{"id":32313,"date":"2021-03-02T21:03:21","date_gmt":"2021-03-03T03:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=32313"},"modified":"2021-03-02T21:03:21","modified_gmt":"2021-03-03T03:03:21","slug":"so-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/03\/02\/so-what\/","title":{"rendered":"So What?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Certain conservative atheists are all excited about some of the results of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Conservative_Political_Action_Conference\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em><strong>CPAC<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">For those who shit on my efforts to secularize the right, you can apologize anytime. Also, you&#39;re welcome.  <\/p>\n<p>How would you like a choice of secular parties to vote for? Coming soon, thanks to AFL. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/CdWDrpS9QP\">https:\/\/t.co\/CdWDrpS9QP<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MrAtheistPants\/status\/1366161356135751686?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 28, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve never heard of Silverman, who apparently is a conservative atheist, but it&#8217;s not hard to see how years of hard work &#8211; or at least hard wishing &#8211; can make it easy to misinterpret the results. People see what they want to see, not what is there. I include myself as an occasional member of that group.<\/p>\n<p>So how is Silverman wrong? <em>This is not a straw poll of the conservatives, the Republicans, or the base.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a straw poll of the attendees of <em><strong>CPAC<\/strong><\/em>, and to a poll professional, which I am not, I am quite sure they&#8217;d note this is not a random, representative example of anything at all. This is a self-selecting group within the stratified hierarchy of the conservative movement. In fact, it&#8217;s probably near the top of the movement.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, a liberal reading of those stats would suggest this: <em><strong>CPAC<\/strong><\/em>, being a gathering of conservative\/Trumpist leaders, have placed abortion down at the bottom of the straw poll, which reveals them to be deeply out of touch with their base, which remains strongly anti-abortion.<\/p>\n<p>Now, is there any repercussions for telling the truth? How many of the base pay attention to such trivia as straw polls at <strong><em>CPAC<\/em><\/strong>? It&#8217;s hard to say, actually. The aliens (to sober governance) now infesting <strong><em>CPAC<\/em><\/strong> are relatively new to the game, and they may not realize how important it is to posture properly to keep the base happy; indeed, the lack of imposition of anti-abortion laws on the nation may have contributed to the failure of the traditional Republican leadership, who&#8217;d been stringing the anti-abortion forces along for decades.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s something to keep an eye on.<\/p>\n<p>(For those wondering, I picked up this Tweet and a link for a future post from this <strong><em>Friendly Atheist<\/em><\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/friendlyatheist.patheos.com\/2021\/03\/01\/right-wing-atheists-are-oddly-excited-about-cpac-embracing-secular-conspiracies\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">post<\/a> by Hemant Mehta. Mehta and his crowd are a bit repetitive and abrasive &#8211; like me, come to think of it &#8211; but I do appreciate their work on collecting information such as this.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Certain conservative atheists are all excited about some of the results of CPAC: For those who shit on my efforts to secularize the right, you can apologize anytime. Also, you&#39;re welcome. How would you like a choice of secular parties to vote for? Coming soon, thanks to AFL. https:\/\/t.co\/CdWDrpS9QP &mdash; \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/03\/02\/so-what\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32314,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32313\/revisions\/32314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}