent investigations into the 2024 and 2025 election cycles have pulled back the curtain on the "MAGA" digital footprint. A staggering amount of the most viral, aggressive content originates from bot farms in Russia and Eastern Europe. These aren't your neighbors; they are lines of code designed to manufacture a sense of inevitable momentum. They aren't a grassroots movement; they are a sophisticated marketing campaign for a product that's expired.
This brings us to the lashing out. When a movement loses its ability to persuade, it pivots to coercion. We see this most clearly in the escalating violence of agencies like ICE. But even this is backfiring. As of early 2026, the data shows the tide has officially turned. What was once a "radical" slogan is now the pulse of the public: over 57% of Americans now believe current immigration enforcement has become a human rights disaster, with nearly half the country explicitly calling to abolish ICE.
The beast is lashing out because it is cornered. They have lost the culture, they have lost the youth, and they have lost the long-term economic argument. You can only sustain a society on "protection from ghosts" for so long before people realize the real monsters are the ones signing the checks.
Conservatives are "dying" because they have run out of future. An ideology built entirely on looking backward and consolidating what remains has no way to innovate. They cannot solve the climate crisis, they cannot solve the housing crisis, and they cannot stop the demographic shift that is rendering their worldview obsolete.
This isn't the rise of a new era; it’s the terminal stage of a political cancer. The danger, of course, is that a dying predator is at its most lethal right before the heart stops. The question for the rest of us isn't whether they will fail (the math says they already are), it’s how much they’ll be allowed to break on their way out.
If you’re a conservative reading this and you’re angry, ask yourself why.
You’re angry because, deep down, you know the hoarder conservatives (the billionaires and the lobbyists) don't actually care about your heritage, your faith, or your small town. They just need you to be angry enough at a trans teenager or a migrant worker that you don't notice they’re the ones who closed your local hospital and outsourced your cousin’s job.
You are the foot soldier in a war for a bank account you’ll never see. You’re being told that "freedom" means a lower corporate tax rate for a CEO who wouldn't let you sit in his lobby. You’re being fed a diet of "traditional values" by people who change wives like they change cars and worship nothing but the Dow Jones.
The reason the movement has gone full-fascist isn't because you're winning; it’s because the people at the top know the scam is almost up. They are looting the burning building and they’ve convinced you to stand in the doorway to keep the fire department out.
You aren't a "silent majority." You are a shrinking minority being held hostage by a digital ghost army of Russian bots and hedge-fund algorithms. You’re being used as a human shield for a dying class of hoarders who will leave you in the dirt the second you’re no longer useful.
Go ahead, share this. Call me a "commie" or a "traitor." But tonight, when the screen goes dark, ask yourself: when was the last time the people I vote for actually made my life better, and not just my neighbors' lives worse?
The line is going up, but you aren't on it. You never were.
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