With veganism I don't think people are getting "negatively polarized" - most people eat meat to begin with, and don't want to give up their meat-eating, so they're predisposed to dismiss vegetarians/vegans and fixate on the annoying ones as a justification for not doing what they already didn't want to do in the first place. And I suspect something similar is happening politically, though perhaps to a different degree.
Good take! But here are some objections to consider:
(1) That those who believe p are unlikeable can be evidence against p, given that those who believe p are unlikeable in relevant ways. If they're unlikeable because they melt down the moment their political views are challenged, for example, that constitutes evidence that their political views haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation. And political views that haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation tend to be false. So, it might be rational to doubt a political ideology once you realize that most of the people you know of who hold it are prone to hysterical meltdowns. (I'm not granting that leftists are more prone than others to hysterical meltdowns, by the way -- this is an empirical question that can't be resolved by surveying non-randomly sampled social media posts.)
(2) It's possible to acquire evidence for an ideology as a (causal) consequence of spending more time with people who hold that ideology. It may be that those who are driven rightward by leftist misbehavior undergo the following, two-step process: first, they stop associating with leftists and start associating with conservatives because they find the latter less annoying than the former; second, as a result of associating with conservatives, they encounter arguments for conservative policies they haven't heard before (or objections to liberal policies they haven't heard before) and shift rightward ideologically in response to those arguments.
(3) You assume that rank-and-file voters should choose how to vote based on which policies are most likely to work. But a growing number of applied political philosophers deny this. According to them, the probability that your vote will change the outcome of a democratic election is so tiny that it's foolish to vote for the sake of changing the outcome. If you're rational, you'll instead vote for social reasons -- e.g., reinforcing your relationships with those close to you. If partisanship is really just a vehicle for strengthening social bonds, then it might be rational to vote for the party whose members you personally like better. (I hate this view, but it's not easy to articulate what's wrong with it.)
To clarify, I substantially agree with the content of your post. But considerations like (1)-(3) have given me food for thought recently.
I don't think it's difficult to articulate what's wrong with view (3): it's not foolish to vote for the sake of changing the outcome because the value of a vote is quite large.
> If they're unlikeable because they melt down the moment their political views are challenged, for example, that constitutes evidence that their political views haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation.
One wrench here - what if someone's perfectly rational conclusion is tied heavily to morality, and they are also highly and consciously consistent in acting to enforce that conclusion i.e with conventional tools like social shaming? It's unlikely, but I don't think you can handwave that idea away.
The broad point is obviously right, but one nuance: the kinds of people who self-select into an ideology can tell you *something* about that ideology. I think it's not crazy to say, the fact that (a certain subset of) leftists are really annoying in a consistent way is actually a pretty good reason not to be that kind of leftist! Like, some of the more extreme sections of the left (and to be clear, the same is true on the right) basically just feel like a way to express certain personality disorders... that's a good argument against that brand of leftism!
Alone, that's not an argument for moving in the opposite direction, but if you notice even the less extreme leftists treating this group with more respect than you think they deserve, that'll lower your opinion of the rest of the left too.
> I think it's not crazy to say, the fact that (a certain subset of) leftists are really annoying in a consistent way is actually a pretty good reason not to be that kind of leftist!
But that's an argument against a personality type, a way of expressing yourself. It wouldn't work as a reason for avoiding the positions themselves.
I understand why it seems to work at an instinctual level, but the reasoning is just poor.
If there's a position that is fairly distinctively associated with that group, I think there's real signal there.
You can sometimes tell when a position is being adopted as part of a group membership shibboleth; if the group in question is deranged, all else equal you should probably move in the opposite direction from that position.
The problem is that people aren't careful and reject much broader, associated ideas just because of that association.
> You can sometimes tell when a position is being adopted as part of a group membership shibboleth
Even this implies agency. What if the position is a shibboleth, but was adopted because everyone just went along with whoever suggested it? There's no requirement that a shibboleth be related to anything practical in one's life either.
Sure, like I said, I think this post is basically right. I'm just saying, there are situations where seeing a group express a deranged opinion can update your views about how much you trust that group, and that can impact your view on other related issues; no argument that when to actually do so requires exercising actual judgement, not just blindly and predictably doing the opposite of the most recent annoying thing you heard, and that nothing replaces actually forming your own opinion on the matter at hand by engaging with the best pro and con arguments.
But you originally wrote that doing this kind of update based on group demographics/characteristics was a "pretty good reason". Now you seem to be saying that it requires exercising actual judgment. But if you were going to do that, why wouldn't you just evaluate the actual positions/arguments? The only reason I can see to do that is if doing that is not feasible, but evaluating the argument is. I don't think there's many cases like that.
This is incredibly disingenuous, you act as if there is literally zero ties between behavior and policy positions, but that just isn't the case. The annoying rage based behavior is because of their policy ideas of for example seeing words they disagree as "violence," and literally a genocidal threat to their lives. They are so hopped on their ideology which is the superstructure of their policies that they feel justified in hitting you because you may not want fags all up in your grill. So no I don't buy your distinction at all, immoral root ideas lead to both immoral behavior and immoral policy prescriptions, which yes guess what is annoying.
I've sometimes expressed views that (by my lights, at least!) are liberal but not perfectly woke, and have been told by woke people that I must have been triggered by someone annoying or just be anxious about my social position, etc. (e.g., in a discussion of race-based AA in hiring, where my interlocutor was for and I was against, he said, "don't worry, *you'll* still get a job!"). My sense is that a lot of people form beliefs as a result of emotional reactions like those you describe and just assume that others are doing the same thing (or else can't fathom people disagreeing with them on the basis of normative reasons, and so assume that their opponents must have formed their beliefs in response to non-rational stimuli). Sad!
It actually doesn't matter what policy positions left-wingers adopt if they can't be trusted to implement those positions faithfully and instead continually abuse their power in almost every position they've held and continue to hold in society today.
From the obviously partisan attacks on Republicans coming from our elite institutions (from social media censoring conservative views to FBi agents texting their loved ones about how they are going to get Trump after the people voted him in), to lies about the Covid pandemic (censoring concerns about a lab leak, being two-faced about masks, and trying to keep lockdowns in place - especially in our children's schools - far longer than most people originally agreed to), to the insistence on re-instituting racist and sexist discrimination (even including racial segregation in some cases, like with special graduation ceremonies for minorities at Harvard) despite all that having being plainly illegal since the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (yet endured because of activist judges who enabled left-wing racism and sexism, not only by looking the other way, but also sometimes by actively interpreting civil rights law so that white people or men have to pass a higher bar in order to prove their rights have been violated - which in effect denied them equal rights).
The problem with the left isn't that they are annoying. It's that they are untrustworthy, power-hungry, moral busybodies who cannot even admit when it's the terrible policies they actually implement that are making them unpopular (e.g. with young men). The above sort of stuff is what people mean when they say "the left has gone crazy" and the reason it sounds like a judgment of their character is because it is, and their character matters.
But equally, it doesn't matter how bad leftists are if Trump is worse! And you have to actually make the affirmative argument that that's the case, not just gesture at what annoys you about Trump!
BB's point (which I agree with) is that Donald Trump also abuses power very badly--much more egregiously and often than (mainstream elected) members of the "left"! So, "these guys can't be trusted with power" doesn't obviously translate into "support Republicans" unless you can argue they are *more* trustworthy. Now, sure, you can try make that argument, but just saying "these guys suck" proves nothing: the other guys might well suck more!
I mostly agree about Trump. I've never voted for him. I agree that character matters on both sides, and that the character of the average politician sucks on both sides.
What I don't agree about is that the average Republican candidate is nearly as bad with regard to abusing power as the average Democrat. I can't think of any obvious analogies from my lifetime to the above left-wing sins but for the right. When was the last time Republicans tried to explicitly discriminate in government benefits, college education, and hiring for elite jobs against Black people? Are there activist Republican judges looking away while they do this, or intentionally making it more difficult for Black people to defend their civil rights in court, when it comes to racial discrimination? Even when it comes to judicial activism, an actual activist right-wing Supreme Court would have banned abortion via the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, instead of letting people vote on the issue (as they always should have been able to).
The only thing that I can think of that even comes close is right-wing gerrymandering, and this is one of the issues where the left talks the talk but mostly does not walk the walk. Left-wingers gerrymander almost as much, and the times they don't it's often because their "independent" redistricting boards grant the Democrats disproportionate seats regardless.
I suspect you won't agree with me about this. That's fine, we can have good faith disagreements about the trustworthyness of various politicians. Still, notice how different this discussion is from the one BB is having, above. I think he really missed the ball on this. Politics is not fundamentally about having the right views, it's a messy process which requires trusting other people to implement their promised policy and adapt when necessary to changing circumstances. We can have good faith discussions about this process, but only if we first take seriously the idea that we must monitor the people involved, and not merely their ideas. This includes monitoring for the crazy people and who they seem to have sway over (and, yes, I include Trump's sway in this).
>When was the last time Republicans tried to explicitly discriminate in government benefits, college education, and hiring for elite jobs against Black people? Are there activist Republican judges looking away while they do this, or intentionally making it more difficult for Black people to defend their civil rights in court, when it comes to racial discrimination
>their "independent" redistricting boards grant the Democrats disproportionate seats regardless.
This is mostly not true but regardless, Republicans unanimously voted against the For The People Act which would have ended gerrymandering. It's also uniquely corrupt for the President to direct states to gerrymander to hold onto power. https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/
Look, if I were a one-iasue voter and my one issue was gerrymandering, I'd vote Democrat, but if you examine the bill in question it would just require states to have "independent" commissions, which we will have to agree to disagree on.
(I hope you see why telling us right-wingers, who have decades of experience now dealing with left-wing takeovers of "neutral" institutions, that you will create a new neutral institution controlling one of the most important parts of our voting procedures where both sides have strong incentives to corrupt it and then you insisting that it totally would not get taken over...for sure this time...would be a hard sell.)
The bill also includes a bunch of other things Republicans would normally disagree with, such as steps towards D.C. statehood, attempts to limit the Supreme Court in an obviously partisan response to Trump's additions, forced disclosure of campaign donors, forced disclosure of the President and Vice-President's tax returns, government funding matching and thus multiplying small campaign donations (I believe by a 6:1 ratio), the ability for felons who have served their time to vote, increased flexibility for mail-in and electronic ballets, and more.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if the Democrats were even seriously trying to pass the bill, with all these provisions in it. Did they reasonably expect Republicans to sign off on all that for essentially nothing in return (a guarantee about paper ballots being used at the polling place, maybe?). It looks a lot more like one of those bills Congress makes to sound good to their side, rather than engaging with the other side in the ways necessary to actually legislate.
That isn't to say I disagree with all of the above provisions (though, of course a number of them I do disagree with), it's just to say that pretending opposition to the bill is only about gerrymandering is disingenuous in this case.
I don't because conservatives are delusional. I hate woke shit but there is nothing comparable to what conservatives do once they're in power. Your fucking leader falsified electoral vote certificates and led a months long pressure campaign against his VP to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Algorithmic redistricting is easy to verify mathematically that it minimizes bias.
>Did they reasonably expect Republicans to sign off on all that
Republicans can identify parts of an omnibus bill they like and request it to be pulled out individually and vote on it. In fact, they did that when they voted down Lankford's immigration bill and tried to blame it on the Ukraine funding being a part of it. They even still passed the Ukraine funding when it was done individually, because Republican politicians are schizophrenic and their voters are too stupid to ever expect them to do anything in government except obstruct proceedings.
I hate to say anything in defense of right-wingers, but I think you're missing the meaning of what they're saying, because they aren't expressing it as an academic article. To oversimplify for a short comment, they mean something very roughly like "These people belong to an enemy tribe which will try to harm me, so I want to hurt them as much possible".
In the recent Trump post, that's what many Trump supporters were saying in effect was their rationale for supporting Trump. You may not like that answer, but it is an answer.
Yes. Progressives being annoying is downstream of the actual reasons I oppose them, they're actively trying to harm me, and so I support preemptively harming them (politically). This is why Trump Bad articles are not convincing to me, I don't care that he's a terrible president and or person generally, he's an excellent political tool for my purposes.
The point is, if Trump is a terrible president, he might actually harm you too! Even if inadvertently, or as collateral damage.
So if the point is just to avoid being harmed, you need to be sure voting Trump actually nets out to better for you than just supporting generic Republicans or whatever. And this requires an affirmative argument; pointing out the lefties are bad doesn't get you all that far.
It's the same reason why I, though basically on the left, wouldn't vote for Zombie Joe Stalin to stick it to annoying MAGA folks..."those guys suck, and this guy will stick it to them" is actually a pretty stupid thing to vote on without any further analysis.
I understand that, I've decided that it's worth the risk. Really, I only mentioned the Donald in order to tie back to a previous comment of mine regarding why attacking him isn't very persuasive to many of his voters.
There needs to a saying somewhere between "Game recognizes game" and "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it". Something conveying: we're on opposite sides of a fence, and may not like or even respect each other, but we both agree that there is a fence and where we are in relation to it.
Yeah, I get very frustrated at this seeming inability for a lot of the left of center commentary sphere to grasp that many Trump voters went in with open eyes to his flaws and made a perfectly rational choice given their own interests, that they (the left) are the ones who don't understand the motivations of their opposites very well, or at all in many cases.
Yes, they are delusional and run on pure tribalism. That's why they're happy to believe we never went to the moon because radiation in the Van Allen Belt would kill astronauts and support DOGE cutting NASA, why they think vaccines are deadlier than the diseases they protect against and support RFK, why they think the 2020 election was stolen when Trump was in power but not any other election when a Democrat was in power and a Republican won, etc. The next Democrat President should actually abuse their power and target the law firms that struck deals with Trump, detain the people behind the AEA flights and the Republican politicians who visited CECOT in Guantanamo Bay without due process, revoke Fox News's broadcast license if they don't have bias monitors appointed, etc. The violence of the state coming down on them full stop is the only thing with a chance to break them out of their delusions.
I think there may be an ideological asymmetry here - conservatism ideologically entails preserving the status quo (caveat - not complete stasis as generally existing societies have some change built in), whereas non-conservative positions entail moving away from the status quo.
As such the conservative outcomes are determined mostly by the accumulated character of society over the last centuries/millennia, they are less impacted by the character of modern conservatives.
Non-conservative outcomes are more impacted by the characteristics of present non-conservatives, tradition doesn't get a say.
Because of this plausibly the annoyingness/vices of non-conservatives matters more than the annoyingness/vices of conservatives as they have a bigger impact on political outcomes.
This is why I just call myself a member of the Good Guy Party because by definition my policies are good and anyone who disagrees with me is a Bad Guy, regardless of what my actual policies are.
Come on. I've never heard of anyone moving right because a leftist chewed with their mouth open or forgot to mute their phone in a movie theater.
The "irritating" behavior you're dismissing here mostly falls into 3 categories:
1) expressing aggressive personal distaste for groups that the listener identifies with ("straight cis white men," "suburban soccer moms," "Americans," "Anyone who dislikes getting screamed at on the subway," etc.)
2) hypocrisy ("your toddler needs to wear a mask to go to the park, but huge protests pose no risk whatsoever," "violent criminals deserve infinite sympathy and second chances, but anyone who made an edgy joke in 2004 is beyond saving," etc.)
3) flat out lying ("sex isn't binary," "Biden's at the top of his game," "affirmative action is not ever in conflict with fairness to individuals," etc.)
I still consider myself leftish, but only because conservatives are somehow still managing, by my lights, to be slightly worse. I've got a lot of sympathy for people who weigh things a little differently and end up on the other side.
It's not possible for a single human being to become an expert on every area of policy dispute. Sooner or later we all hit the limits of our knowledge and have to trust someone else's judgment.
And progressives have spent the last decade or so screaming their untrustworthiness in people's faces. It's not irrational for people to take that into account!
I don't totally disagree with you; I think it can (obviously!) make sense to grit your teeth and vote for a party that is not aligned (in its rhetoric or alliances) with your political tribe and whose supporters you generally find objectionable, simply because its concrete policy positions are better. But I think you are too flippantly dismissing the case for rejecting left parties based on the conduct of leftists (and ignoring concrete policy platforms).
If I wanted to steelman that case, I would argue that lefty activists who push people away from the left are frequently:
* not merely annoying, but profoundly destructive to valuable institutions and valuable cultural norms
* emboldened by the sense that their ideological coalition has power, such that right-wing political successes will cow them and stop their harmful acts
* likely to be deterred from doing bad things (as you argue they SHOULD be in this essay!) if this observably causes people to vote right-wing
* allied with left-wing parties, who if elected will use their power to sponsor crazy lefty groups with government funding and will refrain from legal action against such groups
That is, there are real, substantial harms that can be curtailed by right-wing political parties scoring victories *regardless of any of the specifics of their policy platform*, simply because of the effect that such victories have on the culture war.
The case for not acting on these considerations is IMO that these considerations are greatly outweighed by concrete issues of policy, not they don't exist!
You know the problem, BB? The rules for figuring out the truth are *really* different from those for convincing people of it.
Rationalists have put a huge amount of effort into untangling cognitive biases and getting better at seeing the smoke, as Jacob Falkovich put it.
But those things don't really help for convincing people. All that fancy language is bad in anti-intellectual country like the USA, and even in the rest of the world appeals to authority and emotion may be logical fallacies but they're essential in persuasion. Artists can convince people without any logic by telling stories that make you feel things; Will and Grace did more for gay people than a thousand Equal Rights Campaign position papers. Nobody remembers Roger Bacon or Albertus Magnus except for students of the period, but everyone knows Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Most people are mentally weak! Politics is largely tribal, and in our stupid two-party system people think about what 'tribe' they want to join. And annoying people can have a *huge* effect on which tribe people want to join, especially as annoying people are going to annoy people to differing degrees.
Look at the way smart people are portrayed in media; even Batman has to make up for it being able to beat people up. Compare the way women view academic success in the USA vs East Asia. Look at the way school is seen as unmasculine everywhere below the upper middle class.
The USA has 350 million people and is culturally dominant, I'm not surprised it would have a fair number of intellectuals. Doesn't mean they're respected the same way they are in, say, France.
The US is 4 percent of the world popultion and 40 percent of Nobel prize winners; over 50 percent if you only include science and economics. It has unarguably the best universities, and arguably the two best cities for intellectuals (NYC & SF). Probably over half of the world's top 1000 influential intellectuals live in the US.
Maybe your point is not about intellectuals themselves, but the attitudes of the median person? This doesn't make sense to me because the median person is anti-intellectual in every country on earth.
Maybe your point is about the median person's attitudes towards education? The US is top 10 in college attendance and top 5 in grade school standardized scores. adjusted for demographics (which might not be appropriate here).
Americans have the best intellectuals, the best universities, and are among the most educated people on earth. None of that is negated because nerds got bullied on American TV in the 90s.
I think what's going on with these examples is sometimes a bit more reasonable than you think. WRT the blue-haired hypothetical person who calls you a nazi for saying "master bedroom," it should be reminded that these people sometimes organize campaigns to get people fired, pressure private institutions and political leaders to adopt censorship policies, and so on. Normal democratic leaders are much more reasonable than the hypothetical blue-haired crazy person but I can certainly understand the fear of republicans who worry about the willingness of democratic leaders to cater to the fringe. They might then vote for a republican because republicans can be relied upon to oppose it when the blue-haired person tries to do something practical to enforce their (extremely trigger-happy) view of ethics. To be honest, I do think the far left can be pretty authoritarian at times, which in an era where far-left politics became mainstream left politics at a pretty fast pace, presented long-term concerns.
Of course, in practice, the republican response has been to elect someone who threatens to enact an authoritarian society *immediately* (sanctioning lawyers for arguing against you in court, seriously???), which is not an improvement.
If you are trying to persuade, you have to be persuasive. Anything distracting about your presentation reduces your persuasiveness. That's just how the human mind works. Would you buy an expensive automobile from a guy wearing a clown costume? Certainly not. Would you "buy" an argument from someone whose every tic and twitch screams "I am a poorly adjusted person?" Probably not. Their fitness as a person, hence a thinker, seems substandard, so ideas originating with that poorly adjusted person are automatically downgraded in the listener's mind.
I think I see what you are doing. You are a bright young man just kind of figuring out this life thing, and trying to come up with rules for how to navigate the matrix. You've found one, "Liberalism is good" and you're trying to convince others of its rightness.
Unfortunately, at this moment in history that's a hard sell because liberalism, leftism, whatever you want to call it, has gone off the rails. Unraveling this failure would take a lot more space than is available in this forum. But it is real. It is also unfortunate, because the current sorry state of liberalism taints a pround legacy. Conservatism, which is really just realism, is ascendant because of this disintegration.
I was a proud, loud, liberal for the first 40 years of my life. And when I was your age, I was LOT like you. At one point I was member in good standing of the innermost inner circle of the Liberal firebrand Molly Ivins, who at her peak was a national celebrity. You may not have heard of her because she died when you were three. I was actually headed to her bedside when I got the notification that she had died.
Molly was actually far more subtle in her thinking than her public persona, and writings, indicated. But she had a schtick and it made her a pretty good living, and you do what you have to. But her reputation made her attractive to lots of people who were actual zealsots, hardcore, firebreathing, take-no-prisoners types who would cut you off at the knees if you showed even the slightest hint of openness to opposing viewpoints. Shocked the hell out of me, offended me, and broke the spell. "These people are nuts," was my chief takeaway.
Even in the nicest of them was at least a hint of reflexive combativeness. I had to watch my tongue when around them, which was tiresome, because I did not have to be that way with Molly. It rocked my world, and started me down the pathway to center-rightedness, where I have since dwelled.
Conservatism is essentially reactive. It just kind of waits in the wings, watching, until something seems off, at which point it speaks up. You won't hear from it unless and until something goes wrong or raises a red flag. it's fine with actual progress, not so fine with bad ideas or policies enacted in the name of prgoress that check certain boxes but produce horrendous results.
Most people who identify as conservative are actually classical liberals: They value freedom, the right to be left alone, the right to speak and associate freely. Continuity, presevation of what's good. Conscientiousness, caution. After all, the root word of "conservative" is "conserve."
You have to work a little harder to sell an idea to a conservative, because that person will be looking for the weaknesses and downsides in yoru argument.
Nothing ventured nothing gained versus Nothing ventured nothing lost. Both have value. A thinking, mature person doesn't hew to any one ideology. They will take things on a case by case basis.
I wrote you a rather tart rejoinder to your post about Trump of a few days ago, that I would rather like to retract. At the time I was about half-lit and feeling my oats, as they say. Your piece was very well put together, and well worth the read. Just wanted to say that.
" Would you buy an expensive automobile from a guy wearing a clown costume?"
We just elected a President who does bronzing on his face so thickly it's like clown makeup, and rambles and blusters like he's a wresting promoter. While he may not be literally wearing a clown costume, he's deliberately adopted the aesthetics of professional wrestling, and empirically, it works for him.
But you must have lived through some other country's history if you aren't aware of all the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc which has been part of conservatism. Every bit of social progress here has been fought bitterly, sometimes violently, by conservatives. And when they lose, they turn around and pretend they were for it all along.
I'll grant you that the makeup is odd. I have read that it is to cover major sun damage, which is sort of reasonable. I wish he'd stop it. There are numerous things I dislike about the man and that is one of them.
If you define conservatism as "just say no," then it's no sweat to come up with examples in which it has failed to serve humanity. But that's a weak definition based in your personal disapproval. Edmund Burke-style conservatism is principled rejection of that which threatens liberty and the commonweal. That's my definition.
One example: Fifteen years ago when gay marriage was being debated. Conservatives (and moderates like Obama) opposed it, mostly on the grounds that it redefined one of the most universal societal institutions, something that ought not be done lightly. Conservatives were fine with "civil unions," which gave all the same rights but preserved this vital core institution, which fostered generational continuity, intact.
Lingering just out of frame, though, was the understanding that the people pushing the issue the hardest had no intention whatsoever of marrying their lovers, nor did they really and truly believe that "love is love." They just wanted a wedge issue they could use to torment the "breeders," as they called them, and gain political leverage. But starry-eyed liberals didn't get this, so they just chanted "love is love" over and over until the other side gave up. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't a great leap forward either. And gay divorce rates are through the roof. My GF is a matrimonial lawyer, so I hear all the stories. Much civic turmoil for little if any payoff.
And then of course there's abortion, the single most contentious issue since slavery, probably. the Liberal stance is: "reproductive freedom," period, a stirring concept that could be set to music. The conservative position, a little more nuanced, goes something like "the elective and violent destruction of a developing human life is a horrific thing. Yes it may sometimes be necessary, but maybe we shouldn't treat it as a heroic act of resistance."
But let's invert the earlier definition and describe liberalism as "just say yes," which is exactly how some people think. It's a terrible idea that leads to utter chaos in a hurry. But that's a lousy definition, too.
Here's my beef. For some years now there have been people, lots of them, who given a chance, would have torn the nation to the ground, burned what's left, and driven a stake through the heart of anything that smacked of traditional America. And they would have done it under the banner of Liberalism. That's the far fringe of the Democrat Party right now in a nutshell.
Change may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean you give in to all forms of it. Cancer is a form of change. Invasions are a form of change. Conservatism is the principle of managed change.
I think it is worth making a bit of a distinction between the party-alignment type issues and the vegan issue. Safe to say that making decisions about voting on such based on being annoyed with a few people (most likely a miniscule sample of the population of people you have never even met, who you saw on social media) is some combination of pathetically weak-willed and batshit crazy. So is abandoning a political party/movement because of a few (former) allies were annoying. Deliberately eating the products of factory farming because vegans are annoying is similarly bad. However, abandoning veganism/animal rights/whatever *as a political movement / interest group* is a bit different.
There is a genuine "have a beer with" element to being part of that affiliation. And the annoyance comes not just from a few extremists or instances of developmentally stunted adolescent behavior amongst tens of millions of adherents. Rather, a fairly large portion of people who interact on the basis of their vegan self-identity are horrifically annoying (or worse), including a similar proportion of top opinion leaders. They not only alienate those who are looking for an excuse to be annoyed by them and thus ignore the moral issues, but also people who are among the few percent that are most inclined to agree with their cause. Pretty much all of us who were vegan influencers in the 1990s (before we had the awful term "influencer") want nothing to do with the social movement anymore, and hesitate to self-identify as vegan.
On another tangent, you note that this motivation seldom drives someone to reject the right-wingers in favor of the left, which may simply reflect that real facts have such a left-leaning bias that this always fills someone's mind as their real motivation. But I can cite my experience in dealing with people who strongly identity as libertarians (usually in the context of things that I and other sensible analysts write which happen to appeal to that ilk), that they make me absolutely not want to identify as libertarian, even in contexts where that is technically accurate. I attribute that to them seeming utterly clueless about the world, not merely annoying, but that is splitting hairs.
Additionally, I and many others refuse to identify as environmentalist or such, even though it might describe our beliefs, because so many in the environmental movement are comfortable well-off hypocrites who just advocate for others to make sacrifices and for magic to happen, rather than being serious. Again, not quite just annoyance, but in the neighborhood.
The point is many “left the left” people don’t leave the left as ideology, they just move their cultural baggage on the right, creating bizarre phenomena as the “woke right”. Just think about those former Bernie bros turned trad Larpers
With veganism I don't think people are getting "negatively polarized" - most people eat meat to begin with, and don't want to give up their meat-eating, so they're predisposed to dismiss vegetarians/vegans and fixate on the annoying ones as a justification for not doing what they already didn't want to do in the first place. And I suspect something similar is happening politically, though perhaps to a different degree.
Good take! But here are some objections to consider:
(1) That those who believe p are unlikeable can be evidence against p, given that those who believe p are unlikeable in relevant ways. If they're unlikeable because they melt down the moment their political views are challenged, for example, that constitutes evidence that their political views haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation. And political views that haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation tend to be false. So, it might be rational to doubt a political ideology once you realize that most of the people you know of who hold it are prone to hysterical meltdowns. (I'm not granting that leftists are more prone than others to hysterical meltdowns, by the way -- this is an empirical question that can't be resolved by surveying non-randomly sampled social media posts.)
(2) It's possible to acquire evidence for an ideology as a (causal) consequence of spending more time with people who hold that ideology. It may be that those who are driven rightward by leftist misbehavior undergo the following, two-step process: first, they stop associating with leftists and start associating with conservatives because they find the latter less annoying than the former; second, as a result of associating with conservatives, they encounter arguments for conservative policies they haven't heard before (or objections to liberal policies they haven't heard before) and shift rightward ideologically in response to those arguments.
(3) You assume that rank-and-file voters should choose how to vote based on which policies are most likely to work. But a growing number of applied political philosophers deny this. According to them, the probability that your vote will change the outcome of a democratic election is so tiny that it's foolish to vote for the sake of changing the outcome. If you're rational, you'll instead vote for social reasons -- e.g., reinforcing your relationships with those close to you. If partisanship is really just a vehicle for strengthening social bonds, then it might be rational to vote for the party whose members you personally like better. (I hate this view, but it's not easy to articulate what's wrong with it.)
To clarify, I substantially agree with the content of your post. But considerations like (1)-(3) have given me food for thought recently.
Good thoughts, I agree it can be a weak signal but not super decisive.
I think the wrong thing with voting incorrectly is that voting might change the election.
I don't think it's difficult to articulate what's wrong with view (3): it's not foolish to vote for the sake of changing the outcome because the value of a vote is quite large.
> If they're unlikeable because they melt down the moment their political views are challenged, for example, that constitutes evidence that their political views haven't been refined through thoughtful argumentation.
One wrench here - what if someone's perfectly rational conclusion is tied heavily to morality, and they are also highly and consciously consistent in acting to enforce that conclusion i.e with conventional tools like social shaming? It's unlikely, but I don't think you can handwave that idea away.
The broad point is obviously right, but one nuance: the kinds of people who self-select into an ideology can tell you *something* about that ideology. I think it's not crazy to say, the fact that (a certain subset of) leftists are really annoying in a consistent way is actually a pretty good reason not to be that kind of leftist! Like, some of the more extreme sections of the left (and to be clear, the same is true on the right) basically just feel like a way to express certain personality disorders... that's a good argument against that brand of leftism!
Alone, that's not an argument for moving in the opposite direction, but if you notice even the less extreme leftists treating this group with more respect than you think they deserve, that'll lower your opinion of the rest of the left too.
> I think it's not crazy to say, the fact that (a certain subset of) leftists are really annoying in a consistent way is actually a pretty good reason not to be that kind of leftist!
But that's an argument against a personality type, a way of expressing yourself. It wouldn't work as a reason for avoiding the positions themselves.
I understand why it seems to work at an instinctual level, but the reasoning is just poor.
If there's a position that is fairly distinctively associated with that group, I think there's real signal there.
You can sometimes tell when a position is being adopted as part of a group membership shibboleth; if the group in question is deranged, all else equal you should probably move in the opposite direction from that position.
The problem is that people aren't careful and reject much broader, associated ideas just because of that association.
> You can sometimes tell when a position is being adopted as part of a group membership shibboleth
Even this implies agency. What if the position is a shibboleth, but was adopted because everyone just went along with whoever suggested it? There's no requirement that a shibboleth be related to anything practical in one's life either.
Sure, like I said, I think this post is basically right. I'm just saying, there are situations where seeing a group express a deranged opinion can update your views about how much you trust that group, and that can impact your view on other related issues; no argument that when to actually do so requires exercising actual judgement, not just blindly and predictably doing the opposite of the most recent annoying thing you heard, and that nothing replaces actually forming your own opinion on the matter at hand by engaging with the best pro and con arguments.
But you originally wrote that doing this kind of update based on group demographics/characteristics was a "pretty good reason". Now you seem to be saying that it requires exercising actual judgment. But if you were going to do that, why wouldn't you just evaluate the actual positions/arguments? The only reason I can see to do that is if doing that is not feasible, but evaluating the argument is. I don't think there's many cases like that.
I said it's good reason to not be *that kind of leftist*; I think with the usual all-else-equal caveats that continues to hold.
I think the part that requires judgement is deciding how far to extend that into associated groups.
I assume the Infinite Scroll like is meant to go to this article: https://www.infinitescroll.us/p/in-search-of-furious-liberals
Oops!
This is incredibly disingenuous, you act as if there is literally zero ties between behavior and policy positions, but that just isn't the case. The annoying rage based behavior is because of their policy ideas of for example seeing words they disagree as "violence," and literally a genocidal threat to their lives. They are so hopped on their ideology which is the superstructure of their policies that they feel justified in hitting you because you may not want fags all up in your grill. So no I don't buy your distinction at all, immoral root ideas lead to both immoral behavior and immoral policy prescriptions, which yes guess what is annoying.
I've sometimes expressed views that (by my lights, at least!) are liberal but not perfectly woke, and have been told by woke people that I must have been triggered by someone annoying or just be anxious about my social position, etc. (e.g., in a discussion of race-based AA in hiring, where my interlocutor was for and I was against, he said, "don't worry, *you'll* still get a job!"). My sense is that a lot of people form beliefs as a result of emotional reactions like those you describe and just assume that others are doing the same thing (or else can't fathom people disagreeing with them on the basis of normative reasons, and so assume that their opponents must have formed their beliefs in response to non-rational stimuli). Sad!
It actually doesn't matter what policy positions left-wingers adopt if they can't be trusted to implement those positions faithfully and instead continually abuse their power in almost every position they've held and continue to hold in society today.
From the obviously partisan attacks on Republicans coming from our elite institutions (from social media censoring conservative views to FBi agents texting their loved ones about how they are going to get Trump after the people voted him in), to lies about the Covid pandemic (censoring concerns about a lab leak, being two-faced about masks, and trying to keep lockdowns in place - especially in our children's schools - far longer than most people originally agreed to), to the insistence on re-instituting racist and sexist discrimination (even including racial segregation in some cases, like with special graduation ceremonies for minorities at Harvard) despite all that having being plainly illegal since the Civil Rights Act of 1965 (yet endured because of activist judges who enabled left-wing racism and sexism, not only by looking the other way, but also sometimes by actively interpreting civil rights law so that white people or men have to pass a higher bar in order to prove their rights have been violated - which in effect denied them equal rights).
The problem with the left isn't that they are annoying. It's that they are untrustworthy, power-hungry, moral busybodies who cannot even admit when it's the terrible policies they actually implement that are making them unpopular (e.g. with young men). The above sort of stuff is what people mean when they say "the left has gone crazy" and the reason it sounds like a judgment of their character is because it is, and their character matters.
But equally, it doesn't matter how bad leftists are if Trump is worse! And you have to actually make the affirmative argument that that's the case, not just gesture at what annoys you about Trump!
BB's point (which I agree with) is that Donald Trump also abuses power very badly--much more egregiously and often than (mainstream elected) members of the "left"! So, "these guys can't be trusted with power" doesn't obviously translate into "support Republicans" unless you can argue they are *more* trustworthy. Now, sure, you can try make that argument, but just saying "these guys suck" proves nothing: the other guys might well suck more!
I mostly agree about Trump. I've never voted for him. I agree that character matters on both sides, and that the character of the average politician sucks on both sides.
What I don't agree about is that the average Republican candidate is nearly as bad with regard to abusing power as the average Democrat. I can't think of any obvious analogies from my lifetime to the above left-wing sins but for the right. When was the last time Republicans tried to explicitly discriminate in government benefits, college education, and hiring for elite jobs against Black people? Are there activist Republican judges looking away while they do this, or intentionally making it more difficult for Black people to defend their civil rights in court, when it comes to racial discrimination? Even when it comes to judicial activism, an actual activist right-wing Supreme Court would have banned abortion via the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment, instead of letting people vote on the issue (as they always should have been able to).
The only thing that I can think of that even comes close is right-wing gerrymandering, and this is one of the issues where the left talks the talk but mostly does not walk the walk. Left-wingers gerrymander almost as much, and the times they don't it's often because their "independent" redistricting boards grant the Democrats disproportionate seats regardless.
I suspect you won't agree with me about this. That's fine, we can have good faith disagreements about the trustworthyness of various politicians. Still, notice how different this discussion is from the one BB is having, above. I think he really missed the ball on this. Politics is not fundamentally about having the right views, it's a messy process which requires trusting other people to implement their promised policy and adapt when necessary to changing circumstances. We can have good faith discussions about this process, but only if we first take seriously the idea that we must monitor the people involved, and not merely their ideas. This includes monitoring for the crazy people and who they seem to have sway over (and, yes, I include Trump's sway in this).
>When was the last time Republicans tried to explicitly discriminate in government benefits, college education, and hiring for elite jobs against Black people? Are there activist Republican judges looking away while they do this, or intentionally making it more difficult for Black people to defend their civil rights in court, when it comes to racial discrimination
Multiple Republican states are under court orders to stop discriminating against black voters by gerrymandering them. Texas in particular had public officials testify in court that their map did not discriminate against black voters (the case is ongoing) and now Abbot is using a DoJ memo to say that their map is discriminatory and needs ro be redrawn. https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/court-records-show-texas-flipped-its-stance-on-use-of-race-in-drawing-maps/
>their "independent" redistricting boards grant the Democrats disproportionate seats regardless.
This is mostly not true but regardless, Republicans unanimously voted against the For The People Act which would have ended gerrymandering. It's also uniquely corrupt for the President to direct states to gerrymander to hold onto power. https://gerrymander.princeton.edu/redistricting-report-card/
Look, if I were a one-iasue voter and my one issue was gerrymandering, I'd vote Democrat, but if you examine the bill in question it would just require states to have "independent" commissions, which we will have to agree to disagree on.
(I hope you see why telling us right-wingers, who have decades of experience now dealing with left-wing takeovers of "neutral" institutions, that you will create a new neutral institution controlling one of the most important parts of our voting procedures where both sides have strong incentives to corrupt it and then you insisting that it totally would not get taken over...for sure this time...would be a hard sell.)
The bill also includes a bunch of other things Republicans would normally disagree with, such as steps towards D.C. statehood, attempts to limit the Supreme Court in an obviously partisan response to Trump's additions, forced disclosure of campaign donors, forced disclosure of the President and Vice-President's tax returns, government funding matching and thus multiplying small campaign donations (I believe by a 6:1 ratio), the ability for felons who have served their time to vote, increased flexibility for mail-in and electronic ballets, and more.
Frankly, I'd be surprised if the Democrats were even seriously trying to pass the bill, with all these provisions in it. Did they reasonably expect Republicans to sign off on all that for essentially nothing in return (a guarantee about paper ballots being used at the polling place, maybe?). It looks a lot more like one of those bills Congress makes to sound good to their side, rather than engaging with the other side in the ways necessary to actually legislate.
That isn't to say I disagree with all of the above provisions (though, of course a number of them I do disagree with), it's just to say that pretending opposition to the bill is only about gerrymandering is disingenuous in this case.
>I hope you see why telling us right-wingers
I don't because conservatives are delusional. I hate woke shit but there is nothing comparable to what conservatives do once they're in power. Your fucking leader falsified electoral vote certificates and led a months long pressure campaign against his VP to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Algorithmic redistricting is easy to verify mathematically that it minimizes bias.
>Did they reasonably expect Republicans to sign off on all that
Republicans can identify parts of an omnibus bill they like and request it to be pulled out individually and vote on it. In fact, they did that when they voted down Lankford's immigration bill and tried to blame it on the Ukraine funding being a part of it. They even still passed the Ukraine funding when it was done individually, because Republican politicians are schizophrenic and their voters are too stupid to ever expect them to do anything in government except obstruct proceedings.
I hate to say anything in defense of right-wingers, but I think you're missing the meaning of what they're saying, because they aren't expressing it as an academic article. To oversimplify for a short comment, they mean something very roughly like "These people belong to an enemy tribe which will try to harm me, so I want to hurt them as much possible".
In the recent Trump post, that's what many Trump supporters were saying in effect was their rationale for supporting Trump. You may not like that answer, but it is an answer.
Yes. Progressives being annoying is downstream of the actual reasons I oppose them, they're actively trying to harm me, and so I support preemptively harming them (politically). This is why Trump Bad articles are not convincing to me, I don't care that he's a terrible president and or person generally, he's an excellent political tool for my purposes.
The point is, if Trump is a terrible president, he might actually harm you too! Even if inadvertently, or as collateral damage.
So if the point is just to avoid being harmed, you need to be sure voting Trump actually nets out to better for you than just supporting generic Republicans or whatever. And this requires an affirmative argument; pointing out the lefties are bad doesn't get you all that far.
It's the same reason why I, though basically on the left, wouldn't vote for Zombie Joe Stalin to stick it to annoying MAGA folks..."those guys suck, and this guy will stick it to them" is actually a pretty stupid thing to vote on without any further analysis.
I understand that, I've decided that it's worth the risk. Really, I only mentioned the Donald in order to tie back to a previous comment of mine regarding why attacking him isn't very persuasive to many of his voters.
There needs to a saying somewhere between "Game recognizes game" and "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it". Something conveying: we're on opposite sides of a fence, and may not like or even respect each other, but we both agree that there is a fence and where we are in relation to it.
Yeah, I get very frustrated at this seeming inability for a lot of the left of center commentary sphere to grasp that many Trump voters went in with open eyes to his flaws and made a perfectly rational choice given their own interests, that they (the left) are the ones who don't understand the motivations of their opposites very well, or at all in many cases.
Yes, they are delusional and run on pure tribalism. That's why they're happy to believe we never went to the moon because radiation in the Van Allen Belt would kill astronauts and support DOGE cutting NASA, why they think vaccines are deadlier than the diseases they protect against and support RFK, why they think the 2020 election was stolen when Trump was in power but not any other election when a Democrat was in power and a Republican won, etc. The next Democrat President should actually abuse their power and target the law firms that struck deals with Trump, detain the people behind the AEA flights and the Republican politicians who visited CECOT in Guantanamo Bay without due process, revoke Fox News's broadcast license if they don't have bias monitors appointed, etc. The violence of the state coming down on them full stop is the only thing with a chance to break them out of their delusions.
I think there may be an ideological asymmetry here - conservatism ideologically entails preserving the status quo (caveat - not complete stasis as generally existing societies have some change built in), whereas non-conservative positions entail moving away from the status quo.
As such the conservative outcomes are determined mostly by the accumulated character of society over the last centuries/millennia, they are less impacted by the character of modern conservatives.
Non-conservative outcomes are more impacted by the characteristics of present non-conservatives, tradition doesn't get a say.
Because of this plausibly the annoyingness/vices of non-conservatives matters more than the annoyingness/vices of conservatives as they have a bigger impact on political outcomes.
This is why I just call myself a member of the Good Guy Party because by definition my policies are good and anyone who disagrees with me is a Bad Guy, regardless of what my actual policies are.
Come on. I've never heard of anyone moving right because a leftist chewed with their mouth open or forgot to mute their phone in a movie theater.
The "irritating" behavior you're dismissing here mostly falls into 3 categories:
1) expressing aggressive personal distaste for groups that the listener identifies with ("straight cis white men," "suburban soccer moms," "Americans," "Anyone who dislikes getting screamed at on the subway," etc.)
2) hypocrisy ("your toddler needs to wear a mask to go to the park, but huge protests pose no risk whatsoever," "violent criminals deserve infinite sympathy and second chances, but anyone who made an edgy joke in 2004 is beyond saving," etc.)
3) flat out lying ("sex isn't binary," "Biden's at the top of his game," "affirmative action is not ever in conflict with fairness to individuals," etc.)
I still consider myself leftish, but only because conservatives are somehow still managing, by my lights, to be slightly worse. I've got a lot of sympathy for people who weigh things a little differently and end up on the other side.
It's not possible for a single human being to become an expert on every area of policy dispute. Sooner or later we all hit the limits of our knowledge and have to trust someone else's judgment.
And progressives have spent the last decade or so screaming their untrustworthiness in people's faces. It's not irrational for people to take that into account!
I don't totally disagree with you; I think it can (obviously!) make sense to grit your teeth and vote for a party that is not aligned (in its rhetoric or alliances) with your political tribe and whose supporters you generally find objectionable, simply because its concrete policy positions are better. But I think you are too flippantly dismissing the case for rejecting left parties based on the conduct of leftists (and ignoring concrete policy platforms).
If I wanted to steelman that case, I would argue that lefty activists who push people away from the left are frequently:
* not merely annoying, but profoundly destructive to valuable institutions and valuable cultural norms
* emboldened by the sense that their ideological coalition has power, such that right-wing political successes will cow them and stop their harmful acts
* likely to be deterred from doing bad things (as you argue they SHOULD be in this essay!) if this observably causes people to vote right-wing
* allied with left-wing parties, who if elected will use their power to sponsor crazy lefty groups with government funding and will refrain from legal action against such groups
That is, there are real, substantial harms that can be curtailed by right-wing political parties scoring victories *regardless of any of the specifics of their policy platform*, simply because of the effect that such victories have on the culture war.
The case for not acting on these considerations is IMO that these considerations are greatly outweighed by concrete issues of policy, not they don't exist!
You know the problem, BB? The rules for figuring out the truth are *really* different from those for convincing people of it.
Rationalists have put a huge amount of effort into untangling cognitive biases and getting better at seeing the smoke, as Jacob Falkovich put it.
But those things don't really help for convincing people. All that fancy language is bad in anti-intellectual country like the USA, and even in the rest of the world appeals to authority and emotion may be logical fallacies but they're essential in persuasion. Artists can convince people without any logic by telling stories that make you feel things; Will and Grace did more for gay people than a thousand Equal Rights Campaign position papers. Nobody remembers Roger Bacon or Albertus Magnus except for students of the period, but everyone knows Chaucer and Shakespeare.
Most people are mentally weak! Politics is largely tribal, and in our stupid two-party system people think about what 'tribe' they want to join. And annoying people can have a *huge* effect on which tribe people want to join, especially as annoying people are going to annoy people to differing degrees.
How is the USA an anti-intellectual country? Intellectuals disproportionately live in the USA.
Look at the way smart people are portrayed in media; even Batman has to make up for it being able to beat people up. Compare the way women view academic success in the USA vs East Asia. Look at the way school is seen as unmasculine everywhere below the upper middle class.
The USA has 350 million people and is culturally dominant, I'm not surprised it would have a fair number of intellectuals. Doesn't mean they're respected the same way they are in, say, France.
The US is 4 percent of the world popultion and 40 percent of Nobel prize winners; over 50 percent if you only include science and economics. It has unarguably the best universities, and arguably the two best cities for intellectuals (NYC & SF). Probably over half of the world's top 1000 influential intellectuals live in the US.
Maybe your point is not about intellectuals themselves, but the attitudes of the median person? This doesn't make sense to me because the median person is anti-intellectual in every country on earth.
Maybe your point is about the median person's attitudes towards education? The US is top 10 in college attendance and top 5 in grade school standardized scores. adjusted for demographics (which might not be appropriate here).
Americans have the best intellectuals, the best universities, and are among the most educated people on earth. None of that is negated because nerds got bullied on American TV in the 90s.
I think what's going on with these examples is sometimes a bit more reasonable than you think. WRT the blue-haired hypothetical person who calls you a nazi for saying "master bedroom," it should be reminded that these people sometimes organize campaigns to get people fired, pressure private institutions and political leaders to adopt censorship policies, and so on. Normal democratic leaders are much more reasonable than the hypothetical blue-haired crazy person but I can certainly understand the fear of republicans who worry about the willingness of democratic leaders to cater to the fringe. They might then vote for a republican because republicans can be relied upon to oppose it when the blue-haired person tries to do something practical to enforce their (extremely trigger-happy) view of ethics. To be honest, I do think the far left can be pretty authoritarian at times, which in an era where far-left politics became mainstream left politics at a pretty fast pace, presented long-term concerns.
Of course, in practice, the republican response has been to elect someone who threatens to enact an authoritarian society *immediately* (sanctioning lawyers for arguing against you in court, seriously???), which is not an improvement.
If you are trying to persuade, you have to be persuasive. Anything distracting about your presentation reduces your persuasiveness. That's just how the human mind works. Would you buy an expensive automobile from a guy wearing a clown costume? Certainly not. Would you "buy" an argument from someone whose every tic and twitch screams "I am a poorly adjusted person?" Probably not. Their fitness as a person, hence a thinker, seems substandard, so ideas originating with that poorly adjusted person are automatically downgraded in the listener's mind.
I think I see what you are doing. You are a bright young man just kind of figuring out this life thing, and trying to come up with rules for how to navigate the matrix. You've found one, "Liberalism is good" and you're trying to convince others of its rightness.
Unfortunately, at this moment in history that's a hard sell because liberalism, leftism, whatever you want to call it, has gone off the rails. Unraveling this failure would take a lot more space than is available in this forum. But it is real. It is also unfortunate, because the current sorry state of liberalism taints a pround legacy. Conservatism, which is really just realism, is ascendant because of this disintegration.
I was a proud, loud, liberal for the first 40 years of my life. And when I was your age, I was LOT like you. At one point I was member in good standing of the innermost inner circle of the Liberal firebrand Molly Ivins, who at her peak was a national celebrity. You may not have heard of her because she died when you were three. I was actually headed to her bedside when I got the notification that she had died.
Molly was actually far more subtle in her thinking than her public persona, and writings, indicated. But she had a schtick and it made her a pretty good living, and you do what you have to. But her reputation made her attractive to lots of people who were actual zealsots, hardcore, firebreathing, take-no-prisoners types who would cut you off at the knees if you showed even the slightest hint of openness to opposing viewpoints. Shocked the hell out of me, offended me, and broke the spell. "These people are nuts," was my chief takeaway.
Even in the nicest of them was at least a hint of reflexive combativeness. I had to watch my tongue when around them, which was tiresome, because I did not have to be that way with Molly. It rocked my world, and started me down the pathway to center-rightedness, where I have since dwelled.
Conservatism is essentially reactive. It just kind of waits in the wings, watching, until something seems off, at which point it speaks up. You won't hear from it unless and until something goes wrong or raises a red flag. it's fine with actual progress, not so fine with bad ideas or policies enacted in the name of prgoress that check certain boxes but produce horrendous results.
Most people who identify as conservative are actually classical liberals: They value freedom, the right to be left alone, the right to speak and associate freely. Continuity, presevation of what's good. Conscientiousness, caution. After all, the root word of "conservative" is "conserve."
You have to work a little harder to sell an idea to a conservative, because that person will be looking for the weaknesses and downsides in yoru argument.
Nothing ventured nothing gained versus Nothing ventured nothing lost. Both have value. A thinking, mature person doesn't hew to any one ideology. They will take things on a case by case basis.
Would you like to have a youtube or substack live debate about Trump today?
I wrote you a rather tart rejoinder to your post about Trump of a few days ago, that I would rather like to retract. At the time I was about half-lit and feeling my oats, as they say. Your piece was very well put together, and well worth the read. Just wanted to say that.
I'm flattered that you ask. Today no bueno but like the idea very much. My email is reddhedd58@gmail.com.
" Would you buy an expensive automobile from a guy wearing a clown costume?"
We just elected a President who does bronzing on his face so thickly it's like clown makeup, and rambles and blusters like he's a wresting promoter. While he may not be literally wearing a clown costume, he's deliberately adopted the aesthetics of professional wrestling, and empirically, it works for him.
But you must have lived through some other country's history if you aren't aware of all the racism, sexism, homophobia, etc which has been part of conservatism. Every bit of social progress here has been fought bitterly, sometimes violently, by conservatives. And when they lose, they turn around and pretend they were for it all along.
https://williamhogeland.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/the-national-review-racist-writing-and-the-legacy-of-william-f-buckley-jr/
I'll grant you that the makeup is odd. I have read that it is to cover major sun damage, which is sort of reasonable. I wish he'd stop it. There are numerous things I dislike about the man and that is one of them.
If you define conservatism as "just say no," then it's no sweat to come up with examples in which it has failed to serve humanity. But that's a weak definition based in your personal disapproval. Edmund Burke-style conservatism is principled rejection of that which threatens liberty and the commonweal. That's my definition.
One example: Fifteen years ago when gay marriage was being debated. Conservatives (and moderates like Obama) opposed it, mostly on the grounds that it redefined one of the most universal societal institutions, something that ought not be done lightly. Conservatives were fine with "civil unions," which gave all the same rights but preserved this vital core institution, which fostered generational continuity, intact.
Lingering just out of frame, though, was the understanding that the people pushing the issue the hardest had no intention whatsoever of marrying their lovers, nor did they really and truly believe that "love is love." They just wanted a wedge issue they could use to torment the "breeders," as they called them, and gain political leverage. But starry-eyed liberals didn't get this, so they just chanted "love is love" over and over until the other side gave up. It wasn't a disaster, but it wasn't a great leap forward either. And gay divorce rates are through the roof. My GF is a matrimonial lawyer, so I hear all the stories. Much civic turmoil for little if any payoff.
And then of course there's abortion, the single most contentious issue since slavery, probably. the Liberal stance is: "reproductive freedom," period, a stirring concept that could be set to music. The conservative position, a little more nuanced, goes something like "the elective and violent destruction of a developing human life is a horrific thing. Yes it may sometimes be necessary, but maybe we shouldn't treat it as a heroic act of resistance."
But let's invert the earlier definition and describe liberalism as "just say yes," which is exactly how some people think. It's a terrible idea that leads to utter chaos in a hurry. But that's a lousy definition, too.
Here's my beef. For some years now there have been people, lots of them, who given a chance, would have torn the nation to the ground, burned what's left, and driven a stake through the heart of anything that smacked of traditional America. And they would have done it under the banner of Liberalism. That's the far fringe of the Democrat Party right now in a nutshell.
Change may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean you give in to all forms of it. Cancer is a form of change. Invasions are a form of change. Conservatism is the principle of managed change.
I think it is worth making a bit of a distinction between the party-alignment type issues and the vegan issue. Safe to say that making decisions about voting on such based on being annoyed with a few people (most likely a miniscule sample of the population of people you have never even met, who you saw on social media) is some combination of pathetically weak-willed and batshit crazy. So is abandoning a political party/movement because of a few (former) allies were annoying. Deliberately eating the products of factory farming because vegans are annoying is similarly bad. However, abandoning veganism/animal rights/whatever *as a political movement / interest group* is a bit different.
There is a genuine "have a beer with" element to being part of that affiliation. And the annoyance comes not just from a few extremists or instances of developmentally stunted adolescent behavior amongst tens of millions of adherents. Rather, a fairly large portion of people who interact on the basis of their vegan self-identity are horrifically annoying (or worse), including a similar proportion of top opinion leaders. They not only alienate those who are looking for an excuse to be annoyed by them and thus ignore the moral issues, but also people who are among the few percent that are most inclined to agree with their cause. Pretty much all of us who were vegan influencers in the 1990s (before we had the awful term "influencer") want nothing to do with the social movement anymore, and hesitate to self-identify as vegan.
On another tangent, you note that this motivation seldom drives someone to reject the right-wingers in favor of the left, which may simply reflect that real facts have such a left-leaning bias that this always fills someone's mind as their real motivation. But I can cite my experience in dealing with people who strongly identity as libertarians (usually in the context of things that I and other sensible analysts write which happen to appeal to that ilk), that they make me absolutely not want to identify as libertarian, even in contexts where that is technically accurate. I attribute that to them seeming utterly clueless about the world, not merely annoying, but that is splitting hairs.
Additionally, I and many others refuse to identify as environmentalist or such, even though it might describe our beliefs, because so many in the environmental movement are comfortable well-off hypocrites who just advocate for others to make sacrifices and for magic to happen, rather than being serious. Again, not quite just annoyance, but in the neighborhood.
The point is many “left the left” people don’t leave the left as ideology, they just move their cultural baggage on the right, creating bizarre phenomena as the “woke right”. Just think about those former Bernie bros turned trad Larpers