I attended the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this year. It was good. It was very little different than last year’s. The last one before that I attended, was 2020, the year Covid hit. They had a lot more “breakout” sessions as they call them back then, where you could attend panel discussions on various policy topics. I miss that. There are a lot less of them, which for me is disappointing. What it’s basically turned into is a fan fair, so those attending the conference, can see their favorite media personalities give short speeches, one right after another. It’s basically a conservative media dog and pony show. That model seems to work quite well. That’s why most of the attendees were there, and it was very well attended. It’s a good way to “rally the troops.”
One thing I found quite amusing, was a lot of peoples’ reactions, when I said that I loved cities. Most of the time I would get: “You mean you like living around all those liberals and all that crime? How can you stand it? You should be living out in the country with the rest of us,” or something similar to that. My answer back was usually something to the effect of: “The way to fix the cities is to have conservatives move back into them, and take them over politically. Get majorities on the city councils, and then get a good, solid conservative elected as the mayor. Then, you let the police do their job. Get rid of the crime, fix the schools, and build a lot more affordable middle class housing. If you have a good, solid middle class in the city, you have a stable city.” Some folks when they thought about it said things like, “You know, that does make some sense. Instead of running away from the problem, we should have fixed it.” No shit sherlock.
My main take away from attending the conference, is that there is a lot of hope right now. Most of it centers around the feelings that it’s definitely time to clean house and fix the government. I agree. I think it’s long overdue, I’m smiling, but I’m also being guardedly optimistic. I’m from the “trust then verify,” school.
Things CAN get better in the end! 😊