Why do people laugh at conservatives in the US?

What is being a conservative? Is it conserving resources for future generations? Is it keeping society pretty much as is? Is it something similar. That was what I was taught but it seems this century the term has been turned on its ear to mean something totally different, such as an activist agenda to turn society back a half century, or more, fore various reasons. The result is that thanks to caricatures of fools by those with their own interests, many think conservatives equals the path to a Jesus loving Third World America that is intolerant to anybody not white and Christian.

I point a lot of this at Fox News. Oh there is some truth in what they say but then they use their editorial "discretion" to run their own agenda. "We report, you decide"? Ha. Never trust a source who has to constantly tell you they are honest. They are not just the anti-CNN and anti-MSNBC. They report their stories in way that will energize Republicans (which may also be why some call the network (Faux News). 

Back in the day, conservatives were in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Now the conservatives have pretty much migrated to the GOP and hijacked it for their own means. Part of this is due to the race baiting that Fox pretends they do not do so they can keep their sweet market share of old white men.  Another part is the happy coincidence that this manages to energize the now GOP base. Fox keeps bringing up nonsense scandals and ignore the real problems because that is what their demographics want.

Speaking of the media, it is in the best interests of the corporations that own the newspapers, TV networks, internet providers etc., to have the people fighting over silly things like keeping the Christ in Christmas and how horrible it will be to raise the minimum wage so the sheeple are distracted from what is really important such as how the middle class is being gutted for various reasons with no real solutions to help the people. The solution for the security of the US is not bombing ISIS, it is investing in our people but you would never know that reading the newspapers. 

Thanks to the consolidation of the media, I believe is worse than the yellow journalism of the late 19th/early 20th century. The only reason you are seeing this is because i haven't bothered Google or your internet provider/ I suspect this will continue until some conservative politician tells the starving masses to eat cake when they can't afford bread and a hell breaks lose that the media will be unable to ignore. 

As to the rest, there are different level of conservatism. One strain that makes people think conservatives are crazy are the ones who live on social issues. You know, "good" Christians who think all who are not white, Evangelism, Jesus loving Christians and live according to their version of the Bible are all going to Hell. While I am sure of those people believe in their hearts they are correct, others go out of their way to make others suffer if they don't follow their particular conservative morality code. Like Sarah Palin telling the Pope he doesn't understand Christianity.

These are the folks who twist logic and scientific facts to fit what they think the Bible says. They want their version of Jesus to be taught in schools as if that will solve all of America's problems. They thank God that nobody died when their home was destroyed by a tornado but don't question what they did wrong to cause God to allow the tornado to destroy their home. These are same folks who refuse to be educated in the sciences and, God forbid, true religious studies. For example, Jesus wasn't killed by his fellow Jews against Rome's wishes, as has been taught in Christianity since around the time Rome adopted Christianity as the empire's official religion. Jesus was one of many zealots put to death by Rome for treason against the empire as being a zealot meant you didn't accept the Emperor as number one.

Then, you have the neo-conservatives who hijacked the government after we were caught with our pants down on 9/11 and used that excuse to spend billions of dollars bombing innocent brown people. These people think there is a boogie man around every corner. I will also throw the gun loving survivalists in this group (though why they want an AK-47 to blow up Bambi into pieces too small to eat when civilization and grocery stores fail I don't understand).

Now this is more a Democrat/Republican thing that just happens to fall into the conservative pie, there were the enormous tax cuts to their buddies while allowing deregulation that nearly destroyed the economy instead of just furthering tightening the noose on the middle class. If they truly believed in capitalism they would have let everything fail instead of providing corporate welfare while they let the middle class and lower go down the toilet.

What is the solution? Well it won't come from above. We the People are the only ones who can take back the government from the special interests, hiding under liberal and conservative labels.