Question authority, revisited
Here’s an interesting comment from “Cary Kembla.” It’s an attempt to explain Democrat voters who continue to believe the biased MSM and authorities who’ve been wrong so many times:
I think the dimension that is lacking in these people is skepticism of authority. I’ve thought about this quite a lot trying to come up with the answer to the exact same question you are. I think the answer lies in part at least with childhood experience of authority. Was early Authority (parents, teachers etc) *good* to the child? Sure, it might have made honest mistakes here and there, but was it basically loving and life affirming? If so, the child grows up to believe that Authority in the adult world (politicians, mainstream media, bureaucracy etc) is also basically good and honest, and has its best interests at heart.
That may indeed represent a certain proportion of people on the left. But it doesn’t represent the generation of leftists with which I’m most intimately familiar: my cohorts.
They are generally the people who were the rebels back in the day. They were the ones with the “question authority” bumper stickers. But it turns out they were only questioning authority when they believed that authority was on the side of the political right. When the authority came from the left it was and is sacrosanct.
I wrote a post on the subject in 2021, and I reproduce a portion of it here as follows:
If you’re of a certain age, like I am, you probably remember those bumper stickers that exhorted us all to Question Authority. It was the mark of a thinking person not to take everything at face value, in particular the words of the government or government agencies.
I remember once going to an SDS meeting when I was in college. I was never a leftist but I suppose I was toying with it a bit at the time (this was during the Vietnam War). But what I saw and heard at that meeting repelled me on a gut level and I never went back. That one meeting cured me of any interest in taking the left as an authority on anything, except their angry, ranting, incoherent, narcissistic selves.
I wish I could remember what was said, but I don’t. I only remember the sense I had of dangerous people who were also stupid, and yet very very arrogant. That just about summed it up.
And now we have those same people, grown old, but they’re not running social media. It’s a younger crowd, and they have decided not only that they’re not going to Question Authority when the Democrats are in charge, but they’re not going to let anyone else Question Authority either.
And so we have this sort of thing:
…[I]n April Facebook blackballed a mother for daring to criticize the radical Marxist and racist policies of her school board.
Since then, Facebook has shut down a pro-Israel Christian site with 77 million followers and blocked the viewing of reviews of a climate book by former Obama science advisor Steve Koonin that raised doubts about the theory of human-caused climate change.
… This isn’t just Facebook; it’s everywhere. The left wants freedom of speech when the left is not in control. But once it does take control, the left wants to shut up anyone who disagrees or questions the authority of the left.
Well, I still fly my Question Authority flag.
I’m bummed about my comrades.
__________________________
kumrads die because they’re told)
kumrads die before they’re old
(kumrads aren’t afraid to die
kumrads don’t
and kumrads won’t
believe in life) and death knows whie
–e.e. cummings
1970
Lefty: Question Authority!!!!!!
Me: Definitely question authority, and do it smartly and with an open mind. Be prepared for the possibility that Authority is correct.
Lefty: You mindless Fascist!!!
Now
Lefty: Question Authority ??????
Me: Definitely question authority, and do it smartly and with an open mind. Be prepared for the possibility that Authority is wrong.
Lefty: You MAGA Fascist!!!
I think ‘Cary Kembla’s thesis requires considerable revision and qualification. In our families, I’ve seen people who grew up with fairly untroubled parent-child relationships and people with troubled parent-child relationships break in opposing directions.
One thing it does seem to me is that there has been a secular decline in the mettle and integrity of institutional elites. The authority we’re questioning today is a great deal sh!ttier than their counterparts 60 years ago.
“This isn’t just Facebook; it’s everywhere. The left wants freedom of speech when the left is not in control. But once it does take control, the left wants to shut up anyone who disagrees or questions the authority of the left.”
— neo
“When I am Weaker than you, I ask you for Freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am Stronger than you, I take away your Freedom because that is according to my principles.”
— Frank Herbert, Children of Dune
Actually, it seems the individual is the expert and chooses which authority to believe by how close they come to the individual’s existing belief.
So when some news reader tells them what some government bureaucrat told him was the science behind something, the individual takes it or leaves it based on pre-existing preferences.
If he “believes” it, it’s SCIENCE and you had best not deny SCIENCE.
So what constitutes SCIENCE? Does it allow one to do Important Stuff with minimal cost to oneself? Make life rough for the lower orders? C’est tout. (Nod to huxley) No more is necessary. Actual, experimental results reducing such opportunities are NOT SCIENCE.
I don’t think the issue is so much about questioning authority but to consider the source and the bias of the publisher. IOW, cui bono?
The Fake News benefits from the existing order.
Another thing to consider is that since the Establishment lied about the Russia Hoax and Hunter’s laptop, they’ve lost all credibility.
There used to be a jury instruction decades ago and is certainly no longer in the approved pattern jury instructions: False in one, false in all.
We’ve become a low trust society because the Establishment has been so wrong about so many things for so long. Let’s start with the Vietnam War and move to today’s CAGW scam.
I constantly tell the Omaha Public Power District board that the climate doomsters have been wrong about the destruction of the planet for the past 50 years and there is no reason to believe they are correct now given their record of failure.
Does the GOP’s *Beloved* Rule of Law (AKA King’s Law) fall under “Question Authority” or “authority” or “authorities” or *BIG* Govt Law and Order? If so, humble me often ended up in jail (at least) for questioning and/or rebelling against and/or breaking such…
“Was early Authority (parents, teachers etc) *good* to the child? Sure, it might have made honest mistakes here and there, but was it basically loving and life affirming? If so, the child grows up to believe that Authority in the adult world (politicians, mainstream media, bureaucracy etc) is also basically good and honest, and has its best interests at heart.”
My parents and teachers were good to me when I was a child. I had a good childhood. I grew up in Mayberry! All my adults were loving and affirming. But I do NOT think that the Authority in the Adult world has my best interests at heart!
Amongst the people I still have some sort of contact with who swallow the left line hook, line, and sinker… I do not know why they do, and I do not.
One is an actor, and I know that a lot of people in the arts feel the need to side with the Left,” because they think it is being “edgy.” They like to think of themselves as “rebels.” And they are sooooooo convinced that the Republicans represent the part of the rich, that they would vote Democrat is the party ticket were Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler.
I feel most of them just live their lives basing their outlook on memes. Or, to be kinder, what they think are axioms: Fox lies, Orange Man Bad, etc. If the main stream news says it, it MUST be true. And when lies make there way halfway around the world before the truth has pulled on its shoes, there is no way to convince them that what was reported was a lie.
It’s interesting — I just saw something about Al Jazeera not reporting the name of the hostage rescued because it would give away that the IDF rescued a Moslem. But NBC just identified him as “an Israeli hostage.”
They are generally the people who were the rebels back in the day. They were the ones with the “question authority” bumper stickers. But it turns out they were only questioning authority when they believed that authority was on the side of the political right. When the authority came from the left it was and is sacrosanct.
________
I was in HS in the late 60s, to college in 1971. And grew up on Long Island. My own experience was that all the teachers were telling us to “question authority”. Because we were the Smartest Generation in Human History.
And like the little teachers’ pets most of boomers were, they bought into it. All it really amounted to was Doing Your Own Thing, which meant sex, drugs, and rock and roll. (And avoiding the draft.)
It was BS, and that was clear to me even then. When I went to college, I started wearing a coat and tie to class. It’s fun to be called a conformist when you’re the only one dressed like that. But most of them couldn’t see it. And when you questioned lefty teachers, the response was “Not here, you idiot!”
Eeyore:
The generation I’m talking about was slightly older and they were not taught to “question authority.” But I suppose that by the time you were being taught it was the authorities telling you to question authority.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect refers to the phenomenon where people trust news articles on topics they are not knowledgeable about, even though they recognize inaccuracies in other news reports on issues they know well. — Bing AI bot
Reporters & pseudo reporter/opinion people get lots wrong. They always have, however I think it is much worse now. Who are these people? Young C-students from a greatly degraded educational system. (Am I being too cynical? Possibly, or not.)
________
Actually, it seems the individual is the expert and chooses which authority to believe by how close they come to the individual’s existing belief. — Richard Aubrey
Confirmation bias. But that also leads one to the “chicken & egg” problem. Where did the original opinion or idea come from? Family upbringing is the easy answer, but often it’s something else.
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The other problem is that they really don’t even want to know — literally; a recent group email from my family made that clear, in a rather off-hand fashion. — AesopFan (from days ago)
Oh boy, isn’t that the truth? AesopFan makes clear that she puts in the work to understand these issues, but most can’t be bothered with that level of effort.
Another related variation is the following: Neo and others here noticed that group think and the importance of belonging to a club is an important factor. But also, I think, there is just the entertainment value of group thinking misinformation.
A lefty family member of mine was flipping channels some time ago and landed on Rachel Maddow. He commented approximately, “I know she’s kinda over-the-top, but I enjoy it so much.” Why the enjoyment?? I’m guessing, but I think it is the snarky satirical nature of that show, plus it conveys a sense that my club is so knowledgeable and superior to your club. The right-wing club is so dumb and inferior.
In addition to the level of effort that AesopFan puts in, there is the fact that many truly great economic and political concepts are very non-obvious and even counter intuitive. Most of these left-wing Democrat pols are failed sleazy lawyer wannabes. So they are always trying to sell an idea, and the accuracy or value of the idea is irrelevant. A simple minded one is best. And if the voter buys it, the pol will get the power and do whatever they want.
Do you hate the inflation we’ve been experiencing? Kamala will roll out price controls. Perfect example.
Iliad, 1 (67):
And Iliad, 2 (235)
It is a version of a Costanzaism:
It’s not a lie if you want to believe it.
}}} I only remember the sense I had of dangerous people who were also stupid, and yet very very arrogant. That just about summed it up.
What you describe here qualifies as almost the entirety of the modern Left — particularly the PostModern Liberal left.
“It’s all about the power — screw all that other shit that we dress it up with… that’s just pretty words used to sell it to the rubes.”
=======
}}} This isn’t just Facebook; it’s everywhere. The left wants freedom of speech when the left is not in control. But once it does take control, the left wants to shut up anyone who disagrees or questions the authority of the left.
And, again — straight out of the Leftist/Marxist Playbook, dating back literally many many decades.
Among other things, this is where cancel culture derives from.
This has not changed in my — or Neos’s — lifetime.
It’s not new, folks.
Along with others here, I don’t think skepticism/non-skepticism and unhappy/happy experiences of Authority break down as Cathy Semple suggests.
For instance are Democrats mostly people who have good experiences with Authority to explain their lack of skepticism today? Are Republicans mostly people who have had poor experiences with Authority to explain their skepticism today? I doubt it.
Can one have good experiences of some Authority and poor experiences with other Authority? What happens then?
My leftist friends would argue that they were and are still Questioning the Authority of white, straight, patriarchal, Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment authorities. They are not entirely wrong.
I find the terms of this discussion muddled. But then we humans are muddled creatures.
I read this post as far as the quote from the commenter and was already composing in my head a rejoinder along the lines of what Neo said.
I recognize the phenomenon and yet I am still amazed by it, especially when I encounter it among old hippies. I’m talking about people who weren’t just garden-variety boomers with not-very-serious adolescent rebellious impulses. I mean people whose specific calling, as they saw it, was to rebel, question, refuse to conform, etc., etc., to challenge the establishment about everything. And now they pretty much suck up whatever propaganda the establishment–which is now their establishment–offers them. They’re Trump-haters, Trump-supporter-haters, Kamala-Joy-Train passengers, trusters of the corporate media. THE MEDIA!?! If you knew these people as I knew them in the late ’60s, that last thing is maybe the most amazing of all.
Eeyore writes:
I agree that there is an egotism to a lot of strident Leftists and that delusion keeps them from examining their beliefs and the results of their beliefs when put into action. If their policies fail it cannot be because they are wrong, it must be that others did not enact them, or follow them properly.
When Kamala failed as border czar and the other duties she was assigned it was always because her staff did not position her for success.
As Eeyore writes, many baby boomers were raised to believe they were special. Except for the wealthy, which was a small sliver of humanity prior to the ’60s, most Americans (and Europeans and Asians and Africans…) had little time to be teen-agers or ponder political action. There was no leisure.
In the ’90s girls were taught that they were special. And in the oughts it was dark-skinned minorities. In the 2010s it was the non-heterosexuals.
It is now those last three groups where we see the highest percentages of political activists acting like the Leftists of the ’60s.
I think Eeyore is on to something…
“The left wants freedom of speech when the left is not in control. But once it does take control, the left wants to shut up anyone who disagrees or questions the authority of the left.”
— neo
Cutting down all the laws… blind to the winds that shall blow.
Being of the left is the easiest political path – join us “we’re people powered” and soon you will feel “the joy”. It’s even easier because the agenda is reinforced almost everywhere you look or listen.
There is actually nothing to question, is there?
And you certainly don’t want to be with orange Hitler do you?
The left wants freedom of speech when the left is not in control. But once it does take control, the left wants to shut up anyone who disagrees or questions the authority of the left.
–neo
True, but also true of most human political groups.
When out of power, humans want power. When in power, they want to st\ay in power and suppress those out of power.
Just ask Machiavelli.
The left didn’t invent this.
huxley:
I was NOT saying the right doesn’t want power. I was specifically referring to changeable attitudes towards freedom of speech. The left – when out of power – used to champion free speech for all. Now it suppresses it. The right – at least in recent years in the US – was for the most part for freedom of speech even when it had power. Censorship back then had more to do with codes for TV and movies and the like, and reflected the mores of the vast majority of Republicans AND Democrats of the era.
I was NOT saying the right doesn’t want power.
neo:
I didn’t say you did and I didn’t say the right doesn’t want power. I understand the specifics of your claim. I was there too.
I’m saying this is a general aspect of power dynamics. While I would agree that the American right has been generally more principled, it hasn’t always been. Think Joe McCarthy (which of course is a complex discussion).
I stick by my main claim. The left did not invent this out-of-power/in-power hypocrisy.
The expectations children have and the expectations parents have change over time. Much also depends on whether children and parents are focused outward on the external world and concentrating on making their way in that world, or whether they are looking inward towards the family and expecting something from other family members. Similar parent-child relations will be seen quite differently by different children (and by different parents) depending on what one person wants and needs from the other.
_____________
Right now, the left is relatively united. They know the direction they want to move in and only disagree about how fast to go. The right is more divided and finds it harder to agree on what they can do and should do. It’s this greater unity that perhaps accounts most for the Democrats’ current greater deference to authority. Conservatives argue among themselves about what they want. Democrats panic at challenges to their power, circle the wagons, and wait for orders from their leaders.
Your last two sentences define the word “fascism” to me.
Analogous to another lover of “Democracy”, Turkey’s Erdogan. He uses a well-known simile.
Democracy is like a bus. He’s all for it until it reaches the correct place [of power], and then it is time to get off.
Popular voting is the “bus”. The vehicle to attain power.
“The Young Turks”, who admire certain nefarious fascists, have stoked up to the DNC world that’s dawning — right? Very fitting.
What did it for me was sitting in a group at the Quad where a SDS honcho stated that Lenin should be a mandatory part of the college curriculum. She did not say this in the sense that we should be aware of our enemy, but in a gushing tone that implied that Lenin ranked among Plato, Dante, Shakespeare, Hobbs, etc. I took a challenging Introduction to Politics class in 9th grade that provided me with enough information to be permanently inoculated against Lenin-worship.
No, I don’t think that a pleasant and secure childhood tracks with ready credibility in authority figures – like commenters above, I also had well-adjusted loving parents, and a secure upbringing … but I also was deeply interested in history. And various historical events and movements were replete with examples of authority figures who were not to be trusted.
The history of the Third Reich and the Holocaust in particular was chock-full of such examples where authority figures were outright malign, and it worked out better for those people who did not obey.
Also – as a college student in 1975, I worked with resettling Vietnamese refugees, so I was already skeptical about much of the then-current conventional wisdom about Vietnam in general.
}}} Think Joe McCarthy (which of course is a complex discussion).
Huxley, I may be wrong, but perhaps you are thinking more HUAC — the HOUSE Unmerican Activities Commission, and not SENATOR McCarthy.
We’ve oft been trained by the lying shit merdia to conflate the two.
McCarthy was largely concerned with spies in the State Department, and, as the Venona papers have since shown, he was pretty on-point about exactly that.
He was also largely out of things by around 1950, having been the subject of the Left’s character destruction already.
The actual “Are you now or have you ever been” BS, the whole Blacklist thing, that was HUAC,, not McCarthy, and it was a time back when the House and the Senate did not collude overmuch.
Joseph McCarthy himself (as a U.S. Senator) had no direct involvement with the House committee. McCarthy was the chairman of the Government Operations Committee, e.g., the ones that looked into spying in the State Department.
It is actually a leftist slur against McCarthy — which, to their actual shame, was very wrongful in their treatment of him — to refer to what HUAC did as “McCarthyism”. McCarthy was very correct in his claim that the State department was riddled with Soviet spies, again, as the Venona papers revealed, 40 years later, after the fall of the USSR in 1990.
Not looking to give you a hard time over this, just suggesting that the distinction should be recognized.
}}} The left did not invent this out-of-power/in-power hypocrisy.
I would agree with this, and I suspect, so would Neo. But the Left HAS raised it to an actual art form. The worst hypocrisies of the right in all of American history don’t hold a candle to the endless litany of the left’s modern hypocrisies. Whatever grants them power, they are in favor of it — in or out of power.
If anything the Left feels their accrued power eroding, as they push further and further into insanity, and more and more people break off, and this is making them more and more hysterical about unity and not challenging the Official Line.
I was disgusted 30y ago by my Aunt’s justifications for “party solidarity”, and voting “the straight ticket”. If Hitler, or Stalin — literally — was put forth with a (D) after his name, and she knew it was, in fact, literally Hitler or Stalin — she’d still vote for him.
This honestly, and deeply, disgusts me as a political attitude.
It utterly and completely ignores principles in favor of Winning Power, and is totally reprehensible and morally inexcusable.
IMO, the key difference between Left and Right, whether in or out of power, is the lack of uniformity within the Right. I have always envied the ability of the Left to discipline – and torpedo if necessary – their candidates who step out of line. But it does lead to a dull sameness about all they say.
Back when I first started looking at this, in my teens, it was obvious, as it still is. The Right was usually described as “libertarian vs traditionalist”. With Fusionism as a supposed reconciliation. Though that term has been adopted at NR to describe their own position, it wasn’t accepted in the 60s and 70s – AT NATIONAL REVIEW – by the people involved.
Later there was the “three legged stool”. Also inadequate. By the time it was adopted, for instance, the Evangelicals had entered the equation, and were very different than the previous “social” leg which had been overwhelmingly Catholic or Anglican. And so too had the neocons, who were not, at first, strongly associated with foreign policy. (Rather, the original ones were like Charles Murray, questioning the effectiveness of the Great Society’s programs.)
Really, none of these models worked, just as Russell Kirk had always said. Willmore Kendal started a series of essays on the “Sages of conservatism”, but he finished only a few before dying. Somewhere around I’ve got a Xerox of an essay breaking down American conservatives into about a dozen (or more) types.
Bottom line: the right isn’t and never has been united, except negatively, in opposing the left. That was true when the terms were adopted, and is today. It leads to many accusations of betrayal, which is odd when thrown against someone who had ALWAYS denied believing what the accuser believes.
Yancey Ward on August 27, 2024 at 6:17 pm said:
It is a version of a Costanzaism:
It’s not a lie if you want to believe it.
________
That is a result of their adopting a view of total skepticism about truth. If it cannot be known, the only test is what you want to believe. Something Orwell saw they left as abandoning. Even in the weaker form – “I choose to believe X” – it is justified only when you have to make a decision while lacking sufficient information (as a commander in battle, for instance.)
But it’s always bothered me that people rarely seem to see that, in its original form, Constanza’s view is absolutely and obviously correct. I never was accused of lying when I didn’t score 100% on a test, and people do not get charged with perjury if they didn’t know what they said was false. (Well, not until Biden justice became a thing.) To lie, you must do so when you know better. There is even a distinction made between outright lies and careless or negligent untruths. (“Reckless disregard”).
the “question authority” bumper stickers
I always responded, “Who told you to do that?” The bumper sticker was a mark of obedience, not independence. People who travel in crowds seldom question themselves.
Huxley,
It’s pretty simple.If left or right have authority then it’s fantastic! If they don’t have it it’s terrible. It’s power.
How does a liberal know who’s an expert? What if those whose objective metrics in background–degrees, experience, so forth–disagree? How does the liberal pick which expert/experts to believe?
Back to being a liberal; which expert supports the moral equivalent of war; taxing–other people, making other people do stupid stuff, restricting other people’s individual freedom? That’s the expert. Hence the animus toward objectively expert people decrying climate alarmism.
The American Republic is on the edge of a precipice, looking down at its possible doom, while the Left comes up behind to push it over.
Democrats are authoritarians and must be put down, never elected to rule.
Here’s a post by someone who was once in what she now recognizes as a cult, and sees a lot of parallelism with the behavior of many Democrats:
https://x.com/WindDustStars/status/1828808053963264018
Richard Aubrey…”How does a liberal know who’s an expert? What if those whose objective metrics in background–degrees, experience, so forth–disagree?”
An interesting case of disagreeing experts: the pre-WWII secret British debate about air defense technologies: Radar Wars
https://ricochet.com/834816/radar-wars-a-case-study-in-expertise-and-influence/
David+Foster
Experts disagree all the time. See darwinian gradualism versus punctuated equilibrium. Evolution by creeps versus evolution by jerks.
But that, and the radar issue mentioned, are not public arguments with one side or the other picking one they like and christening it “expert”.
You should (not) listen to the rivet-counters on military blogs. Experts in minutia.
But none of those give their adherents reason to take Aubrey’s SUV away from him. Or make him take shots. Or learn to say, “Her skirt was too short,” once the background of a local rapist becomes known.
Here’s a post by someone who was once in what she now recognizes as a cult,
==
I suspect the outfit she’s referring to is Regnum Christi. I used to correspond online with a Catholic traditionalist who’d crossed paths with Regnum Christi ca. 1999. He had nothing kind to say about it.
Question authority but carefully consider the answer you get
I’m remembering some lines from Eric Andersen:
She’s a broken promise keeper, wanting so bad to believe
In something that would need her much, that could lead her fearlessly
Even if it to were a prison dark, she’d give away the keys
It if simply took her by the hand and promised not to leave
Most of them were simply parroting it as the party line, even then. They didn’t even think about it. Good old doublethink.