u/Fickle-Syllabub6730

Through this subreddit, I've learned that there are libertarians, those with a hedonistic attitude (I've got purple hair, piercings and tattoos, and I just want the government to leave me alone to smoke weed and not get vaccinated), neoliberals, nationalists and isolationists who don't want subsidies to foreign nations, social conservatives who think that modern life is full of sexual and moral degeneracy, people aren't getting married young enough, etc...

I think it's clear that many of these conservative factions are at odds. I often get responses from one faction about how they are the true conservatives and the other factions have been driven out of the party with the RINOs and neolibs, literally directly under a comment from a conservative from a competing faction who has the exact opposite diagnosis of the conservative movement. However, conservatives from these different factions rarely interact with each other from what I can see online or in media.

I've seen questions on here where conservatives address this - the problem of the woke radical left is so acute, that it's imperative that all conservatives rally and vote for Trump. Differences amongst the different factions can be hashed out later, but first the progressive movement must be ground to dust.

But surely, at some point, these differences will have to be hashed out, won't they? Or will the woke left be a perpetual threat, such that the vast gulf in an ideal world as imagined by the weed smoking, video game playing libertarians, versus the family first pronatalists are just academic afterthoughts when compared to the need to unite behind MAGA and defeat the left?

Through some searching I've found some hints of it. Oren Cass, a nationalist, debated David Bahnsen, a free trade person. Sometimes Tucker Carlson will take a conservative to task. But I'm interested in how conservatives disagree and debate, especially in a post-Trump world. I can't find Senate debates, formal debates, contentious online debates, or anything across those lines.

Outside of memes, quips, and pithy op-eds, is there anywhere in the conservative movement that substantial discussion about the differences in various views is had?

Growing up in a pre-internet world, I remember there being lots of controversies from published works. Take The Da Vinci Code. I remember adults talking in hushed tones as if the mere fact that at book had been published that "says that Jesus had a wife" was a big deal - op-eds being written in the newspaper, priests talking about it at church, etc...

Same with Eminem and Slipknot, or the video game Xenogears almost not coming to the US. I remember it wasn't unusual every year or two to hear "There's a new movie/show/book that glorifies X or is saying Y". There was this idea that the work was bringing a brand new idea into the public consciousness, and if you could ban it or stop it, the wider culture would remain ignorant of the dangerous ideas being put forth.

Nowadays, I feel like that almost never happens. My guess is that even slightly internet literate people who would have been outraged and shocked have been kind of defeated or overwhelmed by the internet. "Dangerous" ideas are not monopolized by a single book being published. There's just a constant conversation happening with hundreds or videos, posts, forum discussions about how religion is bad, religion is good, in favor of polyamory, what to do about "minor attracted people", etc... Every taboo about sexuality, family formation, money, you name it, is being broken every minute of every day. I wonder if that realization has kind of finally broken the potentially offended conservative.

Is it possible for a work to be controversial or have a backlash anymore? Or did the internet break that phenomena?

Are there any videos, op-eds, or online communities where the various factions of conservatives hash out their disagreements? When/where does this happen?