Red tribe, blue tribe
Here’s a wonderful post by a liberal guy who’s also a shrink, on the subject of the divide between Red and Blue America, and in particular the attitude of Blue towards Red (hat tip: commenter “carl in atlanta”):
The worst reaction I’ve ever gotten to a blog post was when I wrote about the death of Osama bin Laden. I’ve written all sorts of stuff about race and gender and politics and whatever, but that was the worst.
I didn’t come out and say I was happy he was dead. But some people interpreted it that way, and there followed a bunch of comments and emails and Facebook messages about how could I possibly be happy about the death of another human being, even if he was a bad person? Everyone, even Osama, is a human being, and we should never rejoice in the death of a fellow man…
…I genuinely believed that day that I had found some unexpected good in people ”“ that everyone I knew was so humane and compassionate that they were unable to rejoice even in the death of someone who hated them and everything they stood for.
Then a few years later, Margaret Thatcher died…
You know, you know, you know what’s coming, don’t you? And you’re right:
And on my Facebook wall ”“ made of these same “intelligent, reasoned, and thoughtful” people ”“ the most common response was to quote some portion of the song “Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead”. Another popular response was to link the videos of British people spontaneously throwing parties in the street, with comments like “I wish I was there so I could join in”. From this exact same group of people, not a single expression of disgust or a “c’mon, guys, we’re all human beings here.”
I gently pointed this out at the time, and mostly got a bunch of “yeah, so what?”, combined with links to an article claiming that “the demand for respectful silence in the wake of a public figure’s death is not just misguided but dangerous”.
And that was when something clicked for me…
I know that “click” all too well. It’s quite an “aha” moment:
…[M]y hypothesis, stated plainly, is that if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists ”“ it’s the Red Tribe.
Well, we know that, don’t we? And I certainly know it—now. But back when I was a member of the Blue Tribe, I didn’t know it, didn’t feel it. It was a complete surprise to me when something of the sort began to happen to me at their hands. And perhaps that naivete, that surprise, that initial lack of outgroup feeling, was one of the reasons I was able to change my political affiliation when presented with certain evidence.
It’s not that, when I was a liberal, I was all warm and cozy with conservatives. I’m not even sure that I knew any. And I think I may have had some misconceptions and/or negative feelings about them. When pressed, I might have even voiced ideas like “in general they’re not as smart or well-educated as liberals,” or “they’re not very culturally sophisticated compared to liberals.” But in some basic way I just didn’t care very much. Conservatives didn’t really rile me, get my goat, set my teeth on edge. They were “other,” but not so other that I couldn’t listen to them. And when I started to listen, and realized they made more sense for the most part, in many ways, than the liberals I’d known all my life, they still remained a bit “other.”
I’m getting used to you guys, truly I am. But most of my best friends are still liberals—and it works fine as long as we don’t talk about politics. I still don’t know a lot of dyed-in-the-wool non-changer conservatives on a social level; just don’t meet many. I still live in almost (but not quite) as much of a bubble as the author of the piece. After reading it, though, it occurs to me that maybe at this point I don’t really have a political in-group. I’m outside all the groups, except maybe the changer group, which is so small as to be almost non-existent. It doesn’t bother me or feel like a betrayal of my group to criticize liberals, although for most of my life I was one of them, or at least passed as one of them. But I seem to retain enough residual otherness compared to conservatives that I feel hardly a flicker of upset when I criticize them, either. Likewise libertarians.
It’s all rather odd. Maybe the price of being a changer is to be neither fish nor fowl, and not really a member of any political group. And that’s okay with me.
Maybe the price of being a changer is to be neither fish nor fowl, and not really a member of any political group.
Yea, it’s called being an individual by changing yourself, refusing to change the world instead.
So long as people are part of an hierarchy, including America, they are only as good or evil as the hierarchy commands it. If they happen to belong to the Nazis, they become evil. If they’re in America, they get a better chance and break.
It’s just moral luck when people are part of the group mind.
Maybe the price of being a changer is to be neither fish nor fowl, and not really a member of any political group.
It’s also the price of being in a position to see what’s in front of one’s nose. It’s a constant struggle as Orwell noted. With one eye blind and one eye closed it’s impossible. Neither fish nor fowl; allegiance to neither Party; eyes wide open.
Listen to the end of Dennis Miller’s “America 180.”
He use to be a lib too.
His rant is basically don’t let the politicians get into your head and affect your relationships with others.
Easy to say, but tough to do especially when the left has clearly gone around the bend and are really harming America, viz, ACA and nothing response to ISIS.
…[M]y hypothesis, stated plainly, is that if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists — it’s the Red Tribe.
Which is why the POTUS has so often given me the impression that he dislikes Republicans much more than he does dictators or terrorists.
Gringo: Exactly.
The only friends I possess anymore are in the literary world, where only one opinion reigns as to Obama and what’s happening in either America or the world beyond. No debate or dissent is allowed on any point. The denizens of this world are completely incurious and remain unexposed to any ‘news’ which does not tell them what they already know.
Speaking for me [well, who else?],
I spend the vast majority of my energy, when dwelling on these sorts of things, criticizing the left, including their various and sundry foibles, hypocrisies, weaknesses, and so on — as well as their cockeyed ideas (using that term pretty loosely).
But I know that when confronted by one of my own “tribe” saying/writing/doing idiotic things, I’ll let him/her have it, too — but generally in private. I’d be happy to do it more outwardly, but given the present state of the culture war, I’m gonna stand with my tribesmen/women, at least outwardly. I’d rather that weren’t the case.
But I have digressed. I’m reminded of what one good friend (and whom I’ll call a paleoconservative) once said, when describing one particularly annoying member of our right-oriented “tribe”: “he’s a jackass, but he’s *my* jackass.” The idea was, yeah, he’s one of us good guys, but he’s a real jerk nonetheless, and often a detriment to our side in the process.
P.S. — he *was* a real jerk nonetheless. Happens.
Personally, I try to judge people by their actions. I can disagree with someone’s politics/opinions and respect their pov as long as its not beyond the pale. We have a few liberal neighbors that I consider closed minded and clueless about human nature, but they are good neighors and aside from politics, I enjoy socializing with them. My problem with the left is their death grip on the idea that utopia can be achieved if only humanity can be perfected by the magical mystery powers of the state.
parker: “My problem with the left is their death grip on the idea that utopia can be achieved if only humanity can be perfected by the magical mystery powers of the state.”
My problem with the Left is that they’re not really Utopian in the MLK “I Have a Dream” sense. They’re tribal with a Utopian disguise.
Eric,
I was opining on the running dog lackeys of the left, not the Ayers, Ches, Poll Pots, etc. of the left who are sadistic murderers hell bent on power
The leftists believe they are intellectually and morally superior. This is hubris or the sin of pride. To believe this you have to be willfully blind to the past century and the results of leftists ideas. You have to lie to yourself, i.e. be a hypocrite,
The liberal psychiatrist’s post gave me an Aristotilian “flash of insight”. I’m definitely one of Neo’s “you guys”; born and raised conservative (and a native southerner to boot). The fact (the Truth!) that to the Blue Tribe I and my fellow Red tribesmen are THE alpha outgroup – more loathsome “others”(enemies?) on a visceral, reptilian-brain level than even ISIS, et al – must now be integrated into my worldview. Wow.
Another thing he’s right about is that we’re all irredeemably tribal. So be it, amen.
Susan Sontag speaking to a group of (primarily) fellow Leftists in February, 1982:
“Imagine, if you will, someone who read only the Reader’s Digest between 1950 and 1970, and someone in the same period who read only The Nation or The New Statesman. Which reader would have been better informed about the realities of Communism? The answer, I think, should give us pause. Can it be that our enemies were right?”
Note that when she refers to ‘our enemies’, she doesn’t mean the Soviet Union or China, she means the American Right.
“I’m getting used to you guys, truly I am. But most of my best friends are still liberals–and it works fine as long as we don’t talk about politics.”
I’m trying to wrap my brain around this statement. I like Neo so please don’t take this wrong. My reaction is that this statement represents the “the pinnacle of intolerance.” It reminds me of the self styled cool kids in high school who went around with their noses up in the air thinking they are better than everyone else. As I said, don’t take this wrong. I don’t mean to be critical of Neo here. The fact that Neo is “getting used to us guys” means that she has become a genuinely tolerant human being while her “liberal” friends are still acting like stuck up adolescent bullies.
illuminati:
It was a joke. I thought that was clear from the “you guys.” Perhaps not.
But it is true that I still am getting used to the entire thing—meaning, identifying as a conservative.
…[M]y hypothesis, stated plainly, is that if you’re part of the Blue Tribe, then your outgroup isn’t al-Qaeda, or Muslims, or blacks, or gays, or transpeople, or Jews, or atheists — it’s the Red Tribe.
I have been saying for quite some time now that to this administration and the democrats in general, everything is politics. The only real fight they engage in is against domestic political opposition, i.e. anything not allied with them or of use to them. It is their religion. Anything that challenges their beliefs is not just a different or dissenting opinion, it’s heresy.
On that topic, I have a liberal co-worker who has said more than once that while he considers democrats as moral cowards, he considers republicans dumb, cowardly, and evil.
THey’d make great muslims…
“It was a joke. I thought that was clear from the “you guys.” Perhaps not.”
I wasn’t sure if it was a joke, but I did realize that Neo was not trying to be obnoxious. That’s why I went out of my way to be sure my statement was to be taken as a criticism of Neo. My criticism is directed at the “liberals” who believe they are tolerant and good but who despise conservatives but tolerate genuine evil like ISIS or Al-Qaeda.
Jokes are often a way to deal with truths which would otherwise be too emotionally laden to handle. For Neo it is the emotional trauma of identifying with the erstwhile out-group – to continue the high school analogy – the nerds and geeks. In making this transition, Neo has demonstrated genuine nobility of character.
Correction
Should read “that’s why I went out of my way to be sure my statement was NOT to be taken as criticism of Neo.
Fabulous post and great thread. As a changer myself, I resonate with what Neo is saying. I have both red and blue friends. I probably spend more time with blue friends, but it’s a relief to be able to talk about current events when I’m with my red friends. The real insight here is that we reds are the “other” for the blues. It’s true, and I’d never actually faced that.
Oh, there is certainly a red and blue tribe and, the blue tribe is in consensus that the red tribe is a far greater obstacle to their agenda than is any external enemy.
While the red tribe is split in its assessment of whether the greater threat lies internally or externally.
I vote for the blue tribe, as “a house divided cannot stand”.
Recently, I came across what MAY be a more sophisticated analysis of the determinative factors in what determines one’s membership in either tribe.
The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics (2014)
My qualification of “MAY” is because I haven’t fully digested the theory, nor its foundational arguments having not yet read the book. I do sense there to be validity in its premise but am yet uncertain that it is a determinative explanation for the differences between the red and blue tribes. At the very least however, it is food for thought and an original theory.
This theory also explains the three generation theory of wealth accumulation and dissolution, i.e. “clogs to clogs is only three generations”
In that the first generation, in a condition of scarcity, works their butts off to acquire resources and, having a mind-set that poverty ever lies in wait, even after having achieved great wealth, they continue to stay focused upon resourse accumulation. But by the third generation, having inherited great abundance and having never had to work a day in their lives, the perception is that the abundance is inexhaustible, leading to its dissolution.
“But most of my best friends are still liberals–and it works fine as long as we don’t talk about politics. ”
I have to ask you about this, Neo, in honest curiosity. Part of this sentence is also true for me– most of my friends are liberals, and we don’t talk about politics. But the last part of your sentence is not true for me: it does not work fine. It does not work fine for me to be in relationships that depend on silencing my true self, which if revealed, would be unacceptable. And then there’s respect, or the loss thereof –I watch them rationalize, I watch them deceive themselves, I watch them indulge themselves in hating the Reds while congratulating themselves on not being haters like those awful disgusting Reds, I see how even though they deeply want to be good, well-informed people and never intended to be instruments of harm, in fact almost everything they believe about the world and themselves is premised on denial and ignorance and cannot end well — but I must not say so, because We Don’t Talk About Politics. I must smile blankly and pretend and hide. And these are my friends (and relations and colleagues and boss . . . )
Maybe my friends are just more political than yours, so that politics is woven more inextricably into their lives — but I ask in all sincerity, how the heck do you make it work?
I thought his description of the Red Tribe was rather bigoted 😉 I certainly know folks who fit much of the description who are also Democrats, OK with gay marriage, and not creationists. I think a better dividing line, less overtly political, is type of work: intellectual vs manual vs on welfare. For this classification, something like accountant probably counts as manual or somewhere in between. Income might be an even better classifier as it ties in pretty well with culture.
Living in a neighborhood inhabited by working people is very different from living in a neighborhood of intellectual types. The low income areas are likely also more racially diverse on account of the fact that high income groups don’t include a lot of Hispanics and Blacks.
Mrs Whatsit
I watch them indulge themselves in hating the Reds while congratulating themselves on not being haters like those awful disgusting Reds.
Ain’t it the truth. We all can cite chapter and verse. The libs constantly proclaim that they aren’t haters- and will call you a hater simply for bringing up an inconvenient fact which destroys their argument. Yet these same libs who are so sure they are not haters will call some of their political opponents a term which originally meant testicle-licker [Teabagger]. But that isn’t being a hater that’s being funny. 🙂
Which in a nutshell helps explain why I bailed out long ago from the Demos and the libs. Thirty years ago it wasn’t difficult at all to see that self righteous hypocrite was a term that described many libs.
It is simply about intellectual honesty. You are hard pressed to find it from the Blues. It’s about “context” – not truth. The ends justify the means, Cloward-Piven, etc.
In describing Red/Blue theory of the ‘other’, it is generally a good idea to keep track of Marx, for he is ever present to some degree.
1) All humans are good.
2) Some humans act badly because of markets/money/capital.
3) Primitive humans have never seen markets/money/capital, and are good.
4) If primitives are bad, that is because they have been invaded by us, causing them to be bad.
5) If primitives are really really bad, that is an overreaction to us. It is us who is at fault for the primitives actions.
Bin Laden – bad – but not as bad as Thatcher, because she is closer to money and caused Bin Laden to be bad.
I’m pretty sure this whole sequence is the closest thing to completely wrong I’ve ever seen. Something not like 1+1=3, but rather like 1 + 1 = -100000
But some people really believe it and send out messages and propaganda trying to get others to believe it.
Mrs. Whatsit,
It does not work for me either. I, too, must silence my true self.
NEO, you should have said “Y’all” not “you guys” 😉
I don’t think that conservatives are as tribal as liberals. Politics isn’t everything to me (and, yes, I am a conservative). I already have a religion, and politics isn’t it. I don’t believe that any political leader is a god. Maybe this is why I can have liberal friends, though I hate to see how they are being duped.
Mrs Whatsit & Eve, if you just hate having to stifle you might try just saying “you know not everyone is as *accepting of or supports that point of view*
Of course you can add what you want to say instead of just calling it a *point of view*
It kind of gives others a peek at what you re about
without being very confrontational. Sometimes they will ask you more to draw you out or they may back off political rhetoric if they have an inkling you are not on board. I don t like to stifle, I don t think it’s healthy because your BP rises when having to listen to things that infuriate you. So give that a try
who knows you may find some friends that have been in the *closet* so to speak !
Opps there I go again, giving……. Tips !!!
nutshell
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/us/politics/showing-concern-for-the-president-even-while-criticizing-him-.html
This is the harsh truth.
There is truly no getting around it.
The David Horowitz-s, the Roger Simon-s, the neo-neocon-s (to a much lesser degree as reflected in her mind-change series, versus the published history of Horowitz and Simon), are essential and necessary elements of the destruction of a unique circumstance, the exceptional creation of a nation dedicated to true humanity, true freedom and true equality.
The messy history of humanity has almost always precluded the concept of humans regarded for their individual selves, meaning permitted to be free to make the inevitable mistakes human beings make and always will make.
The Horowitz, Simon, and neo neo-con folks could not, psychologically, permit their fellow human beings to be free. Whatever the reason (solipsism, egotism, family culture, weakness to propaganda, peer pressure, character-related concepts) the idea that an actual other human being should presumptively accorded respect was anathema. The supposed higher ideal, the thought that made them superior a priori, was the obstacle precluding them from looking at other human beings as human beings.
And in this, Horowitz, Simon and neo neo-con were being human beings. Lovable and forgivable human beings.
Nonetheless, there were too many Horowitz-s, Simon-s, neo neo-cons, a vast army of such, a true intellectually distinct barbarian horde. The state, the culture, the nation, the constant, daily images and ideas presented as the way it is, are controlling because of the horde.
It is very nice and thrilling that some articulate and thoughtful folks see the error of their ways. I love Darkness At Noon, and am truly grateful it was written. Is there a better description of what Horowitz, Simon and neo neo-con willed to happen, not knowing that was what they were doing?
Having been surrounded by Leftists my entire life, I know most are fabulous human beings on so many levels. And I realize that many of them are very clever, nice, expressive of concern, often sincerely.
The response to the innate morality every human being has is influenced and often overwhelmed by human life. Alas, the bell curve is supreme, it seems.
After the dam has broken, alas, the flood can not be stopped.
Penance is good. If it is penance. Still, retrospect has degrees of relevance.
Neo, that was a great article–I commented on your post before reading it, so now I’m commenting again, after reading it. The author might not realize that he has explained the fact that so few conservatives teach at universities, for example. And he has also explained why so many leftist governments end with concentration camps. Personally, I am fairly terrified by the fact that the “blue” side believes that I and people like me are more dangerous to this country and to the world than ISIS or the Ebola virus. That is a dangerous attitude in itself, because the real world (which contains ISIS and the Ebola virus) is really out there, whereas picturing me as a threat is a fantasy. Denying or distorting reality is actually dangerous.
The raw hatred shown by the left toward Margaret Thatcher when she died was and is disturbing to me. There are political figures whom I consider to be damaging to this country or to the world, but I can’t imagine myself throwing a party to celebrate their death or even hanging them in effigy. Ugh.
Finally, the essay was worth reading just for the discussion of “The Secret of Father Brown” at the beginning of it: the insight of that story is one that I have often pondered.
GB,
In my neck of the woods we shoot rabbits in the head with pellet guns and eat them; not only for their flesh, but because they are destructive to our gardens. Out here in flyover country we take our veg gardens seriously. I will not bore you with the quanity of the fruits of my labors in terms of pounds or bushels harvested. I will just say what I grow is mine and a significant portion of our winter/early spring diet. Not to mention what we can, pickle, or ferment.
Rabbits, like jihadists, are destructive beings that need to be harvested. In the latter case, I caution against consuming their flesh….. it is bound to be poisonous. Better to feed that to the hogs. Like atf agents, they make for tasty bacon.
Tonawanda:
I have no idea where you’re coming from.
I always had exactly the same attitude toward liberty that I do now. And unlike Simon and Horowitz, I never was on the left; I was actively anti-left. Although I was a Democrat, I was more of a Scoop Jackson type Democrat. And I was not especially political.
When I learned more about the right (particularly, the classical liberal point of view) I realized that fit with what I believed better than the Democratic Party did. There was no change of heart, it was more a change of information.
And in fact, there’s no “vast army” of Horowitzs or Simons. Would that there were! They are actually rare and precious, changers who know more (particularly Horowitz) about the left than most people on the left do, and can explain the left and criticize it especially effectively, having looked at politics from “both sides now.” I believe people such as Horowitz are especially feared by the left.
Great post. This passage particularly hit home:
.
So, now you have an idea what it’s like being a conservative intellectual in the gay community–particularly when you live within the confines of a big, blue city.
JamesB –
* Very nice summary of the structure of leftoid logic. I have commented in past threads about this topic, i.e., about the odd fact that lefties really do consider American conservatives to be THE biggest threat to the world, to such an extent that it gladdens their hearts more when a Thatcher dies than when a bin Laden does.
It is a remarkable phenomenon, one which can of course be found on both sides, but is far more characteristic of the left.
Another psychologist (I think he’s a psychologist) published a paper recently on a subject I have long been vocal about among my colleagues in the poly sci departments: the bigoted research on conservatives and authoritarianism.
The link is taken to be basically proved (see for example Jeffery Mondak’s book on the state-of-the-field, “Personality and Political Behavior”), and if one follows the thread of the research from its inception in Adorno et al.’s “Authoritarian Personality” to its crescendo today in the evolutionary psychology-based work of John Hibbing and others, nothing is clearer than the direction in which it is pointed:
Conservatives are innately authoritarian (and correlatively less intelligent), and liberals are innately not authoritarian (and correlatively more intelligent).
Oh, there’s a lot of throat-clearing and qualification, but that is the thrust of it, and the researchers know damn well the message they’re sending. They just can’t help themselves, given their prejudices. There aren’t all that many different ways policy can go based on such premises, and none of them are, ironically enough, non-athoritarian. Some form of eugenics, for example.
The problem isn’t so much the idea that there are such things as innate personality characteristics, but rather the way those characteristics are framed.
In any case, this psychologist finally got the bright idea that the whole thing was just a gigantic tautology – the field has defined authoritarianism as conservative beforehand, and then – lo and behold – discovered that conservatives are authoritarians. So he thought that maybe if we included some liberal symbols of The Good (environmental groups, etc.) in the surveys and asked the same questions of liberals that are routinely asked of conservatives, we’d probably get opposite reactions.
What a surprise – he was right.
And this is really amazing. Not the result itself, mind you, but rather this: that something which is so head-slappingly obvious to anyone who can fog a mirror has required forty years of “scientific” research to even begin to be suggested as possible – namely, that the urge to forcefully impose and submit unquestioningly to The Good in human/institutional form (“idolatry,” as an old book calls it) is a human characteristic, not a partisan one.
* Continuing with this theme, Ymarsakar makes a good point above when he notes that, to some extent, getting a good and decent “crowd” or “public” is a matter of dumb luck – they (we) happened to be born in a context in which the representative of The Good really is pretty damn good; consequently, when our urge to submit takes over, it is usually in the form of, say, a submission to Free Speech strictures in the First Amendment, or a submission on behalf of tolerance and rights rather than the reverse (which is what happens in the Muslim world).
I would only add that a close look at the relevant Federalist Papers would confirm that the Founders were keen to all of this. Indeed, from the perspective taken here, we could describe the American project in psychological terms as an institutional structure designed to render total submission both unlikely and – since it will occur at any rate – as harmless as possible. The Declaration and the federalism of Constitution are, in this sense, submission neutralizers and shock absorbers.
* So why is it, then, that we have reached the state we’re currently in? Why is it that we seem to have a political movement led and directed by people whose submissive/authoritarian tendencies have taken over to such an extent that they view their prime task in life as forming precisely what Madison warned was the number one danger to the republic: a permanent majority faction, knuckling under the hated minority?
This is where the Marxism comes in. The importation of Hegelian-Marxism into American political thinking was the great event in post-Civil War politics.
The way I’ve put it in the past is that American politics used to be divided more or less between Hamiltonian-style Federalists and Jefferson/Henry-style Anti-Federalists. The tension may have been healthy, but it was shattered by the Civil War. What happened with the importation of Marxism is that it displaced an Anti-Federalism thought to be discredited by the Douglases and Davises – by the South and by slavery – whereupon the Federalists uneasily absorbed what remained of the latter (which is where the fragile synthesis of the current conservative-paleo-libertarian right derives from).
Marx-infused progressivism, no matter how “Americanized” and watered-down it would become, could not pull entirely free of the Marxoid cast of mind, which is just as JamesB described. It is an ideology of industrial civilization rooted in a hatred for what powers industrial civilization, “money” for short.
More fully stated, “Money” means everything in bourgeois society that allows for its use in the project of development – bourgeois virtues (marriage, morality, personal responsibility), bourgeois political philosophy (including “rights”), and bourgeois religion (Judeo-Christian Biblical religion).
It took some decades for these implications to become fully clear to the progressive mind, as we can see from the confused evangelical progressivism of a William Jennings Bryan, or even a Teddy Roosevelt, but once the poison was in the stream, it was only a matter of time before everyone who drank from it was contaminated. Charles Kesler has dealt with some of this in his notion of the three waves of progressivism.
* In consequence, what we get instead of a dynamic division between more “nationalist” Federalism and more “state-based” Anti-Federalism, both essentially pro-American, is a corrosive war between a fractious pro-American Federalist/Anti-Federalist right and a lockstep anti-American Marxoid-progressive left.
Utopianism/secular religion (my nodal point) and tribalism (Eric’s nodal point) – deeply related but not exactly the same – have cut loose a nihilistic submission to idols that brooks no competitors.
And here we are. The truly Tribal Ones hating themselves as projected in the form of the Tribal Conservative Other, a perverse expression of the guilt they feel for their implication in the bourgeois Money System.
The story of the Roosevelt revolution. Some here have probably read this. Should be of interest to all. It helps to know where you’ve been if you want your republic back. I had no clue before I read this. This is sort of like the secret knowledge. Yes, that is what the left has done to us. Taken away our understanding of our own history. It is very well written. Give it a try, please.
The People’s Pottage
by Garet Garrett
Forward
The Revolution Was
Ex America
Rise of Empire
The three essays brought together in this book, entitled respectively, The Revolution Was, Ex America, and Rise of Empire, were first published as separate monographs by The Caxton Printers. They were written in that order, but at different times, as the eventful film unrolled itself. They are mainly descriptive. They purport to tell what happened and how it happened, from a point of view in which there is no sickly pretense of neutralism. Why it happened is a further study and belongs to the philosophy of history, if there is such a thing; else to some meaning of experience, dire or saving, that has not yet been revealed.
–G. G. Garrett
“I consider THE PEOPLE’S POTTAGE, by Garet Garrett the greatest book of this generation. I know of no other 174 pages of printed matter so provocative of righteous anger. I wish every adult American would read it.”
–J. B. Matthews
http://voluntarysociety.org/conditioning/misc/peoplespottage.html
I was struck by the improvement in the Irish situation. The IRA hated the English as much as Arabs hate Israelis, but they eventually got over it. They buried the hatchet for the sake of their country and children.
I would like to put aside any animosity toward leftists, but like the Palestinian/Israelis themselves, there can be no rapprochement when the other side is obstinate.
So instead, I find myself nursing a growing hatred for the left. I hate them for what they’re making us become in order to fight them.
I’ll make exceptions for people who seem to be of good will, but on the left these days they seem to be an endangered species.
It does not work fine for me to be in relationships that depend on silencing my true self, which if revealed, would be unacceptable.
I agree, Mrs. Whatsit. And I’m getting closer and closer to the point of just speaking my damn mind and letting the chips fall Where They May.
I’m also a lot less “tolerant” of people who, for instance, let their teenage son put a 2-foot by 4-foot poster of Chairman MAO on his bedroom wall, and connive to get him into Canada to avoid fighting for his country (hey, let those stupid gung-ho Americans do all the fighting and dying! yeah, that’s NOBLE).
/spit
I don’t see the divide as between “conservatives” and “liberals” (terms, IIRC, devised by our enemies) as between Americans and American-loathing Leftists.
Americans as distinct from “U.S. Persons” (as Comrade Zero calls us). Who believe in our Great Experiment, our Exceptional Government model; our Freedom.
Versus the True Authoritarians: the pro-totalitarian Left. (Boy, they have some nerve, saying those who fight for freedom are the most “authoritarian.” What idiots.)
I guess I am lucky that I never belonged to a tribe. My friendships have always been based on personal relationships, and I have always avoided groups that presumed a line of thought. Some of this has been conscious, like not wanting to share an apartment when I moved to Phiily after college. I did not want to have to my acquaintances and guests subjected zo a group filter. Even today, I have turned down invitations to join book clubs etc. because I don’t want anyone else to tell me what I should read or how I should interpret what I do read. I’ve always wanted to experience things on my own, which has given me an incredibly rich life. And because I didn’t represent a group, I have had all sorts of people be very open with me, which has given me insights into what is really going on behind the social facades. I can take almost anyone on a one-to-one basis, but I’m very happy not to belong to a group. Maybe that’s why I love Neo and her commenters. We share what we want of our ideas and don’t go into other aspects of our personal lives. We are truly free here.
}}} Which is why the POTUS has so often given me the impression that he dislikes Republicans much more than he does dictators or terrorists.
He likes dictators. They have the power to do things he can only dream of. In this, he is like most postModern liberals.
I’ll point everyone to an old essay by the illustrious Bill Whittle, from his erstwhile website, Eject! Eject! Eject!.
Bill has given up the long-form essay for video, which is a shame. While his videos are excellent, he was probably the best long-form political essayist so far this century.
But that’s water under the bridge. Even though the website is gone, it’s still available via The Wayback Machine. So here is the link:
RAFTS
If you like it, by all means, click the “Main” link at the top, then look at the right hand sidebar, where there are other links to some of his other essays (note that there are TWO listings, the ones in his book and the one only on the site) So look just below the first list for more…
In particular, I recommend:
TRIBES
TRINITY (part 1)
TRINITY (part 2)
SEEING THE UNSEEN Part 1
THE WEB OF TRUST
A certain columnist who’s name is toxic, even in some red circles, covers this well with his “Cold Civil War ” meme. I live in deep blue New England- in a university town to boot, and the visceral hatred for, for example, Southerners, suburbanites, and the denizens of flyover country is obvious to me. I’m also a history teacher, and work in a public school. I’m amused by the brew-ha-ha over the new AP US History curriculum- all it does is enshrine the way US History is mostly taught anyway- what the above named columnist has called the “black armband school of American History”. At work I usually speak my mind- there are still a number of my liberal colleagues who are not consumed by “red hatred”, but in social situations, particularly functions at my wife’s work, I (call me a coward if you will) mostly keep my mouth shut. Like Neo I’ve shifted politically- although I was practically a communist in my youth- 10 years of teaching/ living in New York started me on my journey rightward.
After reading the post, it occurs to me that the motivation guiding beliefs is essential. Does one want to know what is true? Or does one want to “fit in”, succeed professionally, belong to a certain group or club?, etc etc. Jesus said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” But St. Paul states that “we see through a glass darkly..”, so searching for and arriving at what is true is difficult. I find myself thankful that I was raised to be comfortable not “fitting in”. I am friends with the “in crowd”, but not one of them (speaking of my church friends). Among my husband’s family, we are the only members of the “Red Tribe”, but we host the majority (waning in frequency as time goes on) of any family gatherings. Our clients are almost exclusively Blue Tribe–one percenters, all. We have dear friends (like family) that are liberal Jews and I am completely comfortable expressing my thoughts to them. (The one time our friend–the patriarch of the family used the term, “white slave holders” referring to our Founders, I blew up, telling him (a white man, mind you) that I never want to hear him use “white man” in a derogatory way in my presence again. That I took it as an insult to every man in my life that I hold in the highest esteem…my deceased grandfather, father, my husband and my 2 sons. He backed down. We are still close friends. As for our liberal family, the one member who would fit in nicely with the psychiatrist’s group of 150 friends has tried to bait me into political discussions on more than a few occasions. I never take the bait. I know his intention is not to persuade me or to understand my point of view, but to skirmish. Mrs Whatsit, and Beverly, I think the reason it is becoming more untenable to spend time with your liberal friends is because the costs of the liberal point of view is starting to tip a balance. The next generation is going to pay a terrible price because of the policies based on fundamental lies and deceptions that have been put in place and may cost the Republic altogether. In our Catholic congregation we of the Red Tribe are indeed outnumbered by the Blue Tribe but among the evangelicals I know (and having spent 16 years in their fellowship I know many) there is a definite sliding toward Blue taking place. Because if you repeat a lie often enough….and of course, like I wrote….what is motivating your belief? Is it a quest for truth, or wanting to ______ (fill in the blank)? Thankfully for us, our children (3) have all embraced our foundational understandings, so our times together are enjoyable and life affirming.
JamesB
Bin Laden — bad — but not as bad as Thatcher, because she is closer to money and caused Bin Laden to be bad.
I realize this is parody, but the facts on the ground make the parody ever funnier. Margaret Thatcher’s father was a small businessman, who owned two groceries. The family lived in a flat above one of the groceries. Bin Laden’s father was a billionaire construction magnate. But a self-made man.
I bristled a bit upon first reading this piece. Felt alienated in some way. Vulnerable. In my mind, Neo was coming across as a member of the Blue Tribe. Then I read Mrs Whatsit’s comments, Eve’s and Beverly’s, and was inspired. Sharon W tied it up beautifully, thank you. I just may start speaking up without fear. My immediate family consists primarily of Blues and they are intimidating.
Talking about money. It is not true that the left hates wealth. They love it if it is righteous money. It all depends on how someone acquires it and what they do with it.
Evil money is money people make providing essential goods and services which people need for survival or comfort through fair competition. This makes them capitalists the worst humans who ever existed – worse than murderers, slave traders, or rapists.
Righteous money, according to the left, is money which someone acquires without working for it (inheritance), or through the exercise of government power, or through crony capitalism (righteous because it avoids competition and uses government power to acquire market). People who earn their money through fair competition can sometimes launder their money by declaring their allegiance to the left and by donating generously to leftist causes.
Evil money it the type of money which defines evil people and which causes righteous people like Bin Laden to go on murder sprees. No wonder Bin Laden hated us so much since we haven’t eliminated those evil capitalists. That is why Bin Laden is better than Republicans and that is why Republicans who support capitalism are the true enemies not folks like Bin Laden.
Sharon- I should mention that I have many liberal friends who are not dicks- mostly guys I play hockey and golf with- with them we can have the proverbial “frank exchange of ideas”, but in situations where I don’t know people I tend to be more circumspect!
Neo, Sharon, and all you other young ones,
Don’t worry about having to get into knock-downs with your Blue friends. At some point it will occur to them that you are simply not enthusiastic enough about the cause of the day, or especially about our current prez.
That will be sufficient to cause the invitations to ease up or maybe to stop altogether. You see, it is not enough simply to be agreeable and tolerant, you have to endorse<del the agenda or narrative as well.
In my field I publish under my own name articles that go against certain received wisdom. This has made me anathema in certain circles and has certainly cost me professionally. But I walked into it with my eyes open and am not complaining, just observing.
sorry about the bold.
Teresa:
By now, as I said, I don’t think I’m a member of any tribe. But more importantly, I think part of the reason I was able to make the switch in political affiliation was that I don’t think I was ever a “member” of any tribe, not in the sense of hating the Other or not wanting to have an open mind to what was being said. I just wasn’t exposed to what was being said very much until I started getting my news from the internet rather than just the Globe and the Times.
Speaking up is always good, although being aggressively combative doesn’t work. I don’t talk politics with most of my liberal friends at this point only because they’ve heard me many times before, and it does no good. So there’s no reason to waste the energy, with those particular people. With others, who are more inclined to listen, I still speak up.
Sharon W:
You are correct, I think, about wanting truth vs. fitting in as motives.
However, the caveat is that most people think they want truth. Most liberals think they have truth—AND fit in, if they live in a Blue state or city. Most people in that situation do not see that there is any conflict between the two (same for those on the right, if they live in a red state or city).
The conflict and the challenge only comes for such people if they come across evidence that challenges or contradicts their beliefs, and is strong enough to make them consider that what they believed before was truth was actually not true. That was my circumstance. And I think I was able to undergo a political change for two reasons: (1) I was far more interested in truth than fitting in; and (2) I didn’t realize that changing political affiliation would cause me not to fit in! That’s how naive I was about all of this, because I’d never thought of politics as a question of fitting in or not, although it certainly is to a great extent, for most people.
So by the time I realized (from personal experience) that some people were going to be very angry with me and even ostracize me, and that my politics would distance me at least somewhat from almost everyone I knew and loved, it was too late. I had already changed my mind, and I couldn’t turn back on what I now saw as a point of view that made more sense to me. So I made the choice about fitting in and not fitting in ex post facto.
You might like to look at this post I wrote on April Fools Day, 2006. It upset a lot of people who didn’t know it was a joke (that’s happened to me on quite a few April 1sts), and so I had to put a disclaimer at top and bottom to calm them down. The comments section is backwards, as are the comments to all the posts I imported from my old Blogger blog; to read them in proper order, scroll down to the bottom and then read in ascending order).
My “coming out” moment was quite dramatic. We were out for dinner with a large group of old college friends. Bush was president and it was during the build up to the war in Iraq. 2006 I believe. All of us were dedicated, well educated liberals–professionals, teachers, etc. For some reason, I had picked up Paul Berman’s book (Terror and Liberalism, I believe) and had just finished reading it. The group started to discuss the “evil” George Bush and his proposal to go to war in Iraq. I defended the idea, based on Berman’s liberal thinking. My friends were horrified, and the “peace” folks literally verbally attacked me until I left in tears. Something important happened to me that day: I learned that you either sing with the choir or you are out. I was out. That moment changed my life.
Then a few years later, Margaret Thatcher died…
We had a brief re-run of the controversy here in the UK last month with author Hilary Mantel’s short fantasy about participating in an assassination of Thatcher (in the Guardian, natch!):
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/19/hilary-mantel-short-story-assassination-margaret-thatcher
Some people are still sore. What I really don’t understand is that a lot of the ‘haters’ were born after she left power.
eve:
Take a look at the Kundera quote at the end of this post.
billm99uk:
The anti-Thatcher lore is handed down from generation to generation, and mouthing it becomes a badge of membership in the in-group.
As far as my wife and I are concerned, you are a member of our group.
The group mentality can’t be escaped. Even the people who say they are the ones not in either group are the ones in the group of people not to be placed in either group.
It’s like the people who say they are truly moderates. To be truly moderate means to places oneself directly in the middle of 2 extremes – on principle. Perhaps one extreme are mass murderers and the other extreme are 100% opposed to the mass murderers. The moderates are then are half in favor of mass murder. Love those moderates.
The only issue is whether you are in a good group or a bad group, or a more or less one.
But who decides good and bad? Here is probably a clue for you. The group that says there is no good or bad; or the one that says everything is relative – that is exactly the bad group; the one you need to get away from at breakneck pace.
Today the difference between good and bad; right and wrong could not be more clear.
Only horror in staring at obvious conclusions makes us hesitate…
“together they formed a single body and a single soul, a single ring and a single dance.”
And a single mind and a single understanding and a single agreement on all things political. Or else. . . .
So what’s up with Bill Maher speaking out against those who make excuses for the murderous cult called Islam? Is he going through a changer moment or is it just one of those momentary lapses he has sometimes?
Bill Maher is an old Democrat who still thinks the Democrat Party is the Democrat Party and not the National Socialist Party of America.
Plus he is libertine (not libertarian) and wants no checks on his own moral system.
Pretty soon he will realize he has a choice to make – to go with the Fascists or not. That will be the first real choice he ever makes and his soul will depend on it. Who knows how he will decide.
Plus, although I don’t watch Maher hardly at all, my impression is that he’d down on religion in general. So that positions him to more easily criticize Islam, too. However, his criticism of Islamic fanatics goes beyond his criticism of other religions. He goes so far as to say that fanaticism in Islam is more extreme and more widespread than in other religions. That’s what’s surprising about what he says.
But he thinks of himself as a rebel and an iconoclast, and in some ways I guess he is.
Has anyone ever noticed that changers to the right often sound like people with PTSD, cast out of the garden, stunned and wondering numbly what happened and how did it happen?
Whereas changers to the left usually display the smug, self-congratulatory air of people who know they’ve joined the winning team?
I am you. 🙂 it’s why i read your stuff.
reticent
No.
And, no.
Moving to the Left is practically unheard of.
Barry Goldwater is the only case I know of. Love distorts all.
Conservative ‘withdrawal’ is much more common. (Politically dropping out.)
” The group started to discuss the “evil” George Bush and his proposal to go to war in Iraq. I defended the idea, based on Berman’s liberal thinking. My friends were horrified, and the “peace” folks literally verbally attacked me until I left in tears.”
Eve, I had a similar incident which illustrates the left’s hatred. Similar time frame though I had already moved from the left to right a decade before. Online discussion with other faculty on Iraq war. I state my views, and of course was attacked…. the clincher was when one person stated she hoped my daughters would join the military so they could then be killed. I was shocked that anyone would wish my then, 8 and 6 year olds would die, but that’s their mentality. Several faculty told me privately they were not “comfortable” with that statement, so I asked them why they didn’t defend me…..crickets chirping. I’ve never forgiven any of those people, or will I.
It’s all rather odd. Maybe the price of being a changer is to be neither fish nor fowl, and not really a member of any political group. And that’s okay with me.
nope… thats what a conservative feels because a conservative is an INDIVIDUAL and no two individuals have the same idea of things. so if your looking to feel like belonging, then you need a homogenous tribe to hang with, as they will reinforce each other, but if not, then you can be a conservative, because they each stand alone…
its this alienation that our society magnifies with policies like feminism, or race hate and so on, that then creates the attraction of being on the left, in that its a place where you can belong as every place else is made so you cant belong. meanwhile,
conservatives dont belong to a howling mob of people who pretend to think alike to cure malaise, they stand as separate individuals and belong as part of a very diverse group of such… ie real diversity.
The red tribe/blue tribe loyalty certainly explains why the Left, and Obama in particular, see Republicans and the Tea Party as enemies, but not IS, AQ, etc..
I have been very fortunate in that my three siblings, my parents, and I were all changers – happening roughly at the same time (mi-late 90’s) despite living in different states and leading different lives. I’d chalk it up to being raised with strong values and the ability to recognize the Left’s evil.
Art,
Well said.
I think that I mentioned the psychotherapist with whom I became personally acquainted during the RKBA debates a few years back. She stated that she was largely persuaded by our pro “right to keep and bear” arguments and the natural law predications that underlay them. And when it came to the swirling matter of arguments over the arguments, who were, in her words, “the stand up guys”.
Nonetheless she would not dare mention to any of her university town neighbors that she had come to these opinions. She said to me, “You would not believe how they talk about conservatives when we are all together”.
Well, yes I would, since I have been swimming in a sea of collectivist utilitarian types all of my life and have a pretty thorough acquaintance with the chief scriptures of their clan.
And I do know from observation and experience that “being part of” and conceiving themselves as uniquely and supremely “enlightened” is an extremely and extraordinarily important part of their self image.
The desire to belong to a trend setting group and to be validated for right thinking, rather than to own resources and be validated upon the quality of one’s productive efforts, seems to be one of the signal aspects of this psychological divergence.
I don’t think most liberals do. And those they do meet are probably not really conservatives but just white lumpen-proletarians or stolid doofuses; just as most of the Democrats I meet are members of the Democrat Party client or clerical classes, and not leftist ideologues. [Though I do also encounter them on a fairly steady basis]
One of the things I’ve noticed is that conservatives, and small “L” libertarians don’t really seem to react to being criticized the way liberals do. Perhaps it’s because they are taught that the opinion of others is not the sole standard by which their worth as a human being is evaluated. Possibly it is just because as Haidt suggests because they are more psychologically “reactant” (if that is a real trait) and simply care less about acceptance and more about freedom. Or possibly a mix.
However, if you compile and take seriously the implications of the doctrines of what we call left-liberalism, man is nothing else but a social organism, a “species being”, and the society through its supposed “constructs” defines everything about him.
This is of course an ultimately incoherent and self-refuting view, quite at odds ultimately with the very claims liberals presently make on behalf of the rights to diversity: but it takes a few minutes of thinking about to actually come to that realization. And of course, once they become dominant, we can be sure that “diversity” will quickly become a rather antique notion. Like free speech, it will have served its purpose.
eve: “Bush was president and it was during the build up to the war in Iraq. 2006 I believe.”
That should be 2002. Or else, you’re thinking of the build-up to the Petraeus-led COIN “Surge”, which started end of 2006.
When I talk about the Iraq mission and explain how it’s right on the law and justified on the policy, I cite to primary sources.
Almost invariably, when someone actually deigns to debate me, they’ll cite to secondary and tertiary sources that mischaracterize the primary sources. As Neo has explained, the same phenomenon happens with the Pentagon Papers for the Vietnam War.
It’s a gotcha moment every time. I point out that my position is based directly on the primary sources that are mischaracterized to argue the theses of their secondary and tertiary authority.
Has pointing that out changed minds?
At first, I hoped that such a clear obvious contrast between false narrative and truth would jar them.
Nope. After the gotcha point, they’ll avoid discussing the subject with me further. At most, they’ll say ‘I disagree’ or ‘I don’t see it that way’ and end it there without attempting to reconcile the contradiction.
As this post illustrates, it’s not about facts, the truth, or principle. It’s about tribal conformity.
Mike, Artfldgr:
When I say I’m not a member of a political group, I meant as defined in the article—as in “ingroup vs. outgroup, emotional identity as part of the group.”
I agree that conservatives are much more likely than liberals to not identify as part of such a group, and to think as individuals, than liberals are. But conservatives are hardly immune from such behavior; that’s what I’ve observed.
I am definitely part of the conservative (and somewhat libertarian) group if you define that group by belief in certain principles, and patterns of voting. I was talking about a different sort of “group” identification, as defined above.
Eric: Berman’s book was published in 2004, so I was talking about the Iraq war surge. Got the timeline mixed up.
blert,
I know it’s said that there are few right to left conversions, but in my experience, there are many, let’s call them, rightish-to-mainstream conversions, and these days, that means going leftish. And I don’t think my experience is atypical.
Often, these are people who are not especially politically-aware but tend to live conservatively and vote that way. Then, they will have an epiphany that goes something like this:
“My son is taking environmental studies in college, and you know, there really is something to this climate change stuff” … or
“My daughter is taking ____ [fill-in the blank] studies. I never realized that those ____ [fill-in the blank] people were so oppressed and discriminated against.” … or
“Oh those awful massacres. We really do need to stop people from having guns in their homes. I believe in freedom but this is ridiculous.” … or
“We need to leave those countries alone. They’re attacking us because we keep sticking our noses in their affairs.” … or
“My doctor tells me I need to lose some weight. I’ve decided to go vegan. I feel so much better eating clean. Not only that, but I feel more ethical now that I’m not abusing innocent animals for my own selfish needs.” … etc., etc.
Unlike changers commenting here, such rightist-to-leftish epiphanies are generally accompanied by self-congratulation, as they enjoy the feeling of joining and being validated by, as DNW puts it, the trend-setting group whose members consider themselves uniquely enlightened.
Many such changers are very upwardly mobile people who, at some level, realize that in order to join the elite, they have to align their opinion with that of the winning team. They don’t see it as a nakedly self-interested change. Instead, they convince themselves, as in the examples above, that they are simply adopting more discerning views.
Eric…
“As Neo has explained, the same phenomenon happens with the Pentagon Papers for the Vietnam War.”
&&&
It’s been my universal experience to find that the average Joe thinks that the Pentagon Papers damn Nixon’s policies — and that’s why Nixon was upset about Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the highly classified white paper. (top secret)
“United States — Vietnam Relations, 1945—1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense”
As you can see by its official title, it’s a critique of the McNamara years. ( The schtick about 1945-60 is a joke, as America had Vietnam on autopilot during that era.)
It was commissioned by McNamara, himself. If you knew the vanity of the man, you’d understand that he fully expected that this massive study would make him look sage and wise…. Rather like his judgment calls during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the USS Liberty fiasco. (He personally intervened to stop an atomic strike in 1967. The Sixth Fleet had launched its two jet atomic strike package!)
One might judge that McNamara was pulling a Winston Churchill: writing the first history of the conflict — to get bias off onto the right foot. (Churchill largely succeeded. Even now, WWII popular history is wildly off base — with some of its biggest, bloodiest battles entirely missing!)
He was out of government by the time the full white paper/ tome was assembled.
So we now have a well nigh universal ‘take’ on the debacle that has shifted the onus from McNamara — who ramped the war way, way, up… to Nixon, who ramped American involvement way, way, down… to a pull out.
In the larger picture, the Democrat grand policy was to contain Red China.
Nixon flipped that script entirely. He entirely dropped Democrat era containment — and used the Red Chinese to confound the Red Soviets. His diplomacy had replaced 550,000 fighting Americans.
Nixon had some serious flaws, but hanging the Pentagon Papers on him passes strange. Yet, this is what the popular history sustains.
[ Operation Mars: the Red Army counter-offensive in front of Moscow 42-43 cost 400,000 DEAD Soviets. It’s entirely missing from the popular histories. It was twice as big as “Uranus” — the Stalingrad encirclement.]
[ The endless campaign in the Hurtgen Forest (Bradley’s baby) is not to be found in the popular histories. Virtually EVERY single American division in the 12th Army Group was destroyed there at one time or another. The role call is astonishing and depressing. In the popular history (“Patton”) Bradley is circumspect about GI fatalities. In truth, Bradley fought WWI battles straight through WWII — a real meat grinder, he was. ]
In a similar fashion, the popular history of the Korean war and the Vietnam war are absolutely awful.
The Korean war was really the culmination of the Chinese civil war. Within its days, the ChiComs destroyed entire southern armies — by throwing them deliberately, suicidally, against American howitzers. This reality is the under pinning for MacArthur’s conflict with Truman. Even unto this day, the US Army is flushing the entire affair down the memory hole. Full exposure would not make either Truman or MacArthur look very good. The one, insubordinate; the other, horrific in judgment.
reticent,
Hence, the narrative contest for the (social nodes and cues of the) zeitgeist is a critical arena of the activist game.
“reticent” at 1:30pm on 10/6/14: Great observation. I see the same thing all the time. Especially among people who strive to internalize the worldview of their ‘hip’ young-adult children. You’re on to something there.
Neo: I believe that everyone human who’s not a hermit is a member of one or more tribes. It’s who we are anthropologically. You may not be interested in joining the Red Tribe, but I think you’ve already joined. You may see yourself as standing at the outer edge of that circle around the fire, detachedly observing, but in fact you’re doing much more than that you’re TEACHING those who are long time died-in-the wool members. How do you reconcile that fact with your professed belief that you’re not a member? Are you “not a member” of the red tribe the same way a shaman isn’t a member of his or her tribe? Or like the “man with no name” in the old Eastwood Spaghetti Westerns or even “Ahnuld” in the Conan movies? Ah, the “mysterious stranger”….
Reticent, you perfectly described the slide I see occurring in the Evangelical community (already firmly in place in the Catholic sector). The irony here is I believe there is the overriding idea (motivation…belief) that this will open the door to sharing the gospel and gaining converts. The cognitive dissonance is the acceptance of errors (or outright lies) as the basis of setting aside principles that are constructs of truth. I firmly believe from the situations I’ve observed personally that wanting to “fit-in” is an unacknowledged reality.
One small correction for the quoted Shrink, Neo: Jews—particularly Israeli Jews—are more and more on the “Blues” out list. I see it quietly here in Hollywoodland among the secular members of the Tribe. Sad and maddening.
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2012/10/29/the-science-communication-problem-one-good-explanation-four.html
eve,
In 2006, the debate about the COIN “Surge” was about trying to save the Iraqi people from the terrorists or abandoning them and given them over to the terrorists. Based on Western morality, the answer should have been obvious.
* … giv
ening them over …Eric, I agree with you that activism is needed, but don’t you think that trying to change people’s minds about the Iraq war, when those minds are set in concrete on this issue, is rather quixotic?
Carl in Atlanta:
I believe I explained in an earlier comment that I did not mean I wasn’t a member in the cognitiIve sense. I am a cognitive and conceptual and intellectual member. I’m not a member in the way the author of the piece defines tribal membership, that’s all.
The “Iraq” battle is to reveal that Bush’s moves were simply non-partisan.
For the HEART of the objections turns on the implicit belief that it was “Bush’s War.”
That’s the ONLY aspect that is worthy of exposure.
Once the campaign is understood to be bi-partisan — the fire goes out.
&&&
The same twist goes back to Nixon-LBJ.
In the popular memory, Vietnam was Nixon’s war — when he was the president that eliminated the draft (it collapsed towards zero before 1971) — shut down the war — etc.
Kennedy’s massive role — that LBJ couldn’t figure his way out of, is expunged in popular histories.
Indeed, virtually the ENTIRE stream of American political history bouncing through the brains of Blue voters is savagely twisted — going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt.
Anti-truth is simply everywhere in the popular consciousness.
Lincoln becomes a Democrat.
Wilson (D) ==> Jim Crow to Washington DC.
Wilson segregates the US armed forces.
Hoover’s role in Big Government is unknown.
FDR’s anti-Big Government campaign (1932) which he flipped 100% upon taking office: unknown.
FDR blocks Jewish refugee flight by deliberate executive inaction: unknown.
On and on it goes.
Neo: Surely you don’t mean to say that you don’t like NASCAR, BBQ, SEC football, tricorner hats, Gadsen flags or grits? OMG, you’ve infiltrated! Hah.
Sharon, the carrot of “fitting in” and being deemed “good” and the stick of being shunned are weapons that the Left wields so effectively that most of us can’t help but knuckle under to some extent so as not to imperil our social or economic standing.
As for people of faith, I think it’s possible for them to be open and sympathetic to others of all backgrounds and lifestyles without giving up on their principles. The problem with adopting the Left’s view and approach when you’re interested in helping people who are disadvantaged or alienated is that you freeze them in their disadvantaged or alienated states. Once they agree to be an aggrieved party, rightly or wrongly, that becomes their identity and their claim to a special status. Perceptions and reasoning thereafter are filtered through that identity-protective cognition mechanism that Eric’s link above talks about, and it become very difficult to move them to a place that objectively would be more constructive.
blert, so true. That’s why I suggest always saying, “Lincoln, the first Republican president”.
reticent: “Eric, I agree with you that activism is needed, but don’t you think that trying to change people’s minds about the Iraq war, when those minds are set in concrete on this issue, is rather quixotic?”
It’s concrete because it’s cornerstone.
The patient zero (for the 9/11 era, Neo) foundational character of the false narrative against OIF speaks to the importance of knocking it out.
OIF was right on the law and justified on the policy means Bush was right on the law and justified on the policy means everyone who told you OIF was based on lies and illegal – eg, Democrats – bamboozled you. And everything the Democrats won, eg, the White House, based on the false narrative against OIF is based on a lie.