Guap
3167
I like the term “progressive”, as a counter to the term “conservative”.
Timex
3168
I think that this gets at the crux of the issue.
Trump supporters cannot be linked a political ideology, as evidence by the fact that Trump changes his positions randomly, and they just support it. Their support is entirely tied to that one particular person, rather than any group of ideals he purports to represent.
How is this different from past conservatives? Did conservatives abandon Reagan over the ballooning deficit? Over violations of law and funding of authoritarian regimes in Iran-Contra? Over raising taxes?
Narrator: No, they didn’t.
He’s been very, very consistent in certain things. And he - or rather Miller - has a concrete agenda. You and Tom just find talking about this agenda distasteful as being part of conservatism. But racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, a desire to dismantle education, a loathing of certain kinds of people from certain parts of the country - Trump and Miller have a whole administrative agenda designed just to punish California for existing - these are all ideas, repellent as they are.
These concepts form an ideology, with principles that can be followed and consequences that flow from those principles. This ideology unites and drives millions of people in this country, including the President, the majority of the Senate, Fox News and its followers, and the vast majority of the Republican party.
“Conservatism,” as practiced by the vast majority of people calling themselves “conservative” in 2019, is an ideology based entirely on hatred and spite. You may find this fact regrettable, you may not want to to admit it, but it is nonetheless true.
(And yes, the post linked by Calerari is very good, so here it is again.)
Timex
3171
First, let’s be clear here, I agree that those bad things are in fact at the core of Trump and the GOP right now.
However, while I do not expect this to happen, I feel that Trump could reverse any of those, and his hard core fan base would just be fine with it.
Like his racist anti immigrant stuff. Trump could come out tomorrow and say, “As always, I love immigrants and my policy is going to be to eliminate the detention centers.” He won’t do that, of course, but if he did? Most of his core supporters would be TOTALLY FINE with it. Folks like Anne Coulter would scream about it, which she has numerous times while pointing out that he’s achieved basically nothing in regards to the wall, etc. But his supporters will defend him on literally anything. They attack Coulter in those cases, for attacking Trump.
Again, Trump won’t actually change those views, because Trump himself is in fact a racist fuck. But a ton of his supporters support him independently from any actual positions. They support a mythological figure that they’ve created in their minds, and reality has no impact on that figure.
Clay
3172
This has been written about pretty extensively, including his relationship with Richard Spencer. Here’s one article.
The Blue Wall polling of swing voters in MN, WI, MI, and PA suggests that switching stances on immigration and guns would each carve off a segment of his voters. Something like 6% of all voters said that a reversal on guns could change their mind about voting for Trump and 4% said immigration would (IIRC). So if he’s already at 45% or w/e, dropping to 41% would be pretty devastating. Even losing only half those voters could kill his chances.
I’m not sure what the appropriate ratio is here, though. If you agree with Trump/GOP about guns, immigration, abortion, (lack of) regulations, lower taxes, and generally being a dick to minorities and women, then should you suddenly vote for someone who disagrees on all those points just because Trump changes one of them? If you attack him for changing stances and that causes someone worse to be elected, that seems like a bad outcome, so you won’t attack him over it either. If you won’t attack him over it, then you have to accept it and you probably stay quiet as much as possible while other people who had no strong opinion either way go out and argue that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
Timex
3174
But the thing is, the cognitive dissonance with these voters is so high, that he can change his position, and just say that he didn’t change his position, and they would believe him.
Hell, look at gun control as an example. After these shootings, he tends to waver and support various common sense reforms… He’s even attacked other GOP members for not. And his supporters back him, because whatever, they’ll back anything (also, because support for those reforms is damn near universal). But then the NRA talks to him, and he reverses. And then they back him on that.
They’ll back him on anything, because they’ll just be able to convince themselves that whatever he’s saying is what they want. The parts that they might otherwise disagree with? Doesn’t matter. It literally doesn’t matter what he actually says or does.
The real tragedy is that if Timex is correct then Trump could bring the entire GOP around on climate change at any time, with immense positive consequences for posterity. But apparently he won’t, ‘cause Obama was mean to him at the press correspondents’ dinner.
Timex
3176
I think he actually could. Some folks have actually suggested exactly that, in a kind of “Only Nixon can go to China” sort of way.
But yeah, he won’t, because he’s not only a piece of shit, but he’s also amazingly stupid.
Zylon
3177
“Cognitive dissonance” doesn’t mean holding conflicting views. It specifically refers to the mental discomfort caused by attempting to reconcile conflicting views. Thus high cognitive dissonance (or the potential for it) is actually a sign of a healthy critical mind. Far-right conservatives, on the other hand, are really good at mental compartmentalization, so cognitive dissonance generally isn’t an issue for them. I don’t understand why so many people get this exactly backwards.
None
3178
Wow, so only 4% of the populace admit to being racist fucks? Shocked.
Nesrie
3179
And it’s been that way for a long time. It’s not… new. Conservative = racism goes all the way back to Reagan and further. Conservative being what some want it to mean is not a real thing and has not been a real thing for a long time. The only thing 2016 did is finally give people permission to stop pretending, but it was always there and… embraced.
I don’t think he is correct though. They’ll allow any pivot as long as he’s still granting them permission to resent and hate, but if he had a come to Jesus moment and pivoted to compassionate, humane policies they’d drop him in a heartbeat.
Obligatory F. Scott Fitzgerald quote
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
For what it’s worth, I do think there is something to the Burkean concept of conservatism, which argues that the embedded wisdom of tradition has value and is (or may be) preferable to short-term attempts to rationally alter the political/social structure, because the latter can have unintended consequences. (See: Revolution, French, or, arguably much worse, see: Revolution, Russian.)
However, the older I get, the more skeptical I am of the idea that there is much innate wisdom in tradition beyond sheer inertia. To take one easy example, Aristotle thought slavery was “just the way things are” and applied his formidable intellect to arguing for its necessity.
Now, how many of today’s self-styled conservatives (at least outside the offices of National Review) could even tell you who Edmund Burke was, is another matter.
The word you want is doublethink
I blame popular media. TIL, thanks.
Well, sure. It’s Chesterton’s fence:
In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
But the thing is, fences take energy to maintain. So while the question as to why we should spend effort tearing down a fence down is fair, there’s an unspoken assumption there that we should actually work to maintain that fence instead of letting it decay, and really, what’s that fence for anyway? It’s for keeping out the scum that the law should bind but not protect.
