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A View from the Other Side: Ideological Purity and Trump
I started a new job last week with a large non-profit focused on a specific disease prevention, treatment, research, and cure. I now work from home, but was in the corporate headquarters earlier this week. Much like the government and academia, there is an implicit assumption there that anyone who is educated and cares about people is politically liberal. This always leads to little insights into how the non-fringe, non-activist wing of the other side thinks.
Here are a few snippets to mull over.
Sr. VP 1: Hillary has got to win. Period. Whatever it takes.
Sr. VP 2: My politics are much closer to Bernie Sanders, but I’ll vote for Hillary if she’s the candidate. She’ll help get us there.
Sr. VP 1: I agree. Sanders has “some really innovative policy ideas.”
Sr VP 1: Of course, we could nominate anyone, because as long as Trump goes third party, we win (at this point they both raised there hands in the air and cheered).
Sr. VP 2: Him winning the presidency wouldn’t be so bad … except on immigration (note this is from Bernie Sanders fan).
Sr. VP 1: Lynne, I hope you don’t mind we talk politics sometimes.
Me: I don’t mind, just curious about how much of diversity of opinion there is here.
My lessons learned:
1) Liberals vote to win. Half a loaf is better than nothing. No comments like, “If Bernie isn’t the nominee, I’m staying at home.”
2) They see Trump for what he is — a disaster for the Republican party and not conservative at all.
Next conversation at dinner:
Executive VP: Republicans are going to lose. Hillary is going to win and it’s going to be awesome. We’ll get to the single-payer system that works.
Other dinner comments: Yes, she’s going to get out of this email thing … it’s just media bias making a big deal of it. It must be hard to live in a Red state (we were in GA). Trump is going to drag the party down, down, down.
Me: I really think that Trump represents a populist movement (talk about the Michael Barone column on re-alignment). … go on to say, my friends here in GA who are Republicans see this as too early to make big predictions yet.
EVP: You know people who are Republicans? Even active in the party? (Seriously, he said this.)
Me: Yes, one of the great things about growing up in a Red State is that you meet people who are conservative politically, are smart, educated, caring, compassionate, not crazy, and would make excellent conversationalists here at our dinner.
Silence at the table
Me: Maybe it’s the psychologist in me, I just think people are more complex than their political views.
My lessons learned:
1. They will vote for Hillary no matter what comes out about Benghazi, e-mails, or anything else.
2. They think most Republicans are Tea Partiers, and that Tea Partiers are crazy radicals.
3. They think that all people who have had politics explained to them will agree with them.
What do you think? Is this consistent with what your more liberal friends and colleagues think? I think they’re right about Trump, he’s not conservative, but he could sure botch it for us this cycle. I also think they’re right to take the closest thing they can get to the liberal they want … even though it’s not as liberal as they want.
Published in General, Politics
Exactly.
You misunderstand. What I meant by “there is no there” is that there is no end goal. They will never stop pushing. No matter how much ground we give they will always find some new “injustice” which can only be fixed by more centralized control.
I actually used to be a good deal more moderate than I am now, but it’s this realization, that they are never going to stop, that’s moved me into the “We can’t give them anything” camp.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
“Opportunist” can be good, assuming you use the opportunity for good.
Credit where it’s due: He’s proven himself to be a much more serious thinker than I initially gave him credit for. I used to think he had this pathological need to always be the most conservative guy in the room. I think he comes across a lot better now that he actually has to convince people he’s right and can’t expect accolades just for saying the right thing.
That’s the thing, they don’t actually care about injustice at all. It’s just the emotional veneer. Gay rights or animal rights or women’s rights isn’t the goal, the goal is the subversion of the west’s cultural values and traditions. It only seems like they’re finding new injustices when in fact the issue isn’t the issue. It’s cultural marxism. Once the culture is destroyed a new marxist paradise can be built upon the rubble.
This is the principle underlying the seeming intransigence of the NRA and other gun-rights advocates. The opposition will never stop until the country is disarmed, so we can’t give an inch.
Have you considered both you and Freesmith are right? It’s possible to fight like hell in the government and plan a long march through the institutions.
And, by strange coincidence, the NARAL/Planned Parenthood abortion rights advocates don’t dare give an inch on abortion rights, either. And they’re willing to excuse actual, real, public health threats in order to do so.
The “we can’t give them anything” camp is, to put it kindly, not one of the better places in general society to be.
A situation like this demands compromise. They can restore some human rights that they’ve taken from the people, and we can loosen our grip on the pliers that are pinching them and making them sing in a high voice.
What do you make of Ayn Rand calling William Edward Hickman a “brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy”? William Edward Hickman, if you didn’t know, brutally murdered a twelve-year-old girl, which is one more person than Lucifer ever killed. Guess we ought to swear off free markets, because of one quote from a single person.
You’re right. How stupid of me not to realize that anyone who doesn’t share your policy proposals is a communist tyrant. The progressive tax and gay marriage are the door to the killing fields.
I have my differences with The American Conservative, but I appreciate they avoid the kind of wingnuttery that deems half of society to be incorrigibly evil.
Ayers is a scumbag. No one’s making the case that no leftists are evil. Whatever Obama and Ayers’ relationship, the administration has had no ties with him. Ayers has even called Obama a war criminal.
Nicely played, and in real time yet. Was that spontaneous, or a prepared impromptu remark?
Talk about an apples and oranges comparison. A. Rand was a fringe figure in “free markets” despite having read that popular book. B. Did Rand model her life of Hickman? Did her disciples? C. Was Hickman the personification of evil?
I don’t know… Maybe you’re just not familiar with Alinsky and his influence?
I used to think there was political purity on the right until 2008, when two people I thought of as very conservative mentioned they may vote for Obama. They were so wrapped up in the cult of personality and the pablum coming out of his mouth that I had to remind them that he rated more liberal than Sanders as a senator! Hopefully, Obama was an exception…
Given the devotion to a certain candidate who shall remain nameless, I’m inclined to believe he wasn’t.
It’s just not that simple, however:
Does it really matter if he’s talking to Ayers if he’s pursuing the same agenda?
Exactly!
But don’t expect too many to volunteer for your long march if you refuse to fight in the here and now.
And if you turn your back on political power do so with the understanding that your culture war opponents do not. They sincerely intend to get your mind right, through law if necessary.
How do you stop a bully?
I was recently talking with a friend and brought up starting an NPO for a nonpolitical cause we share. He shocked me by saying that it would never go, that after all the persecution the IRS had faced from the Tea Party, they probably wouldn’t okay anything.
Lois Lerner, Saint and Martyr, pray for us.
I know a lot of decent people who simply are not smart enough to avoid leftist political positions.
These are not evil people. In many ways they are not stupid, either. Many have Ph.Ds. (Insert joke here.)
I suppose the best descriptor I can come up with for them is that they suffer from a profound blindness to how the world works caused by an education lacking in practical principles of economics, government, public choice theory, and logic, among other things.
And where do they get such a grand education?
Maybe they were home schooled? Just kidding.
This is spot-on with what I experience in my own company. I work from home and am glad I do, because I would not be able to keep my mouth shut if I were in the workplace. I’m hit with a double-whammy: HQ is in Chicago, and Valerie Jarrett served on the Board of Directors.
We’re going to see a lot more of this I’m afraid, especially when you see the state of our colleges and who’s teaching the students, who then because the VPs, SVPs, EVPs. So they end poisoned for life, and now current graduates of the past six years think this economy is the “new normal.” Sad.
A fringe figure who’s one of the bestselling authors ever. A prominent Republican politician and VP nominee regarded her as a hero, not to mention her influence on former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan. John Galt is a character well-known to right wing circles. A Ricochet member references him in his username and another uses Atlas Shrugged artwork as an avatar.
None of this is to denigrate Rand or her fans. I’m ambivalent to the woman. The left is way more interested in her than the right, but to claim she’s a non-entity is laughable.
Does it matter if she modeled her life on Hickman? Would you be so forgiving of someone from the left writing the same words about a murderer?
Spent some years on the left and didn’t hear a fraction as much about Alinsky as I do from the right, but yes I’m aware of the man and his work. I know Hillary Rodham wrote her senior thesis about him and had some contact with him.
His quote about Lucifer being the “very first radical” is middling praise if it is at all. The use of the qualifying phrases “an over the shoulder acknowledgment” and “at least” makes it ambiguous, but it’s not a full-on embrace of Luciferianism. How you think this one sentence encapsulates all of leftism is beyond me.
The Wikipedia article you link to contains this quote:
Replace the word “organizer” and you have the tactic of many a Trump supporter.
When in the lion’s den among the self satisfied lefties, to only right tactic is to admit to one’s conservative or libertarian leanings and immediately look for areas of agreement, before going to hardline disagreement. For example on immigration, focus on the evil coyotes that sell women into sex slavery, leave women and children in the desert, and rob them of their money. With a sane immigration system, coyotes could be put out of business. Lefties dislike coyotes as much as the rest of us do.
The serious side benefit is that it will bring other conservatives out of the closet, when they hear friendly opinions. I suspect such organizations have the conservatives in fear for their jobs if they voice their conservative opinions. No one wants to be a minority of one. (Except Ann Coulter, maybe.)