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Logic Is Boring
Antifa mob attacks peaceful protesters at Berkeley.
Those of us on the right often criticize the political leaders of the left, sometimes stridently. We question not only their judgment but often their true motivations as well. It can get nasty. But we generally view our leftist neighbors as misguided but nice people. We value our friendships with them and avoid direct confrontation. If a leftist friend launches into an anti-conservative tirade, conservatives often just shrug their shoulders and change the subject. There is no point losing a friend over a political argument. But get a conservative talking about Hillary Clinton, and it can get unpleasant quickly.
Leftists, however, often seem to take the opposite approach. Their criticisms of their conservative neighbors can be vicious, and they often view Republican leaders as misguided fools. They create caricatures of conservative American citizens (bitter clingers) and attack them as evil, selfish creeps who oppose “progress” or “social justice” or whatever, even though many of their neighbors are offended to be stereotyped in such a way. Many progressives insulate themselves from any conservative acquaintance who is out of the conservative closet. But their characterizations of Republican leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are often that of brainless puppets. The head of the Republican party at the time is generally portrayed as an evil genius, but most other Republican politicians are just heartless fools. These are obviously rough generalizations, but it seems to me that conservatives and liberals take approaches that are nearly opposite of one another in this regard.
There are other differences; Republicans consider it a success when they block or overturn a progressive policy while Democrats consider it a success when they personally destroy a Republican. Look at the difference in how Republicans blocked the nomination of Merrick Garland (procedural sleight of hand) and how the Democrats attempted to block the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh (politics of personal destruction). It’s hard to imagine Republican politicians, no matter how flawed, going after a Democrat nominee so viciously and obviously deceitfully.
Much of this may be because conservative politics are based on rational thought, and liberal politics are based on emotion. The emotional side will tend to tolerate less dissent because it feels more like a personal attack than a clinical discussion of policy. So I suppose some of these differences are to be expected.
I recently wrote a post which compared people making decisions about which medicines to take, to how people make decisions in the voting booth. I was attempting to argue that a population that makes irrational decisions based on faulty information when choosing medical treatments is likely to use a similarly irrational process when making decisions in the voting booth.
While I didn’t convince anyone with my argument, many commenters made my point for me by ignoring overwhelming peer-reviewed data and preferring instead to make decisions based on anecdotes. I often make decisions the same way. We all do.
This is not a criticism of anyone. This is simply how humans make decisions. We have emotions, and we have reason. We make decisions based on emotions, and we use reason only to rationalize whatever we just did. It’s human nature. Always has been. It’s not right or wrong. That’s just how humans operate. This is why people often criticize someone who makes difficult decisions based on cold, hard facts as someone who has lost their humanity. In a way, they have.
Leftists, and the way they appeal to the emotions of their supporters while ignoring inconvenient truths have an advantage in electoral politics. They appeal to the way most people usually make decisions – with emotions. Republicans, with their efforts to find logical solutions to real problems, have a disadvantage. Paul Ryan doesn’t stimulate passion in voters, for or against him. Trump does, and this makes him unique among Republican politicians.
I find it interesting that this natural division, that gives the Democrat party such an advantage over Republicans, now seems to be splitting the Democrat party into pieces.
Bernie Sanders had all the energy in the Democrat primary, and without typical corrupt Democrat politics, he won the primary election over the more grounded Hillary Clinton. Hillary asked a reasonable question, “How does Mr. Sanders intend to pay for all this?” Her question was reasonable but unhelpful. People were passionate about Bernie, and inconvenient truths did not lessen their emotional connection to him.
Now, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has all the energy and seems to be taking control of the House majority, much to the consternation of the management-type Nancy Pelosi. Mrs. Pelosi seems unsure how to fight this. I’m not sure that she can.
I’m also not sure how Republicans can fight this. Someone needs to consider reality from time to time. And that person may not be popular for pointing out the obvious. It’s hard to win elections with spreadsheets when your opponent has snappy bumper stickers.
So the Democrats will have a natural advantage in elections. If they can avoid allowing this emotion vs reality divide to destroy their own party.
The Democrat party has always been a party of factions. It is not based on an ideology exactly, it based on the concentration of and use of power. It has generally managed to coordinate its various factions sufficiently to maintain power in the past. But it’s always been a delicate balance, getting unionized factory-worker deer hunters to vote the same as lesbian sociology professors and environmentalist single-Mom waitresses. They struggle but generally succeed.
They’re really struggling now.
They have a huge advantage over Republicans. If, and only if, they can harness the energy of their members who aren’t cursed with rational thought, without allowing those members to get their entire party to ride their sparkly rainbow unicorns into the leftist land of lavish looniness.
Democrat voters aren’t excited about Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and some of their other less insane leaders. But they are completely dependent on them.
I have no doubt that Nancy and Chuck understand this. But I don’t think the energetic and passionate base of the party does.
There must be some really interesting meetings between various Democrat leaders these days.
Republicans, as always, are boring. And that’s a disadvantage.
Donald Trump is not boring. And that’s an advantage. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are not boring. And that’s an advantage. I think.
I’m not sure that Mrs. Pelosi would agree, though. At least, not right now.
What do you think?
Published in General
If it is socialism, it is not the socialism imagined by almost anyone who advocates socialism. In the family version, children have no autonomy: they are completely under the authority of their parents.
Practically speaking, that’s how socialism works out, too. But no one who calls for socialism thinks that.
…or if they think it, they’re not telling the children, especially the ones who want to go out on their own and craft their own lives without government interference.
Similarly, big brothers are good (says the guy who was the oldest of five siblings) but if you extrapolate to the world at large you get George Orwell’s Big Brother.
Right? I’m the oldest of seven myself. I think big brothers are great. ;)
I find myself often thinking of the Left-Right divide in terms of parent-child.
Leftist ideas come across, to me, like the ideas of a moderately bright teenager. They want to solve a problem, get an idea, and don’t have the knowledge or experience to understand why their idea will not work and, often, will just create a bigger problem.
If you try to explain this to them, they get petulant and obnoxious. Sometimes they descend into a tantrum.
In the real world, and with smaller scale problems, you can let them make their mistakes and learn from them.
The truly deceptive twist of Leftism is the oppressor/oppressed narrative, which allows the Leftist to blame the Conservative for the bad consequences of the Leftist’s own bad policies.
Let’s hope so, for the sake of the nation.
A politician just needs to be supported by the right group of powerful people. It doesn’t matter the form of government. A democracy requires more people to be paid off than a dictatorship. In 2016 it was about 63% of the pop. and if Trump barely won with not quite half of that, you don’t need everyone to vote for you or even a majority of the population.
In “The Dictator’s Handbook- Why bad behavior is almost always good politics”, by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, they explain in the introduction how Bell, CA managed to legally allow the manager and board members to make hundreds of thousands. You can read the introduction on Amazon, and it is illuminating.
“Unsk2” Thank you. Succinct, cogent, as well as, brilliant.