Woke or Resentful? Most Likely Neither

[_honorentheos]

Hi Doc,

I read through your multi-post response this morning. You make some interesting points. While it's a little off from the content of the OP, on the subject of political strategy it may be as simple as:

1 - The Conservative message is simple, poorly defined and therefore adaptable to just about any circumstance or personal experience. That message being, "American is about freedom." Therefore, anyone from the entrepreneur to the coal miner to the school teacher to the home-school parent and beyond can relate to the message as it applies to them even when their view of it's fulfillment would lead to infringing on the freedom of the other person who also buys into this message in a different way.

2 - Government rarely actively engages in activities that can explicitly be seen as protecting freedom. The elevation of the military, law enforcement, and the occasional fire fighter are the exceptions as being the rare manifestation of government that is held in high esteem by the right because the direct line can be drawn between their functions and "freedom" in this jingoistic version we're talking about.

3 - Because the typical action of government is constraining in order to maintain social order or execute some social good through the compulsory application of public goods and/or services, almost every act of government can be seen by at least some group of individuals as being anti-freedom. The management of public lands, zoning ordinances, licensing requirements, using tax dollars to fund public services someone doesn't think they benefit from directly, etc., etc., all are easy tools for the message that government needs to be constrained itself. It takes almost zero effort for this message to propagate itself once it is successfully implanted into someone's worldview. One finds it being supported everywhere one looks.

4 - In short, the conservative message is simple at its core, it makes up for it's inherent lack of substance by being perfectly adaptable to almost anyone's experience which allows them to frame it in the context of their own personal experience without any need to evaluate it's consistency with the broader context of what others experience or what the absence of government looks like (it ain't absolute freedom), and it has a few easy tangible targets such as the military or law enforcement around which to galvanize and unite that becomes the consensus around which the view can gel.

5 - Conservative propaganda such as Fox News only has to exert energy in keeping the fly wheel of this view spinning by pointing out so-called attacks on someone's individual liberty, attacks on the military, or attacks on law enforcement. This also takes on the flavor of attacks on a mythical view of what American society is, if one reduces American society down to Norman Rockwell paintings and Leave It to Beaver ideals of the average suburban American family.

I'd also argue that what we're seeing today is the conservative establishment - those who really just wanted to see government kept out of their bank accounts and lucrative enterprises - lost control of the monster they had created because they knew all along the US government benefits them and society on the whole and makes their lifestyle possible. Because they knew it was a lie, they didn't worry too much about the average less well-off conservative feeling betrayed when each election resulted in more of the same...because they weren't sincerely interested in seeing government constrained as they knew that led to an anarchic world where they had much more to lose than gain. So Trump's victory and the resulting populist wave was unwelcome and unsettling. They seem to be attempting to figure out how to use it to their advantage and finding success in remaking the courts, getting tax reform through, regulation rollbacks, and increasing military spending. But they are not in control as evidenced by the trade tariff wars, ballooning deficit, and the general rolling boil that is public sentiment towards all things Washington.

Because of this, I'd argue the attempt to fight conservative behavior with similar tactics is missing the point. Their success isn't because their tactics are amoral and have a win-at-all-costs motive behind them. Their success is due to the nature of the message, how it's spread, and how easily adaptable it is to people of polar opposite socio-economic conditions that units them against the common foe of government.

Sander's has found some success in attempting to make inequality the central message for progressives and liberals. It's probably a good strategy, too, given it has the potential to be vague enough almost anyone can look around and find what seem to be a lot of people doing much better than they are for reasons they don't see as fair. The problem for the liberal/progressive movement is there isn't the equivalent tangible manifestation of the message such as, say, the military around which to rally and galvanize. They try by using minorities, women, immigrants, the poor, LGBTs, etc., etc., but each can only find limited appeal while also alienating others who might agree with the message. But who else is available? College students with six-figure student loan debt? Families who lost their homes ten years ago to predatory lending practices?

So I'd argue the problem is in finding an equivalent simple, almost universal message that can galvanize around a broadly relatable tangible manifestation of the values contained in the message.

[_honorentheos]

In thinking about it more, it may be finding a common and demonstrable threat is the best bet for a galvanizing tangible core around which people can rally while having varied and even contradictory interpretations of the message. Along the lines of your thoughts on megaprojects and touting innovation, if this could be conveyed as necessary to beating a realistic threat of some kind perhaps it would work. Again, though, the ones I can think of have issues given the nature of liberal attitudes. Climate change is an obvious one but it has the disadvantage of being seen as a threat to US business that would need to be remessaged. Our losing ground to China is another but in a world of "everyone gets a star for participation", competition might not sink in as being vital in the same way I personally view it.

[_EAllusion]

This Vox piece I think does a really solid job ripping to shreds the initial article, or at least the subsequent commentary on it, this thread is about:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... vid-brooks

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

This Vox piece I think does a really solid job ripping to shreds the initial article, or at least the subsequent commentary on it, this thread is about:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics ... vid-brooks

Yeah, extremists really hate centrists. Just because you call something extreme "the center" doesn't actually make it so. You and this article are way off base. This:



is not normal no matter how much you want us to accept it. It's damned mentally ill and until the Left gets that most people may tolerate that, as they should, they don't have to embrace it or legitimize it.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

You and this article are way off base.

By all means, explain why.

Yeah, extremists really hate centrists.

Vox, den of neo-liberal shills, is "extremist?"

Lol.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

That's the Left, and that's why people are getting away from it.

Until this gets fixed we're going to have an unbridgeable divide, and no matter how much you call Conservatives Nazis the middle sees the above, sees the messaging, and rejects it. But, hey, by all means keep creating this false narrative of the patriarchy or whatever you think being (((woke))) means these days.

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

The Vox article makes a few valuable points, not least of which being any attempt to categorize people is a construct or way of modeling reality rather than reality itself. People don't naturally fit into the seven groups the study identifies with bright, clearly illuminated boundaries around them. And it also makes the very fair point that to dismiss polarization and the damage it is doing for any reason, including the belief the majority of Americans are much more centrist than the vocal poles convey, is absolutely dangerous.

But to say it "shredded" the article is a bad reading and fails to inform. EA has been spending too much time on the board and some of the worst behaviors appear to be rubbing off.

For example, the Vox article makes it clear where it sees the problem with reporting on the Hidden Tribes study and where it sees the study as not that problematic. To quote the Vox article -

The report is, as a matter of quality, a mixed bag. It has a lot of interesting data, and has a sophisticated way of approaching polling, but its most headline-worthy conclusions are grounded in pretty questionable analysis. In particular, political scientists say, it likely overstates the significance of the seven tribes for actual voting behavior while significantly understating the importance of partisanship as traditionally understood.

“There have been many, many attempts to explain or explain away partisan polarization over the years — but the consistent evidence is that it is increasing on the mass level in the last few decades,” says Ryan Enos, a professor at Harvard University.

So while the report is by no means useless, the new centrist punditry is resting its arguments on the report’s weakest point. The fact that they’re willing to make such dubious claims speaks more to the mind of the Washington centrist than anything else: a tribe with virtually no members outside of a small elite that suffers from a deep-seated need to convince itself otherwise.

...

“The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization — one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture,” political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt write in their book How Democracies Die. “And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracy.”

The “Hidden Tribes” report aimed, admirably, to try to find solutions to this problem — places where Americans agree, which politicians could use to bring us back from the brink identified by scholars like Levitsky and Ziblatt.

The article notes similar points I made in my earlier if brief comments. It agrees that the majority of Americans aren't as divided and fueled by liberal/conservative orthodoxy over culture war issues or breaking out pitchforks ready to march on their neighbors who don't share their views about abortion or race relations.

Where it seems to take the most umbridge is that the study's polling technique, decision making in defining the so-called tribes, and missing how voting behavior is not necessarily reflective of the attitudes expressed through the polling. It makes an interesting argument that while the polling answers show people may hold much less binary views their voting behavior still largely aligns with the dynamics involved in the increase of polarized polemics.

Where I thought the Vox article shines is in the discussion of what I've heard referenced as the siloing of Americans into sorted groups whose identities have come to overlap with political ideologies more and more -

There’s an even more fundamental issue. Polarization as a phenomenon depends on people’s self-identification: how closely Americans identify themselves and their social groups, like race or religion, with their political party. This is what makes polarization dangerous to American democracy. Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at New America, puts it well in a Vox essay from last September:

Over the past half-century or so, partisan identities have become much more closely aligned with other social identities. Partisan divides now overlay religious divides, cultural divides, geographical divides, and racial divides. In the past, these identities used to cross-cut each other more often. Thirty years ago, you could be a culturally conservative Democrat, or culturally liberal Republican. These overlaps made the parties less distinct. They also made it easier to find common ground with opposing partisans based on other shared identities.

But as social sorting took place, we lost those potentially bridging ties. Moreover, our collective sense of cultural, regional, and ethnic status become more and more linked to the status of our two political parties, which came to represent these different identities. This made politics more emotional because it felt like even more was at stake with each election. It was not just the parties fighting each other, but also competing ways of life they represented.

As political scientist Lilliana Mason convincingly argues, “The more sorted we become, the more emotionally we react to normal political events.” And when emotions are heightened, everything becomes a threat to status. Politics becomes more about anger. And, here’s the warning from Mason that should give you goose bumps: “The angrier the electorate, the less capable we are of finding common ground on policies, or even of treating our opponents like human beings.”

The key takeaway from Drutman’s analysis is that polarization is a process of conscious identification: You link being a Democrat with other core parts of your identity, like being a feminist or an atheist. It’s this tying of politics to your sense of self that makes political defeat seem like a threat to you or your group, which is in turn what makes you unwilling to even consider voting for a member of the other party.

But nobody thinks of themselves as a member of the Devoted Conservative or Passive Liberal subgroup. These are made-up categories for analytic purposes, not identities around which anyone is organized. Politicians can’t appeal to the exhausted majority because it does not exist as an identity group.

That makes for an interesting point that the problem is one of identity and sorting. It was kind of funny to see EA having linked an article that includes the quote, "You link being a Democrat with other core parts of your identity, like being a feminist or an atheist" after having questioned someone elsewhere on the board, "I'm personally curious how atheism equates to "leftists." Apparently some people see that even if I get what EA was saying. Anyone who hangs out on 4Chan isn't going to be convinced the alt right is a bunch of pious believers fighting for the cause of Christ. But still, one either is accepting of labels as useful constructs that don't exactly mirror reality or one is into identity politics.

[_EAllusion]

But to say it "shredded" the article is a bad reading and fails to inform.

Did you read my parathetical, "or at least the subsequent commentary on it...?"

The Vox article does a very effective job pointing out what's wrong with what the bulk of the commentary - what we can call naïvely hopeful beltway centrism - that explains why it was shared extensively as a discussion and advocacy topic.

That makes for an interesting point that the problem is one of identity and sorting. It was kind of funny to see EAllusion having linked an article that includes the quote, "You link being a Democrat with other core parts of your identity, like being a feminist or an atheist." after having questioned someone elsewhere on the board, "I'm personally curious how atheism equates to "leftists." Apparently some people see that even if I get what EAllusion was saying. Anyone who hangs out on 4Chan isn't going to be convinced the alt right is a bunch of pious believes fighting for the cause of Christ. But still, one either is accepting of labels as useful constructs that don't exactly mirror reality or one is into identity politics.

You're conflating two points here. On the one hand, atheism isn't inherently leftist and atheists can be found across the political spectrum. Most atheists are left of center (not necessarily leftist) because atheists in America are almost universally socially liberal and most social liberals are attracted to mainstream liberalism. Economically conservative atheists often, but not always, are libertarianish. Religion is the primary motivator of or coincident attraction to social conservatism in the United states. This remains true despite the secular patina that tries to justify it. Once you remove that, you mostly see social liberalism.

So on the one hand, it's wrong to equate atheism with "leftism" such that the actions of atheists can be called the actions of leftists. Separately, however, people form personal identity by linking up their internal roles into an overall self-concept. A Democrat atheist may and often does link those identities together.

[_honorentheos]

I read your parenthetical. At some level you felt it shredded the article even if you then added a qualifying, "but if not that, then at least this". That's not informative and deserves to be criticized.

As to the second part, I just thought it was funny to point out something that I agree with in theory in terms of your question in the other thread but also am feeling critical of the general reduction of discussion on the board to stupid one liners. Generally speaking most of us know that religiosity isn't exactly reflective of one's political views while also knowing that a person who is a self-described Evangelical or Mormon is likely a conservative who would almost never dream of voting for a Democrat. While at least among older Americans there is some degree of social liberalism associated with atheism that has to be paired with one's economic views to get a reasonable sense of one's likely political affiliation. It made your comment to Water Dog seem shallow like you were seeking to score a point on a technicality rather than earn esteem by informing the discussion.

[_EAllusion]

I read your parenthetical. At some level you felt it shredded the article even if you then added a qualifying, "but if not that, then at least this". That's not informative and deserves to be criticized.

As to the second part, I just thought it was funny to point out something that I agree with in theory in terms of your question in the other thread but also am feeling critical of the general reduction of discussion on the board to stupid one liners. Generally speaking most of us know that religiosity isn't exactly reflective of one's political views while also knowing that a person who is a self-described Evangelical or Mormon is likely a conservative who would almost never dream of voting for a Democrat. While at least among older Americans there is some degree of social liberalism associated with atheism that has to be paired with one's economic views to get a reasonable sense of one's likely political affiliation. It made your comment to Water Dog seem shallow like you were seeking to score a point on a technicality rather than earn esteem by informing the discussion.

I"m not sure what you are even saying here. One, the discussion was with DocCam, not Water Dog. Two, DocCam argued, probably insincerely, that if you blame conservative voices for violent attacks (because those voices encouraged violent attacks), then you have to blame leftists for atheist attacks. Res Ipsa initially responded to problem here, which is "how are atheists voices encouraging atheist attacks?" I jumped in and noted the obvious that atheists aren't necessarily leftists such that you can equate the two. That's the obvious reply. It isn't informative because it's stating something obvious to someone almost certainly arguing in bad faith. I think well enough of the average reader to already know what I'm saying.

The point here is totally different. It is the case that most atheists and religiously unaffiliated are Democrats or vote Democrat.

http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/none ... cal-views/

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... -leanings/

Among those who are, it is also the case that people absorb their self-concept into their personal identity. So it would be true that a person would link being a Democrat to other core parts of their identity like being a Mom or an atheist. That's just how people's mental schema works.