On political affiliation as a birthmark
Commenter “Jamie” writes: “My father-in-law is utterly convinced that he’s a Democrat and that Republicans are, minimally, bad people,” and then she lists a set of beliefs he holds that seem very consistent with being on the right. She adds:
Doesn’t he sound center-right? But there is NO convincing him that he might consider voting for a (California!) Republican for ANY office, including dog catcher.
My point being, he begins with an unexamined belief in something that doesn’t hold up to even a little scrutiny, because it’s core to him. He is a Democrat, his father was a Democrat, his father before him… To challenge that “truism” is to challenge his sense of identity.
That is extremely true for a lot of people I know. They are consistent Democrat voters and believe people on the right are mean-spirited, bigoted, money-grubbing, ignorant and/or stupid. And yet, when one actually speaks with these Democrats and explores their beliefs – which I sometimes do – it seems they are far more conservative than their voting records would indicate.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve said to such a person, “You know, you’re actually a closet conservative.” And I meant it. They sometimes have chuckled in response. But still, they would never ever vote for a Republican.
I wrote about this phenomenon back in 2005 in this post entitled, “The birthmark: an identity is a difficult thing to change.” An excerpt:
So, the groups to which we belong–social, ethnic, religious, racial, class, professional, recreational, familial, political–all are pieces in the puzzle that creates our sense of identity. The majority of people are probably most comfortable when they perceive the elements within them as cohesive, and are uncomfortable when they see them as clashing with each other. But all sides–Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, “progressives” and anarchists and libertarians–take on an affiliation which becomes a basic part of personal identity and is consequently often very difficult to give up.
An excellent illustration of this phenomenon is Democrat Zell Miller, who gave a speech nominating G.W. Bush at last year’s Republican convention. This earned him the enmity of most of his fellow Democrats, who considered him a traitor to the party.
Many people wondered aloud why Zell Miller had not switched parties in light of his strong alignment with the Republicans and his staunch opposition to the Democrats. A “conservative Democrat” seemed to be a sort of oxymoron.
Miller’s answer? That he was born into the Democratic Party and considers his party label to be “like a birthmark”–innate, and difficult to eradicate…
That’s because a liberal political identity tends to be so much more than a political identity–it’s also a moral and personal identity. Liberals tend to equate their own position with such abstract (and non-political) qualities as goodness, kindness, lack of bigotry, intelligence–oh, a host of wonderful virtues. Any identity that is so identified is going to be particularly difficult to shed. Do some conservatives feel this way about their identity? Of course. But my impression is that it is a feeling even more basic to the political identities of liberals–at least the ones I know, and I know quite a few.
My sense is that this is one of the main reasons that my attempts to talk to my friends have so often been met with rage: to many of them, my espousing of any conservative causes means 1) I must be a bad (i.e.: selfish, racist, classist) person; and 2) if I ever were to convince them of the rightness of my arguments, they would be faced with leaving the fold, also, and becoming a bad person, too. Much better to let the whole edifice remain in place than to remove one little brick and risk the whole thing toppling down.
As I said, that was written in 2005. What’s changed about the phenomenon during the ensuing years is that the gulf is now even wider and the feelings more entrenched for the vast majority of people. Democrat pundits, politicians, and activists realized quite some time ago that their strongest appeal was to this phenomenon of virtue-signaling and demonizing of the other side, and so over the years that’s become an especially prominent part of their campaign tactics.
It works.
My Dad distrusted unions and thought that minimum wage laws were stupid. Yet he consistently voted for candidates who supported both. I pointed this contradiction out to him more than once, and it had no effect.
Unfortunately I don’t know if there’s any way to actually change an unexamined but core belief in an older person who has held such a belief as long as they’ve been alive. Pushing too hard against a viewpoint with demostrable facts may have the opposite effect, more entrenching the person in question. In many cases I suspect forcing such a person to confront cognitive dissonances is more likley to cause anger than enlightenment. It’s only when reality intrudes in some extreme way, like if a person is attacked on the street or if they lose their job or something, that they may actually change. Addicts call it hitting rock bottom.
I firmly believe that leftism is as much a religious as political belief system. For generations Democrats have had pounded into them that Republicans are selfish, greedy, intolerant, terrible people; so they couldn’t possibly be one of those horrible people.
I ran across this time and time again in my younger days when I was more active in the political scene. I’d be debating an issue with a lefty and I’d try to get them to see that we both were trying to accomplish the same goals, just through different methods.
For example: We both agree that crime is destructive, traumatizing and a bad thing overall and so we should do what we can to reduce it. What we disagree on is only the means of accomplishing that goal.
Unfortunately, only very, very rarely would I run across a leftist who was even willing to entertain the idea that we had the same goals. As far as they were concerned, if I didn’t support their agenda, I was an evil person who (continuing with my example) wants people to be robbed and raped and murdered.
That’s why we can’t have a conversation with them about the issues. Their idea of a “conversation” is that we agree with everything they say or we’re some sort of “-ist” or “-phobe”.
And yes, there are radicals on the right that are intolerant of dissent as well, but based on my experience, on the right that’s the exception. On the left, it’s the norm.
My maternal Grandmother was a lifetime democrat from Richmond, Va She voted all democrats, except JFK. She said she would never vote for a republcan, this was 1969. In 1976 she was shopping in Richmond and met a man who she recognized wanting to shake her hand. They talked for 20 minutes and Ronald Reagan asked her for her vote. He got it and she voted republican the rest of her life.
It’s a cult, and cults make you feel secure and superior. Regardless of IQ and other human variables, some people are just more prone to wanting to belong than others. The GOP is not, and arguably never has been, a tribe or organization inspiring loyalty. It’s sort of the default position for people who see the Dems for who they really are. The Dems, otoh, encourage tribalism/cultism/membership/brand loyalty/whatever you want to call it, in every way, usually using our tax $.
Also, the gentry class who are either progressive or virulently anti-Trump live very comfortable lives and have never really had to examine their principles, much less question the “authority” that delivers their talking points much beyond minor quibbles about semantics and the like. As long as they’re okay, they’ll prioritize signaling virtue over making sense and not bringing ruin on everyone else. Grotesquely, a lot of them now are willing to sacrifice their own children to stay in the cult, or maybe the ones who are doing that are gunning for higher ranking. Either way, we can only hope that some of them are awakening from their zombie woke mode, and actually starting to think clearly. We’ll see …
Um, er, uh…OK, I’ll bite: why wouldn’t she vote for JFK?
Have a family member that rails against the crime, homelessness, environmental policies, high taxes etc. in WA which is of course dominated by increasingly crazy leftists yet she continues to vote for Democrats. She is in her sixties and has always been a Democrat albeit a somewhat calm one that I can talk to (although she hates Trump with the fire of a hundred suns) yet she just can’t make the leap.
I tried to get her to vote against Inslee last time after she had been railing against him and his stupid mask over his eyeballs but no go.
Just my own anecdotal evidence but I have never seen a Republican voter that closed off ideologically. Hell, I voted Clinton in ’96 and Booth Gardner and Gary Locke for governor in WA back in the day but there are Democrats that would never do that. We will see that here next year when very, very moderate former Republican congressman Dave Reichert will likely be the nominee for governor. He will be painted as the most outrageous person ever by these same people that bitch and complain about all the problems in this state.
Griffin–
I first came across Dave Reichert in connection with the Gary Ridgway (“Green River Killer”) case. As for his “outrageousness,” all you have to do is look at the Wikipedia article about him. The MSM just can’t help themselves, can they?
PA+Cat,
Yep, Reichert was the original lead detective in the Green River case and then became King County sheriff and eventually a congressman for the east side of King County which is the wealthy suburbs of Bellevue, Kirkland, etc. which had been a Republican seat for awhile but he started facing tougher and tougher elections and eventually retired from Congress and that seat is now Democrat.
He should be an ideal Republican candidate for a blue state but he will be painted as a ‘far right MAGA Republican’ around these parts and people will just go along with it and elect someone even worse than our current governor.
I was born in the South and in the olden days up until the 1970-80’s most all the folk voted Democrat just because. Lots of us were conservative and that faction of the voters were at time referred to as Dixiecrats, in most states if you were not registered as Democrat you were limited in the primaries to the good old boys and at some point lots of the elections at the national level went to the Republicans with the Southern states voting making a huge difference.
Had the Northern states and the media stepped back I think the South would have had a much smoother time during the integration stuff and there were enough people in the South who knew, in their hearts, that segregation was terrible and the nation needed to move on. Funny how many folk in the old South were able to switch over from Democrat to Republican as the years went by.
Robert Shotzberger on July 25, 2023 at 3:52 pm said:
“My maternal Grandmother was a lifetime democrat from Richmond, Va She voted all democrats, except JFK.”
Let me guess. Did it have something to do with JFK being a Catholic? Between a Catholic and a Republican, she chose the lesser evil?
When I was little I was informed by an aunt that although I was a smart kid I would never be President, because a Catholic can’t be President. She was right, I didn’t, but I don’t think that was the reason.
Is it strange that voting Democrat is both a sign of gentry class or caste membership and an indication of moral righteousness, or is that to be expected? Do the social and moral status Democrats claim reinforce each other? I don’t know how things are in the red states, but in the blue states Republicans are more hesitant and uncertain, more willing to examine their own beliefs and think things through. Democrats are either unable to conceive that they might be wrong or fear that they will fall into an abyss if they attempt to examine their long-held convictions.
It’s also interesting that some people vote Democrat because they think the Republicans are “for the rich guys” and others vote Democrat to keep the great unwashed proles in line. That’s possible when you have a party that joins high and low against the middle. It was a losing proposition back in the Seventies and Eighties, because the middle seemed so strong, stable, and sure of itself. Today, it seems, more people identify themselves as either oppressed or as part of the movement of enlightened opinion against the ignorant and the greedy.
Republicans have to walk a thin line between just giving into Democrats and looking like radicals or reactionaries who want to overturn everything that has happened since 1965 or 1933 or 1913 or even further back. The fact that there’s always somebody in the party who can be painted as that kind of radical or reactionary accounts for people who disagree with everything Democrats are doing now still giving their votes to the Democrats.
I don’t think things would have gone better in the South during the civil rights struggle if Northerners and the media would have backed off. Many Southerners favored segregation, and those who didn’t might have been emboldened by the fact that the rest of the country was opposed than resentful about it. Change looks easy afterward than it was at the time.
At the heart of the closed mind lies fear. Its certainty, the mind’s protective walls.
Geoffrey:
Is your heart closed to the joys of socialism and intersectionality? 🙂
No?
Sometimes walls are necessary.
My sense is that this is one of the main reasons that my attempts to talk to my friends have so often been met with rage: to many of them, my espousing of any conservative causes means 1) I must be a bad (i.e.: selfish, racist, classist) person; and 2) if I ever were to convince them of the rightness of my arguments, they would be faced with leaving the fold, also, and becoming a bad person, too. Much better to let the whole edifice remain in place than to remove one little brick and risk the whole thing toppling down.
–neo
In my experience most conservatives underestimate this.
Democrats are not philosopher-kings, free to pick, choose and argue political and moral implications.
They are human beings. Deep down they know if they were to significantly change their politics, it would risk their social world and their own identities.
The same applies to Republicans, though less so as neo observes.
When being political is such a big part of your identity as it is for so many on the left admitting you might have been wrong is a major deal.
For most on the right politics is not the overriding theme to their lives which is bad for the cause but it’s good for individual happiness.
Abraxas: “Republicans have to walk a thin line … The fact that there’s always somebody in the party who can be painted as that kind of radical or reactionary accounts for people who disagree with everything Democrats are doing now still giving their votes to the Democrats.”
No, it’s because the MFM is nothing but the propaganda wing of the DNC. What Republican is as outrageous as Al Sharpton? MTG doesn’t come close.
I used to think that *this* will be the thing that wakes democrats up, but nothing does:
– Abolish free speech? Dems are not only okay with it, they promote it
– Mutilate the genitals on minors? Dems are not only okay with it, they promote it
– Pornography in schools? Dems are not only okay with it, they promote it
I could go on, but democrats are either vile individuals who are against the principles that founded this country, or too wrapped up in their own single-issue causes to care about anything else.
But I am letting that wash over me as that old country is gone, killed by millions upon millions of immigrants who don’t care about any of our freedoms, only the freebies they get. And dems are okay with that too.
whatever (10:13 pm), they are not only okay with it, they promote it.
Some of the opinions in this post are somewhat tangential to the topic of why some people stick with a political party that they don’t actually agree with on principles or policies, but is relevant to why some people defend their party when it seems to be acting contrary to its professed principles: there are actually other higher-priority principles in action.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/do_leftists_believe_what_they_claim_to_believe.html
@ Griffin > “For most on the right politics is not the overriding theme to their lives which is bad for the cause but it’s good for individual happiness.”
That is what first occurred to me on reading Neo’s post.
When you don’t have your political affiliation “as a birthmark,” it’s much easier to evaluate facts without endangering your conception of your self.
AesopFan:
In this post, I wasn’t trying to describe anything about the way committed leftist activists and politicians think. I was referring to the ordinary rank-and-file Democrat voter, not all that interested in politics in general, but who keeps up with things somewhat.
Two very different types of person with very different political reasoning.
}}} That is extremely true for a lot of people I know.
The term is “Yellow Dog Democrat“. Someone who would knowingly elect Hitler or Stalin or Mao as long as there was a (D) after their name and the alternative was an (R).
I’ve never encountered a “Yellow Dog Republican”. I suppose some may exist, but very rare, as opposed to the YDD, which damned sure isn’t.
I have been very unlikely to vote (D) anytime in the last 10-20 odd years, but that does not mean I won’t pay attention to what I am voting for.
Corrupt is corrupt, no matter the letter.
Harry S Truman was close to a YDD, but I think he’d have done a Zell Miller by now.
PostModern Liberals — which is like 95% of them now, are all Truman’s “Professional Liberals”.
Speaking of the spectrum;
For some, as Horowitz notes the issue is never the issue. But that’s the big shots and the manipulators.
They have to make the case to the rest of society, or at least enough to make things happen.
As regards global warming, there are True Believers who have never considered the Revolution. They really believe. But the question is why they believe. For some, it buttresses the need to be made to do stupid stuff (“Make me comply!”) or the little Hitlers who want to see others made to comply. The stupider the stuff, the better.
Some haven’t gone further than the green alarmists, having other things to do with their lives.
The point is to make the argument to, or in front of, this group. If you can figure out how to do it in some kind of debate format, good.
We had some guests recently. We see them every year. Their daughters are, iirc, ten and fourteen. They get up, work out with weights, run a few miles, go off to school where they max their AP classes and set school records in AP classes. Very self-possessed, interesting to talk to. We barely finish dessert and the kids are clearing the table.
Given their time in life, recommended deBecker’s “The Gift of Fear” to mom. She seemed receptive.
So when the subject of global warming arose, I said it’s great we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age. Talked about that a bit. Brutal Recommended Blom’s “Nature’s Mutiny”. You know, when a medieval village is discovered due to receding glaciers…it means they had a decent thing going a thousand yeas ago until they got run out by increasing cold, failed crops…… Anybody ever think of that?
Mom seemed receptive to that view of things.
IOW, have some relations who are not intfo the Revolution but that the opportunity to make people do stupid stuff–it’s a price we have to pay–and pretend to Do The Right Thing–at minimal inconvenience is the underlying motivation. Should have seen them regarding Covid. No point discussing things with them.
Still, never know who among your circle might be amenable to an actual discussion. Could be they Believe because they’ve heard nothing else, due to the issues we know about.
You know people who respect you and your accomplishments. You can’t be dismissed as a loser no-nothing. Worth a shot.
he was a pendergrast machine pol, but yes he spared us from a soviet pol like wallace, which we got with obama 60 years later,
however truman couldn’t admit that a foreign power had insinuated itself so far inside the government, even steering our policies against a prominent ally that was kaishek’s china, so he said dewey, this milquetoast da, came from the ‘same people that brought you hitler and mussolini,
he did push what was the precursor to medicare, the square deal, but it was held back like hillary care, arthur herman suggests when it came to korea, macarthur had the better of the argument,
Ok, so the political “birthmark” is a multigenerational identification with a political party. And of course we’ve been talking about it as existing more or less solely on the Democrat side, but surely there are actual “lifelong Republicans” (not so-called “LLRs,” who we all doubt ever voted Republican) too.
But now we have young people who would rather poke a stick in their eyes than be seen as sympathetic, or even open to listening, to anything that emanates from the political right. They may come from right-leaning families, but they go off to college and come out strongly on the left, at least in terms of their group affiliation (their point of view often doesn’t hold up to careful or even desultory examination, but that doesn’t change their affiliation). And – this is the point I’m actually trying to make – I don’t think their attitude comes from the old “the Left thinks the Right is evil, while the Right thinks the Left is stupid” thing.
For one thing, I don’t think that statement is nearly as true as it once was, on the part of the Right. I think a lot of us over here, uneasily and against our will, are being drawn toward concluding that the most radical elements of the Left actually are evil, and that a lot of the ordinary Progressives are willing to go along with that evil in order to chalk up a W.
But as for the young leftists – hear me out, here. You know that psychological observation that came out a while ago about how conservatives score higher on the “disgust” scale than so-called “liberals”? The extension of that study was supposed to be that political conservatives, being more easily disgusted, were correspondingly less “open” than liberals, and that liberals’ openness corresponded to greater empathy with – you name it – the poor, the different-colored, the sexually different, whatever. (I haven’t looked into these studies in detail, but I think it’s notable that they use pictures of things they know traditional conservatives don’t like, such as pictures of men kissing, to evaluate people’s disgust sensitivity. I wonder what would have happened if they’d shown, say, pictures of a couple of young “rednecks” sitting in the back of a pickup truck with their rifles…) And the thing is, I agree that disgust sensitivity ought intuitively to be stronger among the conservative.
But I think that the identification of “conservative” and “on the political right” is no longer applicable – I think these kids are conservative, just conservatively on the left. That is, just as the conservative Right used to (and probably some still do) feel, they feel that they have a very strong stake in maintaining ideological purity in their group, and their group is the Progressives.
Fear of evil doesn’t explain these young people’s attitude toward non-progressive ideas. But disgust does. The expressions on the faces of the kids shouting speakers down. The pretence of “actual harm” that they take up when hearing words or ideas antithetical to their beliefs, which is never accompanied by markers of fear or pain but rather by anger and pushing away. The language they use to describe anyone on the political Right. Their quick and total rejection of anyone they deem insufficiently pure. They’re disgusted.
I despair of ever getting a social scientist to change up how the disgust studies are carried out, but… prove me wrong.
Jamie:
“La, La, La! La, La, La! I CAN’T hear you! Speach is violence! Property is theft! The poor built this country! H8r!”
🙂
Good points.
The Democratic Party wasn’t always what it is today. Traditionally, it took in people with very different opinions. Older relatives who are Yellow Dog Democrat voters probably joined up when the party tolerated more disagreement and was less regimented.
That started to change in the 1970s when a large number of younger progressives replaced the older New Dealers in Congress and advanced in the 1990s and 2000s when the older Southern (White) Democrats and older Liberal and Moderate Northeastern Republicans Republicans were wiped out. Today, there’s much more lockstep in the party than there was earlier — and much more lockstep than there is in the Republican Party.
There can also be a convenient vagueness or silence about issues when it benefits candidates. Your dad might not have trusted labor unions. The most he’d hear about unions from politicians would be the usual pablum from Joe Biden about unions building America. Dad’s representative or yours might not talk about unions at all. But the party votes as a bloc for the legislation the unions that support it want, once things are worked out between the party and the unions. Your rep might not say anything about the Green New Deal but will vote for it anyway. All that is changing, I think. Younger Democrats accept the party’s whole program (when they don’t think it’s too moderate).
— this was explained by Krauthammer. The average Dem voter thinks Republicans are evil.
— important to recognize the moral immaturity and often moral defect that makes someone prone to be a Dem voter:
1) they believe that their vote is sufficient reason to give less to charity. They are showing they care by voting D. Obviously, immature and even stupid, but nonetheless this is how they think.
2) imagine the moral and intellectual shortcomings involved in thinking one can “save the planet”. They don’t have an innate sense of worth. They get it from belonging to the cult, following the catechism of the cult and performing meaningless rituals (that are often counterproductive).
3. Imagine the hatred and mean-spiritedness necessary to believe that cops are roaming the streets gunning down thousands and thousands of innocent black children every year. Or the moral vacuity of categorizing the value of all people by their race, sex, etc.
4. They are easily led by those who promise cheap salvation. They are moral because they vote.
5. They need to feel morally superior. This need is not healthy. It’s not morally mature.
6. They feel morally superior because of their hatred. The more they slander their political opponents, they better they feel about themselves for voting D. Their hatred is what ultimately drives their voting (although obviously they don’t recognize it as such).
7. This is why rich white liberals are so racist. They have a need to see blacks as inferior so they can feel good about themselves for helping. This is why racial preferences in college admissions has continued and intensified long after it was blatantly obvious that they were extremely harmful to blacks. The purpose of the preferences is to make white liberals feel good about themselves. Another example of cheap salvation.
One of the all-time favorite ways that Democrats argue is to assert that their proposed policy is the only possible one that an intelligent, moral person could support. (The hubris is staggering on several levels). Anyone who opposes them must be getting paid off by evil forces.
Why does this argument style have appeal to the average Dem voter? Obama and the rest use it because it works. Why does it work so well?
Demonization is ugly. Othering is nasty. Censorship is vile.
Why did so many Democrat voters favor imprisoning those who refused to get jabbed? Why did so many D voters favor taking the children away from parents who refused the jab? This is horrifying stuff. We ignore it at our peril. These aren’t good people. This kind of stuff deserves more than a mere “oops”.
Why do so many D voters favor defunding the police? An obviously stupid policy that devastates black, inner city neighborhoods. Are they zombie members of a cult? What ate their brains? What erased their moral sensibilities? I mean this seriously. Because these attitudes are not normal and they aren’t healthy. Danger ahead.
Piercing the loyal political identity versus one’s values.
Consider the next election. It seems to me that by using social media and creating a meme involving a short “personality questionaire” could create some change at the margins of the outcome.
I believe rhe same tool was used to elect Trump in the first place.
Re Stan, “Are they zombie members of a cult? What ate their brains?”
Funny you should say that.
In April, I got a commendation and an invite from Jordan Peterson.
I said in my comment that we need Tshirts bearing rhe meme “Shoot Woke Zombies”. Lead works in both cases and counters the same menace — both eat up your brains!
Last, this puts due ruducule in its place — something the far Left hates passionately.
— this was explained by Krauthammer. The average Dem voter thinks Republicans are evil.
stan:
Well, things change. The average conservative voter now thinks Democrats are evil. Including yourself, it would seem.
I’m not sure this is an improvement.
I don’t know why we still have a country. Inertia?
It is so obvious when you speak to New Yorkers or Californians who rail against crime and taxes yet still vote for the likes of Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, George Gascon, Larry Krasner, AOC, etc.