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The Left Is Now an Honor/Shame Culture
Anecdotal evidence, especially from Twitter, suggests that the American Right and Left reacted to the Ford/Kavanaugh Senate hearings in the following three ways:
- Both tribes generally thought that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was believable and sympathetic. Most seemed to feel bad for her, even wishing that she didn’t have to expose herself in this way.
- The right essentially had the same response to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s testimony. It made sense that he would be angry, but even more so, if he was innocent he should have been angry.
- The left universally seems to have found Kavanaugh’s testimony to not only be unsympathetic but on some level an indictment of him personally.
Basically Dr. Ford was met with near-universal empathy but Kavanaugh was a like a thermometer for partisanship. This outcome wasn’t terribly surprising to most conservatives. But does it have an explanation beyond tribal loyalties?
Yes and the beginnings of the answer can be found in The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. This excellent work identifies three great untruths that the current generation of college students have bought into.
- The Untruth of Fragility: whatever doesn’t kill you makes you weaker
- The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: always trust your feelings
- The Untruth of Us vs. Them: my enemies are always evil
They provide a thorough analysis of why these untruths have been embraced specifically by the so-called “Generation Z” (children born after 1995). But for present purposes, the most relevant part of their explanation is a change of culture. They argue that sometime in the last several decades America transformed from a culture of dignity to a culture of victimhood.
Dignity culture is essentially the idea that every human has intrinsic value and worth. This kind of culture approaches individuals as persons and assumes that every person is deserving of respect. It presumes objective morality and expects that most persons will strive to be moral. Criminals are supposed to be the exception but should generally be treated as responsible agents and held accountable for their crimes in some way. A culture of dignity views civility as fundamental and incivility as a horrible deviation. Obviously America at her best has never really lived up to these ideals, no country has. But in general western liberal civilization has seen itself within this framework of fundamental dignity.
But according to The Coddling, this has been transplanted by a culture of victimhood. This new culture grants special moral status to victims. A culture of dignity should, of course, be sympathetic towards victims and try to help them. But it does not give them special status and privileges. In a culture based around victimhood the victims are venerated as heroes deserving of special attention. They are treated as having special mystical knowledge. Victims are granted more social capital than nonvictims. I would say they actually occupy an entirely different caste. This culture is clearly a logical outgrowth from the theory of intersectionality which essentially turns minorities into a kind of Olympics of oppression.
It is true that a large and influential segment of the west has become a victim culture. The American hard left and the so-called alt-right are clear-cut examples of this. Intersectionality has become ubiquitous within the American Academy and mainstream media. And of course Richard Spencer-style white identity politics certainly portray white folks as victims. The election of Donald Trump was in many ways an outcome of this unfortunate dialectic. And along these lines so is the Ford/Kavanaugh debacle.
The empathy granted to Dr. Ford was universal. But it wasn’t universally due to her victimhood. On the right, the empathy was granted because of her inherent dignity. Sexual assault is wrong from this perspective because it is a violation of moral order. And this same argument was extended to Kavanaugh. To be accused of these things without evidence was seen as deeply unjust. The right treated both Ford and Kavanaugh as persons first and foremost. Both potentially had been wronged because each of them possesses rights that may have been violated.
But for the American left, Kavanaugh was guilty by definition due to his white male privilege. It was never possible that Kavanaugh would be viewed in terms resembling fairness and objectivity by the left. He was guilty with no avenue for proving himself innocent. He was the villain because of his maleness and Ford was the hero because of her femaleness, and because she had been victimized. The truth simply did not matter.
This is remarkably similar to the way that many traditional honor cultures treat parallel situations. For instance many years ago while visiting Nepal, it was explained to me that if a married woman is raped her husband throws her out and then she is supposed to go live with her rapist. Tragically rape has been a trending topic in Nepali news. One publication recently reported:
Two years ago in Mahottari, a young woman was forced into a sugarcane field and sexually abused by Farmud Ansari and Murduj Ansari. They were arrested, but instead of punishing them, the locals padlocked the girl’s house and expelled her from the village for having “corrupted” the local youths.
A system like this isn’t based on truth, facts, or argumentation. It’s based in honor. The end of the story is predetermined based on social status.
Our dignity culture wasn’t displaced by a new culture of victimization. Instead, western culture has experienced a divergence. One tribe has maintained the dignity culture. But the other tribe hasn’t acquired a new kind of culture either. Rather they have regressed to an honor culture. And in this honor culture, white men are unequal. Dr. Ford occupies a higher caste than Judge Kavanaugh and honor says that she is in the right, whether she’s telling the truth or not simply does not matter.
ThinkProgress recently demonstrated this perfectly when they commented on the obvious parallels between Tom Robinson’s rape trial in To Kill a Mockingbird.
The character of Atticus Finch, as readers might remember, was defending a Black man from a white woman who had accused him of a rape he didn’t commit, in the Jim Crow South. The GOP are trying to ensure a privileged white judge gets an even more privileged position on the Supreme Court.
The presumption of innocence or evidence simply isn’t relevant to this new (old) honor culture. The only thing that is relevant is a person’s intersectionality rating. Of course, the stakes are different for Kavanaugh and Robinson. Robinson went to prison for the false accusations leveled against him. Kavanaugh can’t be prosecuted for his alleged crimes. But the connection is still clear. Evidence and presumption of innocence should have saved Robinson from his tragic fate. Entertaining such accusations without evidence is unjust. That is true regardless of the consequences.
But this is no longer common sense to the Honor culture of American leftism. The consequences for this failure of reason are far from obvious, but unlikely to be good.
Published in Culture
I like this suggestion from Gleason. I’m too busy to have an opinion right now. (235 students at the moment–a personal record.)
May I just suggest that a Klingon honor culture would be a big improvement on the Left.
It’s hardly a secret that this view is being pushed, the WaPo does not hide their sympathies.
Maybe more like believing in the Inventory would be a good predictor…
It’s the existence of exenuating circumstances that makes it criminal? The author of the op-ed is a “former lawyer” yet.
What I find crazy about this is putting in a left/right bracket. Nearly every culture in the world regards female-on-male harassment as something merely between a dirty joke and a venial sin. This was true fifty years ago, and it’s likely to be true fifty years from now. Whether or not this is just or a good thing, it’s a fact, and claims that “the left” has something to do with this need some support, or I have to regard it as one more case in this world where your political enemies can be accused of anything. You know, like they do to us.
The most tiring parts of this ordeal were people endlessly expressing sympathy for this blatant liar (how did she disappear from the internet prior to her testimony? Did her allies at google and facebook take measures to delete her history?) and that she is repeatedly addressed as “doctor.” No one calls a PhD “doctor except as some sort of vanity stroking frivolity.
This view isn’t showing up in the National Review or the Weekly Standard, the Washington Post has complete control over their editorials and someone there thought this was a good one. Harvey Milk had no problem preying on underage boys and it seems many on the Left have no problem celebrating him as a hero. It is not difficult to find other examples where this is tacitly approved behavior between adults and those who cannot consent. Look at how Polanski was celebrated, see how Kevin Spacey was protected for years.
It is a serious charge and a serious problem so your skepticism is warranted but do not attempt to tell me that there is nothing going on here.
“Doctor Jill Biden”.
’nuff said.
What else do you call a Ph. D.? You actually can’t call him “Professor” very easily, despite some Ricochet luminary’s preference (@RobLong, I believe, on a recent podcast).
“Professor” is a job title for my tenured lords and masters; I’m just a lowly Assistant Prof., and formerly a lowlier Visiting Asst. Prof., and for a time before that no more than an Adjunct Instructor. A Ph.D. working at McDonalds has no special title other than “doctor,” which seems a reasonable shorthand for “Ph.D.”–“doctor of philosophy.”
At church, at Ricochet, and at family gatherings, you can call me “Mark.” At Ricochet I can also answer to “Augustine,” “Aug,” “Auggie,” and “Hey, you!”
I doubt it. I was fascinated by the Myers-Briggs test in high school, until I figured out how to manipulate it into any result I wanted. I got a blind date once because I was INFJ.
You call them “Mr.” or “Ms.” unless you’re actually at a school where they are teaching or studying. No one should pay much attention to them otherwise.
I remember a client once asked me to speak with a Dr. “Jones” as a character reference. I called expecting to speak to a medical doctor only to find that she had a PhD in music education and wasn’t even working in that field, and apparently not for quite some time. I had to stifle a chortle on learning that she insisted on being called “doctor.” It’s more than a little presumptuous. Our society doesn’t really, and shouldn’t elevate PhD’s to that level of respect. I have a JD, should I be called “doctor” too?
I have a good friend who’s a PhD in Computer Science. We call him “Dr Ken” facetiously all the time. I have friends from high school with PhDs, and none of them are ever called “Doctor”. They’d be embarrassed.
But if I wanted, I could be INTJ. Or ENFJ. Or any other combination very easily.
Been there.
Well, not the part about the date. But I once got all different results by answering the questions literally instead according to the intentions of the authors.
Do I value justice over mercy? Heavens, no: I read the book of James! Are you asking me if my personality tends to focus on justice first and mercy later? Yes, it does; why don’t you ask that if that’s what you want to know?
Well, that’s fine with me, I guess. But the same standards for other folks, right? An ordained pastor, even if he be a former Archbishop, working at his second career at McDonalds is no longer “Reverend”?
Yes.
And elected officials, once out of office, cease to be “President” or “Senator” or “Governor” or whatever. We’re Americans. We don’t bestow titles, dammit.
My roommate in college became a priest and a few years ago was sent to prison for embezzling church money to feed his gambling habit. If your hypothetical archbishop is working at McDonalds for a similar reason then I think the title isn’t very apt, do you? :)
By the way, my friend did his time and was eventually allowed to minister to the diocese again, but although he was once considered to be in the running for bishop someday, that ship has sailed and he’ll never be allowed to touch a collection plate again.
With the exception of Supreme Overlord @AndrewKlavan, of course.
That goes triple for appointed officials, like, say, Secretary of State.
Not really. But if he just felt called to work in a restaurant and never broke any rules, we ought to have the same standards for Ph.Ds. not in academia, right?
Exactly. I saw basically no sympathy on the Right for the mendacious Dr. Ford except from professional politicians who, let’s face it, are paid to put on a more reasonable than reasonable face in times like this. The rank and file- we didn’t believe her from the start, saw right through this transparently political and utter dishonest attack, and were not afraid to say so.
I’m not so comfortable calling her “mendacious.” We ought to have a pretty high standard for calling someone that sort of thing.
However, the thing about the building modification records from local CA government–that does seem a bit shady.
The night of the “hearing” I had to hang up on my wife, because she was conflating a scary experience from her past with Chrissie Blasey’s and I wasn’t buying it.
No. Only academicians use those titles, the rest of us don’t. I meant the title is only used by academicians while in academics. No one else should ever bother. It’s demeaning to real doctors and dentists and veterinarians.
Only church people use the title “Reverend,” right? I don’t see why the rules should be different.
I suppose the answer is going to be, do you mean a real reverend who studies theology and has some sort of benevolent (such as it is) role in society, or do you mean Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?
Well, to understand whether and why you think the rules should be different–a reverend who did study theology but may or may not now, and has a role nor more or less benevolent than economic productivity in the restaurant industry.
I don’t make the rules. They have existed for quite some time. No one calls a PhD “doctor” unless they work in academia, and that’s been the rule all my life.
Ok. If you’re citing and not justifying rules as you understand them, I’m not sure I have any concerns at all.
Except for all my offline concerns. I’m outta here.
There’s something very romantic about Jung love.