Look, words mean things, and in the American system of politics, calling yourself a “conservative” has a specific meaning. 99.9% of people are going to read that to mean that you are a Republican or a Trumper. You are welcome to use whatever labels you want to describe yourself, but when you run into this issue where people have no fucking clue what you are trying to say because you are using words differently than everyone else does, just remember, this is entirely your fault for not speaking clearly and using words as the are understood by others.
As far as I can tell you are a liberal-leaning centrist. Your decision to brand yourself “conservative” comes across as needlessly contrarian. Pretty much everyone in this country that self-identifies as “conservative” fits a specific regressive archetype and votes Republican. You’re not going to meaningfully be able to define yourself as the exception to this rule. You’re just defining yourself as “conservative”, and getting frustrated that people are interpreting that word for what it means 99.9% of the time they hear it, rather than adopting your personalized definition of the word.
This is like calling yourself “pro-life” because you oppose with the death penalty, or calling yourself “pro-Russia” because you like Russian food. While these terms are semantically fitting for what you are trying to say, it won’t matter, because when you say you’re pro-life they’re going to think you are against Women’s rights, and when you say you are pro-Russia, they are going to think you are a Putin supporter, because co-opting terms that already have colloquial definitions is just inviting people to misunderstand you.
Look, words mean things, and in the American system of politics, calling yourself a “conservative” has a specific meaning. 99.9% of people are going to read that to mean that you are a Republican or a Trumper. You are welcome to use whatever labels you want to describe yourself, but when you run into this issue where people have no fucking clue what you are trying to say because you are using words differently than everyone else does, just remember, this is entirely your fault for not speaking clearly and using words as the are understood by others.
As far as I can tell you are a liberal-leaning centrist. Your decision to brand yourself “conservative” comes across as needlessly contrarian. Pretty much everyone in this country that self-identifies as “conservative” fits a specific regressive archetype and votes Republican. You’re not going to meaningfully be able to define yourself as the exception to this rule. You’re just defining yourself as “conservative”, and getting frustrated that people are interpreting that word for what it means 99.9% of the time they hear it, rather than adopting your personalized definition of the word.
This is like calling yourself “pro-life” because you oppose with the death penalty, or calling yourself “pro-Russia” because you like Russian food. While these terms are semantically fitting for what you are trying to say, it won’t matter, because when you say you’re pro-life they’re going to think you are against Women’s rights, and when you say you are pro-Russia, they are going to think you are a Putin supporter, because co-opting terms that already have colloquial definitions is just inviting people to misunderstand you.