Throughout the American South, there are lots of “nice” conservatives. They’ll invite you to church and be friendly towards you and maybe invite you over for dinner…and then talk about how “those people” – a group that includes you – are “destroying America” and shouldn’t be here.

The problem is “nice”. “Nice” is very different from kind, caring, or even empathetic.

I will say that in the Trump era, a lot of these folks no longer feel like they “have to” be “nice”, and so increasingly they’re just not anymore. It means that the area is more openly mean, but it’s because there’s no longer the fake veneer of “nice” to hide how cruel they really are.

Maybe in an earlier time where you could be raised conservative but be completely ignorant of politics? But now, with it all in your face, I’d think not.

I mean, if you feel empathy towards your fellow man, I don’t think you’d likely be conservative in the first place anyway.

The conservative “nice” is fake. You could follow all but one of their “rules” and they would still cast you down to hell because you dared to use a red pen instead of black pen one time 20 years ago.

There will always be something cast as “the other” because at this point rage is their only plan.

I’m a cis white guy in a Midwest state so they’ll be nice to me, but they’re still shitty people that don’t deserve anything good ever happening to them.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand what conservatism is. According to Wikipedia,

Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.

This means that the injustices inherent to these things are also fiercely protected. It’s impossible to support such a thing wholesale (or basically wholesale) and be “nice.”

Conservatives can absolutely be nice. I’m friends with many. But MAGA cannot. The nice conservatives are currently voting Democratic, Independent, third party, or not voting.

Modern Conservatism’s best face was William Buckley Jr.

He was against the Civil rights movement because he thought that States’ Rights were more important than human rights.

Theoretically, they should exist. Practically I haven’t met a single one yet.

Sure, in my experience most of them are very nice, but that’s largely because they perceive me as a member of their tribe.

I’m a nice conservative. I’m an old school traditionalist. I believe in keeping Indigenous language, culture, and land management practices alive. I’m very judgemental about people who immigrate to Australia and learn English, national language of England, but won’t learn even a word in any of our wonderful native languages.

I’m a polytheist, of the old school pre-Roman variety who believes in all gods of all religions, while worshipping a smaller pantheon. I think the newfangled religious trends are very immoral. Monotheism is a fad and won’t last. And that Paul fellow did a very bad number on Jesus’ Jewish cult. I believe in conserving the original message of Jesus, not this new prosperity gospel shit. Fuck the pope and fuck Henry 8.

Economically I think capitalism is a disaster, and we should go back to communism, which worked just fine in Australia for 65,000 years. I respect the Elders of the land on which I live, and wish to see them made leaders of an old school government, get rid of this new monarchy business.

I want to see more traditional magical practices in the sciences. It’s called two-way science and it’s very interesting. Old school wisdom has been ahead of science for a long time. For example, there are histories kept by the old people, which say a lot of the islands around Australia used to be connected to the mainland. Scientists used to think those myths weren’t true. Then they found out about the ice age. The old people already knew about the ice age.

Oh, and I don’t like tiktok.

I know a fair number of conservatives who are fiercely capitalist and are very concerned about tax policy/abortion/gun rights, but are ostensibly pro-trans, pro-queer, nonracist, often pro-immigrant etc (incidentally, the ICE stuff seems to be a wakeup call for a lot of these people). They often vote for people who actively harm those very same minorities, but they personally have no issue with those minorities. I guess they just consider their personal wedge issue more important than minorities’ lives.

Idk if that counts as “nice” by your metric, but they can be very nice on a personal level, it’s just when it comes to voting that they have very skewed priorities, in part due to the way we’ve all been propagandized to. Talking to this sort of conservative can be very frustrating because often they’ll have so much empathy one moment and then the next they’ll just fall back on some tired conservative cliché.

I have a couple of friends who i would call unwoke. They’re older and religious and say that conservative means cautious with money, but i know it’s really about abortion. I see/talk to them both often but we keep the convo to work and family topics.

I bet some people are really ignorant about their actual politics to the point that they don’t even know about the violent rhetoric. Maybe some single issue voters aren’t assholes as often as the racists and anti-LGBT+ people, but they’re still throwing everyone under the bus for the sake of whatever issue they care about. And I assume their single issue is almost always an asshole policy, too.

It’s different in other countries though, conservatives in like France or Germany are usually not quite as fascist as the Trumpers.

Yes, but they are quiet. You probably have some friends who are - but you don’t know it because they don’t talk politics with you. This goes for all movements - the vocal people who end up as the face of the movement are rarely nice people (there are exceptions). The left has tankies that are not nice people either.

No, their politics are incompatible with decency