Conservative Virtue Signaling
Conservatives harp a lot about how the left virtue signals. The thing about virtue signaling is it's not just annoying, it's almost always hypocritical. The people virtue signaling are so preoccupied with their appearance to others in whatever cult they're appealing to, they don't bother to research whether what they're doing is even helpful or makes sense.
For instance:
(Environmentalist cult) Driving a Tesla to show you care about the environment when in reality Teslas are made using lithium and cobalt, the mining of which are extremely harmful to the environment - or that much of the energy to charge up these batteries comes from burning coal - a far dirtier source of energy than gasoline.
(Racist cult) Talking about Black history month and not realizing that you're just promoting segregation and racism.
(Homosexual cult) Wearing a "Gay pride" shirt or attending a parade and making a big deal out of some aspect of your identity, which you'd call "white supremacy" if some white nationalists did it.
(COVID cult) Wearing a mask (especially outdoors!) when studies show masks don't help with COVID.
The list goes on.
But here's the thing - conservatives virtue signal all the time! They're just so ingrained in their own cults, and their cults have been around so much longer, that they don't even notice!
The cults you don't notice are by far the worst ones.
How many businesses have you seen that plaster "Veteran-owned" all over their marketing material? I see them all the time. What does this tell you? Does being a veteran make you more competent at running a particular business? Probably not. Is it relevant to their business? Usually not.
Many conservatives take pride in having voluntarily gone to another country to kill innocent people in wars of aggression, all while hypocritically claiming they support the constitution and freedom. I'm sure all those innocent Iraqis American soldiers murdered and injured would have liked some constitutional protections, but all the "patriots" that signed up to that war were too busy blowing up innocent people to notice.
When I see "Veteran-owned", I think "unrepentant murderer". Or at least, "unrepentant accessory to murder", since most veterans have not actually killed anyone - though they were willing to and aided and abetted in the murdering. (Mind you, I'm not judging veterans that were forcibly conscripted here - I consider those people to be victims of kidnapping and slavery.)
I've seen some veterans regret their participation in wars of aggression and even apologize for it - you can bet those people aren't taking pride in their bad decisions and plastering "Veteran-owned" all over their business.
Another conservative virtue signaling ritual I see a lot is telling people they're "going to church". They tell you this randomly, out of the blue, with no context or relevance to the conversation. They want you to think they're a faithful Christian, because they're hoping this scores them some kind of points. I talked to one guy who went all preachy and told me about how he lives to embody the best example of a Christian possible to model to others how to live. Once we got to working together, he was sometimes dishonest, late, and incompetent. Overall he was probably an average guy - but by no means some kind of beacon of virtue.
He told me about his Christianity and faith to get respect and points, instead of earning them the normal way by just being a good and respectable person.
When conservatives tell you about their church-going habits they're hoping to cheat their way into some kind of cult-like respect they think much of America has. As an American who grew up in Europe, and not raised religious at all - and certainly outside the cult of military "patriotism" so present in the U.S., I can look at these things pretty objectively since I'm not part of the cult these people assume I'm in.
So next time you decide to harp on about some obnoxious, annoying virtue signaling someone on the left is engaging in - stop for a moment and see if maybe you're doing the same thing, too.