Popularism and its Discontents

 

(Is no one going to make the obvious joke?)

Anyway, "popularism" is the hot button term among lefty technocratic circles popularized by the likes of David Shor and Matt Yglesias. You can read Ezra Klein's very thorough interview on the subject in the NYT. ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/opinion/democrats-david-shor-education-polarization.html or use Wayback machine to circumvent the paywall.)

Popularism is a shorthand for the belief that the Democratic Party, when it is trying to get politicians elected, should focus on policies that are popular and downplay things that are unpopular and irrelevant. Lot's of commercials about cheaper prescription drugs and border enforcement, less talking about systematic racism and anti-capitalism. And by popular we mean "tested in polls, and especially among white voters over fifty with no college degree."

It's obviously a response to perceptions of the 2016 Clinton campaign and the 2020 Democratic primary, and it leans heavily on the success of the Biden campaign, and the specific tactics Obama used in his two successful elections (where he was anti-gay marriage and cautious on immigration.)

Shor and Ygs and others have pushed this tactic in a very loud way, to counter what they see as groupthink among center-left staffers and activists in institutional non-profits, who value staying in like over effectiveness. And fair enough, we can all see where they are coming from.

But predictably, popularism has come in for a lot of criticism. Sometimes issues are more popular after they have passed and begun providing benefits. Sometimes you want to pass a policy because you believe in it, that's why you got elected after all. Sometimes you need to get your base excited and elections aren't entirely about the median voter. Republicans will say bad things about us no matter what we do (they certainly don't hesitate to call us socialists even when Democrats are like, de-regulating zoning restrictions.) Why do Republicans keep saying unpopular things but still winning elections anyway? And the rhetoric politicians use themselves can move public opinion. Playing to the crowd will only lead to centrist milquetoast policy that doesn't change America's underlying problems.

(Since they are always-online-political-pundits, the popularists of course have rebuttals to all of these questions.)

Most importantly I think, the line between "who is a political staffer that has an obligation to stay on message" and "who has responsibility to more people than just today's electoral campaign" is pretty vague, and I don't see why, say, the Ford Foundation which has been around for most of a century would feel obligated to change their message to fit the Harris 2024 campaign's needs. It's not clear who Shor and Ygs are really talking to.

Popularism is just one particular strategy, and I am sure if it gets lots of buy in, eventually it will have one high profile embarrassing loss. I do not recommend anyone put all their credibility eggs in their one basket, or else you'll become one of those people parsing all the data with a fine-tooth comb to say "if you look at this cross tab and that local trend, you'll see really we overperformed the fundamentals and popularism has never failed, it can only be failed."

You don't want to be that.

There is a more fundamental point, that these pundits risk losing for getting lost in the ideological weeds.

"Candidates should try to do what works."

The parsing of all messaging by all Democrats running for office to be acceptable to sensitive college-degree holders who live in big cities... has not paid dividends for the success of the party. The emphasis on supporting idealistic and edgy symbolic causes du jour over what bills can actually be passed and deliver results to voters this year, does not seem to make any situation better when you look at the results. It's not entirely fair to say "a decade of policing speech got Trump elected" but it's at least fair to say that attitude did nothing to *stop* Trump from winning, and the most reviled candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary from winning as well.

I don't think there is One Consistent Plan that will always win you elections. But a serious movement should care about what does and doesn't win. And when one tactic doesn't seem to be helping, it should be willing to drop that and try other tactics. "Winning" is not solely confined to elections, but it should be mostly about "policy change." You should care about what tactics change policy, and lead to better policy rather than irrelevant or badly designed policy. Popularism is a nod towards that, but it's really not the end all and be all of being politically responsive.

The Ideology of Climate Justice

In the news because of the #GreenNewDeal and various right-wing attempts to bait its proponents (do they notice that by paying so much attention to an absurd GND while ignoring many more technocratic proposals, they fulfill the exact raison d’etre of this platform: at least you’re talking about it?) But it’s really an evergreen topic.

Any student of ideology should be very concerned about the way climate change is talked about among the progressive set. While most policy matters on the left really are talked about in material terms and how much benefit people will immediately reap (which contrasts positively against both Republican policy proposals and progressive *cultural* discourse), climate change is an arena where discussions tend far more towards the uncertain and symbolic than the concrete. And that should be a concern.

For this discussion, assume I already believe everything quote unquote “all environmental scientists believe” (as if there isn’t plenty of disagreement even when they are to the left of current policy.) Human causes are changing the atmospheric makeup enough that over the next century the temperature will rise by 2 degrees C or more, which will have massive changes in local ecosystems, and devastate coastal cities. One can agree with this, but also think progressive discourse around climate change is terrible.

The problem is that even with this empirical backing, climate change concerns can become like other causes motivated by distant future threats - extremely ideological and symbolic. If you think about movements defined around “okay if you keep doing this thing now you won’t notice anything bad, but generations from now it will lead to collapse so we need to crackdown now”... they are often pretty reactionary. Homosexuality, immigration, atheism or religious tolerance are all things that demagogues have warned “will eventually destroy society, you just can’t see it yet.” Because you can’t see if you’re having any beneficial effects or not, the “cause” easily becomes entirely symbolic and immaterial, dominated by status games among its leaders to see who can be the most pure/extreme/politically savvy.

You see this most with changing environmental issues to “climate justice” and other methods of making it part of the overall social justice alliance toolkit. It becomes one more way to beat down the “greed” of corporations, aligned with a dozen other causes, rather than about “does it have a proposed policy measure that will change material conditions of the world?”

(There’s nothing wrong with opposing corporations of course, but emphasis on the greed of the Other is pathological and generally prevents you from contemplating structural reform, and instead focuses on replacing “bad” actors with “good” ones and hoping it produces change. It will not.)

It helps to split our discussion into moderate measures, and radical measures, meant to address climate change. Moderate measures are those already implemented by many developed nations, and include carbon taxes, credits into research of renewables, etc. Radical measures are ones that would have a large impact on the economy and dramatically reduce greenhouse related outputs immediately.

In terms of radical measures, we should be honest that no government is contemplating them (certainly the GND is not on a sufficient scale). One should not blame democracy - historically authoritarian governments are even *worse* on environmental matters than bourgeoisie republics, if only because they tend to reap the full gains of exploiting the environment. (Do not forget how often environmental preservation was considered a bourgeoisie cause, valuing pretty parks over the defense of the state and feeding the masses.)

We should also be honest that’s probably what is necessary. Scientific estimates of greater than 2C temperature rise usually come with “based almost entirely off of what we have already set in motion.” Very few researchers believe that we can just stop the train now. If the Earth is to be doomed, we have already doomed it. But activists do not promote that message, because it leads to defeatism and nihilism. Which may be true from a political perspective, but that means everything you hear downstream of that is motivated by politics, not truth. The truth is nihilist despair: the world might end or at least displace billions in the next century, and it’s too late to stop it.

That being said, moderate measures are still possible, to reduce what damage we can, and reducing harm remains our moral obligation.

The next lament of the modern tumblr anti-capitalist becomes that capitalist is incompatible with any attempt to reign in pollution, because it is too short sighted and greedy. So it’s important to remember how untrue this is. Most capitalist nations have happily passed laws regulating greenhouse emissions - in fact in most of those nations the conservative party supports at least some version of them. In fact if capitalism was not so adaptable to so many different circumstances, it would not be nearly so damaging an ideology - it lurches from crisis to crisis where theocracy or dictatorship would fail, never fully failing nor fully fixing its problems.

It’s really only America that is the standout, with the dreadful combination of: a right wing party that has gone all in on denialism, and a veto-heavy system that has prevented moderate measures from being passed even when the left-wing party was in control. Which is terrible and has led to dysfunctional policy. But then the lesson has changed to “America has a broken system of checks and balances” and not “capitalist democracies are inherently unable to confront global warming.”

Cops & Robbers, Left & Right

One of the most important attitudes that dominates our, American, and almost all Western discourse is how the left is held to a higher standard of behavior. I certainly do it.

Harassment, epistemological ignorance, take your pick: if someone on the right does it it gets a shrug, but if someone on the left does it’s a dire concern for our principles. Donald Trump can insult every group in the country all day long, but Hillary Clinton calls half of her opponents “deplorable” and it gets pretty much equal coverage and outrage. Who even notices if a Walmart manager sexually harassed their staff -- but a producer at NPR, oh my.

Now this isn’t to say “everyone hates the left.” Obviously there are still many partisans who will defend social justice or communism against any attacks, cherry picking right wing examples to make themselves look bad. But I guess that’s just it: they’re being mindless and just ignoring inconvenient data. Anyone who engages in actual discussion, and holds both sides to any accountability at all, holds the left to much higher standards.

And yes, for this discussion I am going to state the overall assumption up front: viewed in aggregate, the left’s behavior in this century (culturally or politically) is nowhere near as bad as the right’s. There is no statement by any politician, activist, or star on the left that you can not find something worse by an equivalent or higher-profile person on the right. We have Anita Sarkesian, you have Rush Limbaugh. We have Bernie Sanders, you have Rick Santorum. HRC vs DJT.

This isn’t to say the double standard is bad. I definitely hold the left to a higher standard. Some right-twitters use bad logic and statistics, I’ll laugh before blocking them. Some left-twitters use a bad statistical framework for looking at gun violence/pay gap discrimination, and I won’t stop fuming until I’ve composed a six page tumblr essay. But why do I do it?

The imbalance is so widespread that there are many explanations for it, but they fall short to me.

1. The left are our people. This essay about internecine harassment falls in that camp https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2019/01/08/37793831/think-online-head-from-your-enemies-is-bad-try-getting-it-from-your-friends

I’ve taken heat from both sides, and while hate mail and mean tweets from my ideological opponents are annoying, they’re also easy to dismiss. I criticize Trump, someone with a giant red X in their Twitter bio calls me a cunt, and I glance at it and move on. It’s like a fly buzzing around your head—you swat it away and soon forget its existence. But when I criticize my own side—for being, at times, intolerant and dogmatic—the mob is made up of people I agree with on the big issues (climate change exists, health care is a human right, Trump is a fool and a danger) but disagree with on some small specifics. In this case, the buzzing doesn’t just annoy; it actually stings. (Or, at least, it used to. Turns out, you can become inured to almost anything.)

Slatestarcodex describes it as our disagreement with the fargroup (who we barely know) being eclipsed by the imminence of the neargroup (who are threatening us right next door.)

Except no. People native to the right happily share this double standard. And when people leave left-wing circles, driven out by how much they see their allies fail to live up to their ideals, and fall into orthogonal or centrist movements (say, rationalism) or right wing movements (hello alt), as often as not *they still focus on the failings of the left*. The reaction as someone changes environments varies, and indeed sometimes ideological emigres are just as upset at their new allies… but the flaming, biased hatred towards the left stays alive often enough for me not to buy “it’s because these are the people who are around us.”

(This also goes for the inverse explanation: that we critique the left more because we are more likely to be able to influence it. Plenty of dissidents aren’t!)

2. The left holds the real power. In this explanation, the cultural and social power that the left holds, especially over professional matters, dwarfs the economic and political power the right often holds. Or local government (if you’re in a city) is terrifying compared to national government. Or the “Deep State” which is a bunch of left-friendly bureaucrats holds the real power, and not the conservative politicians holding nominal office. (One might even call them “the Cathedral.”) And since they actually hold power, we should be more critical of them.

As an explanation of convenience, this can be made to fit any situation. Power is amorphous and very hard to pin down. In any particular situation you can make up a story about why you are right to fear left-derived power than right-derived power.

But I can’t see any theory of power where it makes broad sense. Like how can you sit down, and tally up all the forces in America - voters, colleges, state governments, corporations, small employers - and come to the conclusion that progressives have the overwhelming advantage? Certainly how could you tally up all the DAMAGE wrought by various forces, and think there’s more danger from the left? These people are always conspicuously silent on the current goddamn President, or the largest employers in the nation, or the military culture.

3. Equal criticism to both sides will have to target the left unfairly. I mentioned Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before, and there’s a cynical explanation that “well the news media is going to want to attack both to seem unbiased, and that’s going to mean pitting the worst scandals of each against each other, even if one is in absolute terms much, much worse.” There’s something to this - but outside political races, the different powers are so asymmetric that I don’t think that really resembles anyone’s thinking process. What would such a Thoth be balancing for? Colleges vs corporations? Intellectuals vs service members? Bosses vs workers? Urban vs rural? I don’t see anyone in the discourse really trying to apportion fault between wildly different groups like that equally.

***

The closest to an answer I’ve come you can tell from the title. It’s a mix of all three above explanations, but with a strong moral intuition that *the left should be the good guys* (whether you are right or left yourself.)

The feelings most discoursers have about the left and right, is like feelings we have about police and criminals.

Criminals kill and hurt more people than the police, easily. And yet, we talk about the conduct of police much more. Why?

Well, for one, supposedly the police work for us, and so should be taking feedback from the citizenry, whereas no one expects that of criminals, so moralizing about them is wasted breath. And that’s true to an extent, but this sort of anger is shared by radicals and activists who hold as very deep parts of their sociology that the police are a power unto themselves and answerable to no one, especially their victims. And if the cops aren’t going to be better, why even have them at all?

And different people react to this police anger differently. It would be very dumb indeed to think the police are so bad that it would be better if the criminals were put in charge of the police force - but some people get angry enough that they do think that way. Much the same as some liberals, well:

Not everyone reacts the same way of course. Some people criticize the left all day, but still reliably always vote for left over right. Whereas some people are so swayed by their critical emotions, that they buy in that the right must actually be preferable.

But underlying either response is just “these are the good guys!” We can’t ever separate our reaction to someone on the left from “I really expect better from you.” It’s not just about nearness to them, or the cultural power they wield, but an unconscious moral assumption about the world.

And that intuition can mean a lot. For one, it’s a lot harder to fight back against the good guys. When you fight back against progressives or cops, people who don’t know you well think you’re a villain. It’s an uphill demoralizing battle - much worse than complaining about how a conservative state legislature fired you or how a racist troll harassed you. And so some people want to stake out as hard as they can beforehand “these aren’t actually the good guys.” With, alas, mixed success.

Bad Atheism

In today’s SSC post, Scott and his commenters come up with a lot of theories why the atheist movement isn’t a strong pillar of the left (like climate change, concerns about sexual harassment, and poverty), but rather a source of awkward disdain. This is in response to a long article in the Baffler making fun of New Atheists.

They come up with a bunch of theories (Islam became a protected group, atheists kept talking about the science of gender differences, etc), but the post is a perfect example of a wrong form of analysis.

1. Authority is making claims about a group.
2. I disagree with those claims, or the results of them.
3. Therefore they must just be making these claims up, and we must figure out wholly different reasons they must have for the end conclusion, and this argument is 100% post-hoc rationalization.

Instead, we should read the claims directly, and see them as evidence of how that speaker is thinking. Let’s look at the article.

The heirs to New Atheism may have a new target and a remodeled ethos, but their rhetorical crutches remain the same. They announce at every opportunity that they revere logic, evidence, and science, even if the opposite is plainly true. 

…

In a political cartoon by Ben Garrison, an ex-libertarian who now panders to the alt-right, Molyneux is drawn popping bubbles—labeled “Trump is a misogynist,” “Trump is stupid” and “my feelings”—using enormous needles tagged “logic,” “reason” and “evidence.” In another, Molyneux holds a golden shield emblazoned with “REASON EVIDENCE LOGIC” as Hillary Clinton fires arrows representing her various campaign slogans. 

Uh. I think the author doesn’t like (the way atheists use) logic, evidence, and reason. Hell even if the author is a 100% cynical propagandist, there’s a reason they felt these jibes would resonate with their audience.

What we’ve seen in the last decade with social liberalism is an embrace of one-directional subjectivity. Instead of gender-blind tests for hiring, the new left has discovered the tests themselves are biased (they are), and you need an out-right pro-women hiring policy in order to redress structural inequality before a level playing field can mean anything. And we’ve seen cultural social justice crash up against this again and again: due process, metrics of any sort but especially economic ones, anything that tries to use objective or extrinsic measurement, is deemed retrograde by an ideology that focuses on the subjective experience of the oppressed.

(In no small part because of postmodern academics who are able to poke holes in the biases of many objective measurements. And because of the many obvious cases where you can find these advocates fall to bias and prejudice.)

If the left chose subjectivity (a wise decision in theory, but in practice it’s been executed horribly), then where would we expect movements founded around objective tools to end up?

And I did this by looking at the words they themselves use, rather than solely my knowledge of what various scandals happened in an elevator and on bulletin boards afterwards. This doesn’t mean I think they are right, but I do think their own words are the best way to examine a groups grievances.

***

I find this type of analysis particularly important regarding the Trump phenomenon. A large cottage industry has sprung up of “understanding Trump voters.” Is it just because they are racist? Is it they want jobs that no longer and exist and aren’t coming back? There are so many reasons we can hypothesize, and the more we hypothesize the more our theories will just reflect our own preconceived notions.

We can ask them. We can go on reddit, and listen to campaign speeches, and just hear what they say about the other half of America. We don’t have to agree it’s true, but we can look at the logic behind it and conclude “this is how they are thinking.”

Sticky Conservatism

@slatestarscratchpad responds to an annoying Current Affairs article about a link he made on airlines.

4. Current Affairs wrote an article riffing off one of my links posts. I don’t think I can pad my response to the length of an entire blog post, but I want to address it here: I stand by my original sarcasm. I said it was silly to be angry at airlines offering a lower-fare standing option, since it’s just adding another choice to your list of choices. CA said I didn’t realize that actually some people are very poor and so couldn’t afford anything but standing room. I do realize that. My whole point was that if you are too poor to afford sitting fare, your only choice used to be “never fly”. Now it is “never fly” or “pay the affordable standing fare”. This is a gain for poor people, and in fact only for poor people (rich people will just sit regardless). This complaint reminds me of those people who put spikes on benches so that homeless people cannot sleep on them. It is true that in a perfect world nobody would have to sleep on benches. But you are not creating that world. You are just making sure homeless people can’t sleep anywhere. Likewise, in a perfect world nobody would have to stand up on flights. But you are not creating that world. You’re just making sure poor people can’t fly at all. If you want to help the poor, give them more money, not fewer options. 

@slatestarscratchpad ‘s rejoinder makes a bad-point-wittily, that you very often see from neoliberal or libertarian advocates. (And to be clear, the Current Affairs article he got dissed by, is completely incoherent and useless.*) You see this same logic from Matt Yglesias about mandatory parking minimums, or from Tyler Cowen, etc. Why would people, especially poor people with limited options, ever want there to be less choices at the low end of the spectrum?

The answer is so blindingly obvious that it’s clear none of the above put themselves in the shoes of the poor people they are trying to advocate for: because they don’t trust it.

The average working class consumer is cynical, pragmatic, conservative (in the small-c sense), and believes prices and wages are sticky. Their rough economic model is:

• Seats currently cost $150, come with a chair, and the airline makes $1 billion profit.
• With this new innovative pricing scheme, you will stand, seats will cost $150, and the airline will make $2 billion profit.
• The price won’t actually go down. Consumer just straight out loses out.

Same with why locals defend mandatory parking minimums. According to pro-development advocates, if you make parking less scarce, then rent will be a little cheaper because the greater availability of parking was operating as a sort of benefit you indirectly paid for. Except, whoops, in the practical and immediate case, rent ain’t going to fall, you’re just going to have more cars clogging your street.

One one hand, this is sometimes true. Especially if for some reason the price isn’t very liquid (like, say, because of rent control), then you are really bargaining with the sellers over side benefits. Or if the seller is a monopolist, and all new revenue just goes straight into profit instead of increasing quality to make the product more attractive. In economics terms, we call this “sticky”, and it’s extremely important for understanding the day-to-day experience of the economy.

On the other hand, sometimes it really isn’t true. Especially in the long term, pressuring companies to provide more, just means the price will be higher. Airlines used to be a hell of a lot more luxurious, and also way more expensive. On the abstract scale, the economists aren’t complete idiots.

But they completely fail to drop this academic mindset when talking about people directly effected in the short term by a change.

In any case, airline tickets or parking minimum’s effect on rental prices, the actual price change will be based on the context, and there’s no absolute rule here. For sure, sometimes the consumer advocates are wrong. But also they’re right, and instead of writing articles and posts about how “capitalists are always evil” or “leftists are always short-sighted” you really do have to say “what do we expect the actual impact of this specific change on the consumer will be? What do they personally believe it will be? Oh, do they distrust large corporations and expect to get screwed? Yeah, they might have a point.”

(And this was an awfully long post to say “people don’t think they’ll get cheaper fares, just crappier conditions”, but like, you have to lay out the paragraphs of logic so that neoliberal/libertarian thinkers internalize that cynicism and can come up with it on their own in the future.)

***

* Dear god it’s just really bad. If neolibs are annoying in some predictable ways, the standard bearers of the left are even more annoying in how they reduce any problem of exploitative systems to “no, you just haven’t thought about how evil and pig-eyed the super rich are.” Robinson is on one hand treating the reader like a member of the upper-class who can’t understand why these trade-offs are annoying, but also defining the upper-class around the experience of buying a $2000 Tiffany clickbait paperweight. It’s all “you don’t understand privilege maaaan” when, like, you could have convinced your target audience by saying “How do you feel when ISP’s claim that getting rid of net neutrality will mean they can give you more options?”

Not Good or Nice, Just Right

“I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right.”

Let’s think about this in the context of the perpetual social media culture war.

You’re probably familiar with this. Some person who doesn’t like hostility and is uncomfortable about all these witch hunts says they just want to be kind and compassionate to people. And then some more aggressive warrior marches in, saying that person is just “nice”, while it’s more important to be good. They quote something about the worst masters under slavery were the one who treated their slaves “nicely” and smoothly perpetuated the institution, when obviously the only moral course when dealing with slavery was to be an annoying, mean, and stubborn as hell iconoclast who would tell the entire South that their economy needs to be torn down.

Nice, is short-term and short-range helpfulness and lack of hostility to the people you directly interact with.

Good, in their usage of this term, is doing what’s effective for their political cause. They say this good is better than that nice.

That’s nice vs good, and the latter has a point. Most of you readers probably flinch in regard to this, because you’ve seen a lot of pain and suffering done in the name of shouting down the nice people. You’ve seen a lot of idiots trample over functional groups in the name of being “good.” My sympathies to you. But it’s not that the “good” advocates are wrong, it’s that they don’t go far enough.

Really you could say that about every toxic social justice argument: they found a valid point, but never really committed to it. They took it only far enough to win an argument today, but they didn’t think about how it should inform everything they do, if they really seriously believed it.

The witch introduces us to a third concept on the same spectrum… Right.

How good is being good if you have chosen the wrong political cause? Then you’re just being an asshole, in service to a greater evil. (There are many such people who do that.) Or if your tactics are actually pretty bad and ineffectual. Before you can be Good you need to be Right, just to be sure your cause is actually good, and the anti-nice tactics you are using are actually accomplishing anything.

Because this, this arguing on tumblr? It may be “good” but it’s not right. You are not saving the world here. And the niche politics of fandom a troll may be advocating are ill-thought out and far removed from universal justice.

For instance, racial and gender equality will always be impossible without more economic equality. Which most on the left know and will pay lip service too. But actually fighting the economic order is damned hard. So most liberals… kind of throw their hands up in the air, vote for Democratic candidates, and get to complaining about toxic masculinity in last night’s Game of Thrones.

Their analysis and their praxis is flawed - no great sin, this is a difficult task - and so their ability to execute “good” actions is flawed. But culture war discourse discourages discussion of the greater goal or criticism of tactics, so you can’t work on being right. There is only trying to be good, harder and harder.

There is a place for nice. Sometimes being right is too hard, complicated, and horrifying to know the answer for. Then you might as well be kind to people because you don’t know what the fuck else you are doing.

There is a place for right. When being honest about your motives and how you should help the world.

The place for prioritizing good though… when you neither care about the people around you, or the real truth behind your actions… is heavily overstated to say the least. And the great middle mass of people concerned with being seen as “good” people, who are too harsh to be kind to the enemy but not harsh enough to examine themselves, who do the largest amount of damage in ideological crusades.

The SMG Gamergate Thread

In 2014, when the geek internet was blowing up with the controversy Gamergate, the forums at SomethingAwful.com were no exception. It was such a toxic subject that it was confined to one thread. SA’s resident communist movie critic, SuperMechaGodzilla, entered the fray – condescendingly lecturing everyone on capitalism, the fun of videogames, Christianity, anti-semitism, and media studies.

It was fantastic, and extremely educational. A point of view on GamerGate that was neither social justice totality, nor liberal/libertarian defensiveness.

His posts from the thread have been copied here for posterity.

Everything below here is written by SMG, who is not me. Posts are separated by quote bubbles, or an asterisk.

Trump as Pure Ideology

Original Article: To Believe Trump You Must Believe Contradictory Things

Me: Trump is Pure Ideology

Kenny-Evitt: What? Isn't Trump the least ideological politician?

Me:

The one liner was a reference to contradiction again. “Pure ideology!” is a Zizekian gasp of exasperation at something that is empty and meaningless, bereft of any substance but its ideological structure.

As Zizek says “pure ideology is impossible.” What does this mean? That statements of an ideology, when closely studied and interrogated, reveal themselves to be vapid and contradictory.

This is why I have no problem with an artwork being “too ideological.” If say, a film is part of patriachal ideology and denigrates women, rather than considering this a “bad influence’ on our culture, studying it reveals exactly the profound errors that ideology has about women. The famously racist and ideological movie “Birth of a Nation”, shows how white racists viewed black people as ravening monsters who cannot control themselves when it comes to white women BUT ALSO as clever, urbane politicians who manipulate us. The more ideological a work is, the more it displays the seams of that belief system. For a work to be “pure ideology” would mean it would end up being nothing but seams - ie, impossible.

So you bring up that Trump was a non-ideological candidate. Indeed that was some of his appeal - this unsophisticated man who said government should protect healthcare, and the Iraq War was bad, and we didn’t need tax cuts. Even his focus on immigration was obviously different from normal Republicans, who were catering to both a business class that wanted more labor, and hopes to convert socially conservative hispanic voters. Ted Cruz was considered “the ideologically pure” candidate of that primary. Trump was like a barbaric yawp that was a violent, chaotic reaction to the stultifying Republican ideology that was no longer functional. If anything he came across as tribalist, representing and serving one particular group of people who could identify with him.

One could have imagined non-ideological President Trump: cancelling NAFTA, passing infrastructure deals with Democrats, appointing New York cronies from both sides of the aisle, being rude but speaking blunt truth in the voice of the common man.

But just in the way that a rebel overthrowing a tyrannical ruler can themselves become a dictator, the amorphous chaos that comes from rebelling ideology, can crystalize into it’s own ideological order once it comes into its own. (Which is why we must be careful and not give away our ethical principles when we get power.)

Through the unfortunate combination of “establishment Republicans deciding to defend/enable President Trump” and “Trump needing Republicans to defend him”, he’s accelerated past even the Ted Cruz’s of the world.

See, most ideology still has some adherence to the principles it began with. Social justice ideology still tries to be about fighting racism, and helping the lowest of society. They know their principles even if they are bad at them and routinely sell them out. Similarly, an early or weak ideology still interfaces with the facts of the world, acknowledges inconvenient reality, etc.

A very powerful, endgame ideology does not do any of that. All statements and actions are solely based on “what is comfortable.” To Trump it is comfortable that the leakers are lawbreakers, and that the leakers don’t exist, so both statements are true in the world generated by his ideology.

Every single one of the Republican ideals Trump pays paeans to (because to disagree would be an uncomfortable argument) and completely ignores in his actions. He’s moved beyond having to care about those principles. He indulges himself, terrifies everyone around him, and rubber stamps whatever comes across his desk so long as the people sending it promise not to investigate him. He certainly has not passed laws to benefit the WWC tribe or appointed members from that group.

This hasn’t created a non-ideological presidency, but because Trump is a needy child, it’s created a White House that is pure ideology - trying to comfort the child 100% of the time and bending reality in all ways in order to do this. There ends up being no “there” there.

Ideology is Comfort

Vox's first reaction to the Democratic defeat in the special election in Montana was "Republicans' 7-point win in last night's Montana election is great news for Democrats".

This is of course some terrible, Pravda-level analysis. In short:

• To turn this ship around, Democrats need to not just close the margin in some districts, but actually rack up Scott Brown style wins.
• Special elections are when protest votes against the incumbent party should be at their high-water mark. The effect will be smaller in midterms, even smaller in the re-election year.
• This was not the reddest of the red seats. While Democratic Presidents rarely pick up MT, it has an extremely strong local party, that has recently held both Senate seats and in 2013 elected Democratic Governor Steve Bullock. Of all the places an independent Democrat should be able to defy an unpopular national Republican party, it would be here.
• Most political watchers had already known the race would be close, and are not surprised by a “shrinking margin.” This margin was rather safer than we thought it would be.
• And the Republican aggressively assaulted a reporter the day before the election, putting him in the hospital and getting charges filed against the candidate. Democrats couldn’t even win against that epic news story.

All this combined with the earlier special election loss, and a Rasmussen poll putting Trump’s approval at 46%, mean things are really bad for Democrats. The broad public is not rebelling against Trump, not enough to stop him or even slow him down. This should worry us.

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But no one’s really surprised that Vox (with its famous liberal bias) wrote a piece saying “thing is great news for Democrats.” We should interrogate that.

If a writer is biased for one political party, we would expect them to talk up the virtues of their candidates and the sins of the opponent, sure. And days before an election, they might do all they can to pump up their voters and disillusion the enemy voters. This all makes sense from the tactical point of view of wanting to advance your political goals.

We can also see why they might just be blind to the costs of their policies, and the benefits of opposition policies. That’s just what a political standpoint means.

But what’s the point of this? What political gain is there in talking up how the situation really is great? And who cares about pumping up voters 17 months before any big election?

This is why I say the most important desire of ideology is being comfortable. Right now, Democrats are sad (I sure am.) The role of the ideology is not to channel our political instincts into successful programs, or even to rev up the war drums before a fight, it’s a much more fundamental human need: to make us feel comfortable. To reassure us when we are scared.

That’s what sells papers and gets re-shares after all. You read something that makes you feel better, especially when you’re uncomfortable, that shows what a cruel and pointless place the world is, and then you want to share it to like-minded allies. This is how the meme propagates.

And once you’re completely swimming in information designed to make you comfortable - not even to score tactical advantage - it’s easy to become wholly disconnected from the rest of the world. Ambiguity and uncertainty after all, aren’t comfortable. Making your enemy into a one-dimensional buffoon is comforting, even if it’s strategically counter-productive.

Ideologies aren’t good at achieving their stated goals, but that’s not what is really driving them anyway.

What is the Alt-Right?

A disturbingly large number of liberals seem to think it’s very accurate to call the alt right just “Nazi’s, racists, and the KKK.” Grouping all your enemies under one label for the most efficient hatred is never a good idea, but I think in particular this conflation misses some really interesting things.

Have you seen the play Cabaret?

• If not, this post won’t make any sense to you. Go watch Cabaret. It’s amazing, and especially powerful this year.
• If you have, we’re talking the post-90’s version. Read on.

The alt-right is the Emcee.

Right? I mean Milo would act the hell out of this role. But really I’m talking about the whole hedonistic, riotous, irreverent, jaded group.

The Emcee is not some traditionalist puritan. He (or she, depending on casting) enjoys polyamory, homosexuality, gender bending, hedonism, and poking at saccharine nationalism.

But the Emcee also really hates your touchy feely sensitive politics. It’s funny to throw a brick through a Jewish grocer’s window. It’s funny to dress your girlfriend in a gorilla suit and call it a Jew. Doesn’t it just shock those bourgeois sensibilities? And hell those fascists who take themselves so seriously are just as fun to impersonate.

The Emcee hates politics really. Politics aren’t a reason to stop having fun. Politics just make him want to poke at your sacred cows. This sounds incredibly like the post-gamergate resentment faction that morphed into “say anything that upsets those SJW’s, even if it’s ironically worshipping an idiot wannabe-dictator.”

There’s a difference between those supporting Trump because they really believe he can bring back some pastoral image of American greatness, and those supporting Trump because it’s hilarious, and because they think liberals need to get over their political hangups.

And what’s important to remember, is that the Emcee was tragic. Once the Nazi’s actually had power, they rounded up all the minorities and all the deviants, and the Emcee gets shot in the head like everyone else.

The alt-right, as frustrating as they are, are deserving of our pity, for they will be killed by the Pandora’s box they have opened just as much as the rest of us.

Update: After posting this comparison, I got two criticisms that each tried to throw a wrench into the parallel:

• Isn't the Emcee Jewish though?
• But Milo is Jewish.

Dicators Hate Giving Orders

There are a number of good recaps of what happened inside the White House last weekend [January 28 2016] as the Executive Order to bar immigrants from seven Muslim nations exploded, as Homeland Security Secretary Jim Kelly “clarified” the order to defang its worst parts.

The disagreement between Bannon and Kelly pitted a political operator against a military disciplinarian. Two administration officials gave the following account of their exchange: Respectfully but firmly, the retired general told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with President Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command. If the president wanted Kelly to back off from issuing the waiver, Kelly would have to hear it from the president directly, he told Bannon. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Kelly and Bannon spoke on Jan.

…

Trump didn’t call Kelly to tell him to hold off.

Kelly seems an experienced military officer in the concept of “managing up.” Normally a dictator (or even just a commanding boss) wants everyone to fall in line automatically, without them having to tell them to. That gap is filled by their toadies, who tell the frightened servants “this is what the boss wants”. This gives those toadies a great deal of power.

Actually giving the order from the Bossman himself… requires responsibility. It involves saying you stand behind this thing, that could turn good or bad. Insecure egos hate having to take a stand, when there’s no one to fall back on as an excuse, or to do the stand-taking for them while they nod approvingly.

This calls to mind some of the early chaotic disasters of the transition, where flunkies would call up the EPA demanding the name of everyone working on climate change, and when they exploded in the media, the Trump admin insisted it was just rogue operatives who certainly weren’t speaking for Trump.

This is how it works. The Bossman doesn’t ask for specific things, he just makes it clear that he wants results, and his general leanings, and that he will greatly reward and punish people based on how much they can produce. The flunkies has to guess what he wants. If it succeeds (ie, if it looks good in the media), he praises them and promotes them as people who “really get it” and “take initiative.” If someone tries something (like demanding a list from the EPA) that doesn’t work out, he yells at them for being an idiot and a traitor who was just doing stupid things without any authorization from the top.

This way, every time something goes right, it feeds his ego, and every time something goes wrong, its not his fault. Actually taking a concrete stand would introduce risk into what was previously a very comfortable stasis for the Supreme Leader.

He still says vague, good, bold-sounding things. And he still has to make some decisions; that’s unavoidable. But he avoids laying himself on the line as much as possible, and this leaves a lot of room for people who are willing to a) Do whatever they want until he explicitly stops them or b) Command whatever they want in his name.

---

This also offers illustration of what to do in the age of an authoritative state. Most of the commands won’t come in the form of direct orders (East Germany showed how incredibly expensive it is to actually monitor and order the entire country.) Instead there will be fear that the dictator wants something but no one knows what, and the person who says they know what the dictator wants gains a lot of power. Ignore them, do the minimum the state forces you to, and otherwise follow your own conscience.

Be less cowardly than the dictator.

Hegemony / Coalition Theory

“The dream of every lower-middle-class immigrant is to some day have enough money to vote Republican.

The dream of every upper-middle-class executive is to some day have enough money to vote Democrat.”

That joke, like most jokes, presents a gross generalization but also gets at a genuine pattern of how many people and societies behave. I think it’s a very important pattern of behavior, so I’ve done my best to analyze it here.

Before everything else: before government, before class, before structural inequality, countries are made up of different demographic groups of different sizes. One circle of people will be the biggest.

They’ll usually have the greatest numbers, and soon the most money and high status positions. For most of American history this has been White Protestant Men. In other countries it’s the Shia or the Hindi, whatever ethnic group is dominant.

There are a bunch of other circles. Minority racial and religious groups. People who identify strongly with their gender if their gender is disfavored. The extremely poor. Geographically isolated communities. Ideologoical sub-groups. In America these are blacks, hispanics, Jews, (for a while the Catholics), gays, women and gender non-comformers, the labor movement. But the pattern is replicated almost everywhere.

By and large, all the smaller circles have less power overall than the biggest circle, which we call:

The Hegemony.

This cultural group largely equates the country overall with themselves. They are “Real America”. They’re strongly attached to their ethnicity, religion, economic system, and all other cultural markers. They’re often afraid of other countries, especially ones that are very culturally different. They get aggressively militaristic about how to deal with these countries, and identify with the military as part of their cultural heritage (whose officers are mostly made up of members of the Hegemony).

It’s important to remember that this group is mirrored in most nations. Which leads to the ironic situation that the belligerent nationalist group in one nation is often MOST afraid of the belligerent nationalist group in another nation, even though they share many ideals and structural similarities.

They want a governmental system that preserves the status quo, because the status quo in many ways favors them. This means a government that enforces social rules (which are their social rules) and does very little economic management or redistribution (because they already own most of the economy).

Also to them, most of politics is entertainment. Given how strongly we feel about politics and moral matters it’s difficult to call it entertainment, but that is what the subject matter is actually consumed like. Voting and other key policy decisions will rarely directly affect their lives. Politics is much more about being right, or making politicians “do the right thing”, or gleeful enjoyment of the celebrities who express their own political opinions in exaggerated and entertaining ways. Members of the Hegemony, when they consume politics, do it by listening to angry talk radio and telling their elected politicians not to compromise with anyone evil.

This gets at why so many political issues raised by the right-wing are incredibly trivial. Not even trivial, but irrelevant. To opponents, it seems to take three jumps of fuzzy logic to why something like “Bill Clinton’s lying about affair” or “#gamergate” even matter, or how they affect anyone’s life. But to someone viewing this through a lens of entertainment, and poorly expressed cultural resentment, these issues hit the button exactly.

And there is a lot of cultural resentment going on in the Hegemony, of course. They can’t understand the world outside their circle [be it other countries or the other side of the political spectrum], and it resolutely refuses to go away (and probably calls them mean names too.) http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ is a famous article about the subject, just as true now as 50 years ago when it was written.

It’s hard to explain the last bit non-condescendingly. I think the Hofsteader article is right in positive terms, but I also sympathize that some outsider asking you to give up your cultural identity is very hard and stressful. Sometimes the requests seem reasonable, sometimes they don’t, and it’s hard for someone with only the Hegemonic experience to tell the difference. Lack of empathy for the oppressed is a problem, but it’s also fairly human.

(It’s worth noting that their thoughts on politics have little to do with their thoughts on how people should behave. There’s a lot of compartmentalization here. With an issue that *actually* matters to their lives, members of the Hegemony believe in cultural continuity, community cohesion, loyalty, and being protective of all their in-group members. Caveats for diversity among people here, but the key feature is the dramatic contrast between their absolutist political goals and their mundane maternally social attitude.)

Which, in a nutshell, is how you get the modern Republican Party. Nationalistic, belligerent, religious, in favor of governmental social control, against government economic control, and obsessed with the purity of their officials. But full of people who deal with each other healthily and caringly.

The primary victims of the Hegemony’s cultural and political power are

The Dispossessed.

These are the ethnic, racial, religious, and ideological groups who are very strongly defined and not part of the dominant group of a country. Life is a lot harder for them. They do not necessarily have much in common with each other, but they do have a shared experience. They know what it’s like when good jobs, government policy, and cultural traditions are clearly intended for someone else. They’re often on the negative end of law enforcement, and have become cynical about the justice system.

Life is messier than models of course, and people often belong to multiple groups. In America, a white gay man may in many ways feel part of the Hegemony but also be part of the Dispossessed queer circle. The fact that you can jump between circles doesn’t make them any less real though, and the dynamics between these circles still apply.

Governmental policy is very real to them. (Well politics is probably always mostly entertainment, but it impacts the lives of the Dispossessed the most.) An effective and active government economic policy can do a lot to improve their lives directly. While the social rules a government may enforce are often not their social rules, and either intentionally or accidentally create a lot of hardship for them. So they become economically authoritarian and socially libertarian.

So their politics are often very materialistic. What can a given politician accomplish to make life better for their constituency? This leads to more compromise, and often seemingly venal politicians who seem more obsessed with how many dollars they can get than ideological principle. This is a great article on the political asymmetry here http://www.vox.com/2014/9/15/6131919/democrats-and-republicans-really-are-different

Foreign policy generally isn’t as relevant to these groups as the domestic policy that actually affects them, but they’re cynical of the Hegemony’s nationalism, and often might be sympathetic towards foreigners who are painted with the same outsider brush that they are. When foreign policy concerns turn inward (such as concerns about a “fifth column” or terrorists) they always feel the brunt of this security state, and become even more pacifist in response.

In many ways, these tribal circles can act a lot like the Hegemony with reference to their immediate world. They may clash with each other over local fights and create very tense minority-against-minority situations (like the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary). Individually, they are after all culturally cohesive groups that are very protective of their members. Inside the circle they follow their own rigid codes and forms of expression and deeply care for each other and this community. (While being very cynical about the government and other structures of the nation’s society.)

As individual circles, these groups have almost no leverage to get the Hegemony to change how the country works, policy-wise or money-wise. But their shared enemy is obvious, and they often group together to form a Coalition of the Dispossessed.

Which still isn’t enough to effect change, except for:

The Defectors

These are people who are naturally members of the Hegemony (in race, gender, religion, economic status or other native qualities) but have moral qualms with the results of unchecked Hegemonic power. Consideration of abstract moral principles have led them to the conclusion that the Dispossessed are treated badly, and social mores and governmental policy should be used to help minorities out (and to stop oppressing them).

In classical terms, they are Liberals. They’re socially libertarian and economically authoritarian for the same concerns as the Dispossessed, even if they feel the impact of those policies much less. A Defector can always return to being a member of the Hegemony (either due to changing political environment, or due to their own changing circumstance - ie., having kids and moving to the suburbs.)

To them politics is still entertainment, but they change their life around their politics. In many ways they abandon their own cultural traditions for pursuit of the best moral outcomes (in their philosophical view at least.) They don’t always have the same cohesive internal-group structure that the Hegemony and some of the Dispossessed have. Instead they feel their group should adhere more closely to the same political lessons they are espousing on the national scale (which can often be too cold or absolute for many tight-knit communities.)

As conditions for the Dispossessed get worse (or better), the number and intensity of Defectors can rise (or fall) in response to this moral concern, which is the primary fulcrum that political power in many countries changes on (that and “satisfaction with the economy”).

Because success of the Coalition of the Dispossessed relies on courting Defectors from the Hegemony, and because Defectors are much more skilled and confident at navigating the realms of power in this country, and because they form a middle-ground between the many other Dispossessed circles, the Defectors generally take leadership of the coalition. (It wasn’t until 2008 after all that the Democrats elected a President who wasn’t white male and Christian, and only one of those wasn’t Protestant.)

Thus, the Defectors reasons for opposing the Hegemony often become the story told of what the entire Coalition wants. Defectors believe in more universal, abstract moral principles (often about tolerance and freedom and equality) and assume everyone else in their Coalition does too. No one particularly argues, because these make fairly good propaganda too.

On one hand, Defectors believe they are constantly on the losing side of a war. But in many other ways, being a Defector is a very good position. You get to feel morally superior and like you have risen above your cultural biases to see the right outcome. You still get many benefits of being in the Hegemony. And you get (relative) leadership in the Coalition. It’s easy sometimes for Defectors to take for granted the ease and privilege of this position, just because they are nominally on the side of the Dispossessed.

It goes without saying that I consider myself, and most people I know, as Defectors.

***

Anyway, I think it’s a useful model. And there are some really interesting implications.

1. The Hegemony can absorb other circles. Sometimes a circle of the Dispossessed can become large enough or assimilated enough in a country that they join up with/are admitted by the Hegemony. This famously happened with Catholics in this country, and could easily happen with Hispanics, Asians, or the homosexual community. (In fact it might have to to ever win the Presidency again.)  [Update: Haha that sure was wrong.]
   
   And it might seem hard to believe, when you look at the vitriol that is expressed between the Hegemony and this circle before absorption, that they would come together (or that that circle would ever forget what it was like being on the outside). But it definitely happens, and surprisingly quickly.
   
   The current demographic triumphalism of the Democratic Party in this country should be very short-lived. Any political coalition that was dependent on “demographics is destiny” will soon find the definition of who’s in and who’s out changing beneath their feet.
   
   (I don’t know the exact alchemy of when and to whom this happens. If I did, I’d have some very bold predictions to make of the next 12 years.)
   
2. The Defector situation is great but precarious. Many of their allies do not share their same moral outlook, and have concerns that are more important to them than abstract principles. They may also be fairly resentful of the privileged leadership position that Defectors have. When situations arise that the Dispossessed do not need the Defectors, things can change very rapidly for them.
   
   When this happens, Defectors don’t really have the tools to deal with it. They’re shocked at finding out how different their beliefs (which got public expression) were from their Dispossessed allies (that often did not get public expression.) Much of the argument is about whether the Defectors even get to keep their identity as members of the Coalition (and identity fights are very personal and painful.) They are uncomfortable seeking the purely cultural/community succor that they associate with the Hegemony, but they also find that “arguing abstract principles” is not very effective against people who are coming at these issues from personal experience.
   
   In other words: the Democratic Party is controlled by moderate, compromise-friendly voices who try to adhere to universal codes - until suddenly it isn’t.
   
   Or more concretely: the land zoning policy of the city of San Francisco is like a war zone.
   
3. This is mirrored in so many countries. The importance of this can’t be underestimated. Which is why we see a Republican-like party in almost every democratic country, and the Republicans hate them most of all. It’s also why liberals will go to great lengths to defend foreigners, even ones who hold ideals they are specifically fighting in their own country.
   
4. Whole theses could be written on whether "the hegemony represents conservative women". Rigid gender roles are definitely part of the package, again across societies.
   
5. There is an undiscussed split among liberals between whether an ideal goal is a polity where "everyone is the hegemony" or "no one is". It's worth thinking about for yourself.
   
6. I wrote earlier that the Hegemony favors economic liberty. This is true for many government actions (taxation, a broad welfare state) and in their rhetoric. But they are not motivated by principle and rather by serving the interests of their group. So in fact the Hegemony will even more passionately defend government economic actions that primarily serve their group, particularly ones they are used to. In America this is reflected in high conservative support for Medicare and farm subsidies. In other countries where the Hegemony is even more ubiquitous, such that governmental actions really only impact other members of the Hegemony and there are few Dispossessed, the Hegemony can be very socialist about sharing resources, like within a family.