This is a thoughtful way to look at ideological realignments. I used to be a left-leaning institutionalist, but I have been dismayed by the increasing dysfunction in academia and media, especially in the last decade. I remain an institutionalist at heart, so I'm torn between reform and the incredibly challenging (and likely to fail) task of building anew.
Frank writes: "I'm torn between reform and the incredibly challenging (and likely to fail) task of building anew."
Add, for instance, DEI policies (among others) influence on business as evidence similar to apparent "dysfunction in academia and media" ... Demonstrated corrections (e.g. Bud Light's market-share loss, Target's customer revolt, etc.) gives hope that "reform pressure" is possible. Consumers of academia/ media/ business will drive a shift and realignment, but broader change can be non-obvious as diffusion simply takes longer.
The idea that conservatives are low on Openness may be true on average but there are many exceptions. If one will pardon a personal reference, I am both highly conservative, tested at the 98th percentile for O and very low on N, yet am a "brokenist." A prominent social psychologist with whom I correspond (who is himself a moderate liberal) has told me that intelligent conservatives tend to be high in openness.
I ate at Appleby's exactly once 20 years ago. I remember this with precision (though nothing about the meal) simply because we had buried my grandmother-in-law in her county of origin, but had no other remaining ties to the place - and there didn't seem to be anywhere much to eat afterward except the Appleby's out on the highway.
Even then, not yet the experienced cook I am now, I didn't go in for eating at places where they have plastic baggies of food that they warm up, so I distinctly remember thinking, now I will have experienced Appleby's.
So obviously I'm not terribly open, food-wise, to other than my own cooking, whether it's Applebee's or something hipster-approved.
I'm reminded of the time that the media "discovered" the woman in some decaying Rust Belt town, who had faithfully written restaurant reviews for the local paper, for decades. Thus: she reviewed everything that opened up. As homegrown restaurants declined, she reviewed McDonald's, she reviewed Appleby's, etc.
They thought it was so funny someone was giving the Ruth Reichl treatment to these chains in the hinterland. That restaurant reviews would even be a thing outside the big city. Indeed, she was never snarky, and against the odds seemed to view every place as a possible source of community or at least deserving of respectful consideration on its own terms, and promotion - as someone's business, that employed people she probably knew.
I'm not sure if you got the point or not. Appleby's represents American comfort food, which I suppose we all eat to some extent but conservatives tend to only eat that. If you go to an ethnic or fusion restaurant, the clientele (other than people of that ethnicity) will be almost entirely liberals.
There are other odd correlations between various personality trait differences and conservative-liberal. The other one I can think of at the moment is that at a recreational lake near me the power boaters are all conservatives and the sail boaters liberals.
The last place I ate out was a somewhat higher-end Mexican restaurant. I'm not sure that should count given my environs but I guess I'll take it: I'm a liberal! I don't want women to be stoned to death for adultery!
(It's about a long tee shot from my apartment, and opened nearly two years ago - and I just now walked over there - so maybe I'm conservative? But I still don't want people to be stoned to death. But I walked! Conservatives never walk, right?)
That term "comfort food" is funny. It seems to usually signify - the food people used to produce at home, when they knew how or were not too lazy to - cook. Sometimes from produce from their pre-hipster gardens. They were, uh, open to cooking lol.
There may *possibly* be some market-based connection between urban and small town and rural availability, and voting blocs ;-)?
I was once talking to a girl hailing from the small city of Texarkana. A young African-American woman. High on openness, I would say, as she described having participated in a reality TV show that had not yet aired when we were speaking. (To me, un-open to anything with the one exception of talking to people, hearing about their lives: that sounded like walking on the moon.) She was saying her hometown was economically depressed, a backwater (as all of East Texas is, although in fact it is full of immigrants - so much for that). She said with mock pride, that she was excited to try the Panda Express that had come in while she was away. I'm pretty sure Panda Express is every bit the joke that Appleby's is, and probably more current.
Still, she explained that - to get anything new like that - was something!
Very nice overview of the current landscape. I think this makes more sense than most of the commentary I've seen from right and left. Thanks!
"And while Mr. Trump has personal grudges to settle with the FBI and other government agencies, he may be less motivated to follow through on DOGE and other institutional-change efforts dear to the hearts of Silicon Valley brokenists."
I think this captures the heart of Trump and his agenda. I'm pessimistic about any chances for positive change from him.
I see Trump as a leveragist. Push the institution to the breaking point in order to extract some gain. The survival or replacement of the institution is irrelevant.
Nah, she just is young enough to realize the Cold War ended in the 90s nor is she Roman Catholic hence doesn't have an pathological need to think of Russia as our enemy when they are a natural ally. It's what scares Boomers immensely hence them trying to cling to power at all cost, an upcoming generation which neither thinks of Russia as an enemy or Jews as friends in both cases simply by virtute they exist.
I'm only 2/3 through the Farrell piece, which started out somewhat unpromisingly with a pledge to find an explanation for supposedly "rightward"-shifting Silicon Valley political commitments other than "the left successfully undermined the center-left" or "they were always 'Nazi-fanciers' [sic]".
A passage:
"A consensus on antitrust that spanned Democrats and Republicans allowed search and e-commerce companies to build up enormous market power, while the 1996 Communications Decency Act’s Section 230 allowed platform companies great freedom to regulate online spaces without much external accountability as they emerged ...
"All this worked really well with the politics of Silicon Valley. It was much easier for Silicon Valley tech people to be ‘staunch allies’ in a world where Democratic politicians bought into neoliberalism and self-regulation. In February 2017, David Broockman, Greg Ferenstein and Neil Malhotra conducted the only survey I’m aware of on the political ideology of Silicon Valley tech elites. As Neil summarized the conclusions:
"Our findings led us to greatly rethink what we think of as “the Silicon Valley ideology,” which many pundits equate with libertarianism. In fact, our survey found that over 75% of technology founders explicitly rejected libertarian ideology. Instead, we found that they exhibit a constellation of political beliefs unique among any population we studied. We call this ideology “liberal-tarianism.” Technology elites are liberal on almost all issues – including taxation and redistribution – but extremely conservative when it comes to government regulation, particularly of the labor market. Amazingly, their preferences toward regulation resemble Republican donors.
I certainly can't dispute his account of "Silicon Valley ideology", which is almost certainly far less interesting than its insiders or its 'imagined' opponents think.
But we just had an adolescent girl- the response to whose mental derangement was to give her girlpower shooting lessons and put her in a school run by an oddball Protestant sect - given total freedom to have her hatred/mania fed like a swelling tick by dark online spaces which are completely opaque to the normie rest of us (so much so it's almost embarrassing to mention her, is it not? - as the cognitive dissonance is hard to bear); so that instead of hanging herself or taking an overdose, like any good self-loathing nutter in the past, she instead shot up her classroom after the fashion of her idols, whom she presumably discussed 24/7 on the internet.
I don't really care whether people call government regulation "Democrat" when they like it/want it, "Republican" or NIMBY when they don't like it, or on Tuesdays.
For the love of the English language, though - and if you have any glimmer of a notion that we might someday need words to have meanings - please don't suggest the status quo is "conservative" in *any* respect.
Would you apply the institutionalist/brokenist distinction to those of us who identify neither with right nor left but with a consistent view of liberty? Or would we be, necessarily, brokenists? Personally, I am pro-brokenism.
Long time reader - >20 years, first time commentor. This nails it, I think. I’m also a sucker for a good 2x2.
This is a thoughtful way to look at ideological realignments. I used to be a left-leaning institutionalist, but I have been dismayed by the increasing dysfunction in academia and media, especially in the last decade. I remain an institutionalist at heart, so I'm torn between reform and the incredibly challenging (and likely to fail) task of building anew.
Frank writes: "I'm torn between reform and the incredibly challenging (and likely to fail) task of building anew."
Add, for instance, DEI policies (among others) influence on business as evidence similar to apparent "dysfunction in academia and media" ... Demonstrated corrections (e.g. Bud Light's market-share loss, Target's customer revolt, etc.) gives hope that "reform pressure" is possible. Consumers of academia/ media/ business will drive a shift and realignment, but broader change can be non-obvious as diffusion simply takes longer.
Don't think this is accurate....."conservatives, who are almost by definition low on O."
The idea that conservatives are low on Openness may be true on average but there are many exceptions. If one will pardon a personal reference, I am both highly conservative, tested at the 98th percentile for O and very low on N, yet am a "brokenist." A prominent social psychologist with whom I correspond (who is himself a moderate liberal) has told me that intelligent conservatives tend to be high in openness.
More than anything else, low O defines conservatives.
You ever here someone joke about only conservatives eating at Appleby's?
I ate at Appleby's exactly once 20 years ago. I remember this with precision (though nothing about the meal) simply because we had buried my grandmother-in-law in her county of origin, but had no other remaining ties to the place - and there didn't seem to be anywhere much to eat afterward except the Appleby's out on the highway.
Even then, not yet the experienced cook I am now, I didn't go in for eating at places where they have plastic baggies of food that they warm up, so I distinctly remember thinking, now I will have experienced Appleby's.
So obviously I'm not terribly open, food-wise, to other than my own cooking, whether it's Applebee's or something hipster-approved.
I'm reminded of the time that the media "discovered" the woman in some decaying Rust Belt town, who had faithfully written restaurant reviews for the local paper, for decades. Thus: she reviewed everything that opened up. As homegrown restaurants declined, she reviewed McDonald's, she reviewed Appleby's, etc.
They thought it was so funny someone was giving the Ruth Reichl treatment to these chains in the hinterland. That restaurant reviews would even be a thing outside the big city. Indeed, she was never snarky, and against the odds seemed to view every place as a possible source of community or at least deserving of respectful consideration on its own terms, and promotion - as someone's business, that employed people she probably knew.
Openness runs along infinite dimensions, surely.
I'm not sure if you got the point or not. Appleby's represents American comfort food, which I suppose we all eat to some extent but conservatives tend to only eat that. If you go to an ethnic or fusion restaurant, the clientele (other than people of that ethnicity) will be almost entirely liberals.
There are other odd correlations between various personality trait differences and conservative-liberal. The other one I can think of at the moment is that at a recreational lake near me the power boaters are all conservatives and the sail boaters liberals.
No doubt I didn't get the point.
The last place I ate out was a somewhat higher-end Mexican restaurant. I'm not sure that should count given my environs but I guess I'll take it: I'm a liberal! I don't want women to be stoned to death for adultery!
(It's about a long tee shot from my apartment, and opened nearly two years ago - and I just now walked over there - so maybe I'm conservative? But I still don't want people to be stoned to death. But I walked! Conservatives never walk, right?)
That term "comfort food" is funny. It seems to usually signify - the food people used to produce at home, when they knew how or were not too lazy to - cook. Sometimes from produce from their pre-hipster gardens. They were, uh, open to cooking lol.
There may *possibly* be some market-based connection between urban and small town and rural availability, and voting blocs ;-)?
I was once talking to a girl hailing from the small city of Texarkana. A young African-American woman. High on openness, I would say, as she described having participated in a reality TV show that had not yet aired when we were speaking. (To me, un-open to anything with the one exception of talking to people, hearing about their lives: that sounded like walking on the moon.) She was saying her hometown was economically depressed, a backwater (as all of East Texas is, although in fact it is full of immigrants - so much for that). She said with mock pride, that she was excited to try the Panda Express that had come in while she was away. I'm pretty sure Panda Express is every bit the joke that Appleby's is, and probably more current.
Still, she explained that - to get anything new like that - was something!
Very nice overview of the current landscape. I think this makes more sense than most of the commentary I've seen from right and left. Thanks!
"And while Mr. Trump has personal grudges to settle with the FBI and other government agencies, he may be less motivated to follow through on DOGE and other institutional-change efforts dear to the hearts of Silicon Valley brokenists."
I think this captures the heart of Trump and his agenda. I'm pessimistic about any chances for positive change from him.
I see Trump as a leveragist. Push the institution to the breaking point in order to extract some gain. The survival or replacement of the institution is irrelevant.
This piece was a lovely synthesis. Thank you for writing it.
From former CIA analyst Gurri:
"Before his victory, Trump received the endorsement of brilliant and accomplished personalities like Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tulsi Gabbard."
One is brilliant, another is a self-promoting "maybe", and one is a Russian stooge.
Nah, she just is young enough to realize the Cold War ended in the 90s nor is she Roman Catholic hence doesn't have an pathological need to think of Russia as our enemy when they are a natural ally. It's what scares Boomers immensely hence them trying to cling to power at all cost, an upcoming generation which neither thinks of Russia as an enemy or Jews as friends in both cases simply by virtute they exist.
I'm only 2/3 through the Farrell piece, which started out somewhat unpromisingly with a pledge to find an explanation for supposedly "rightward"-shifting Silicon Valley political commitments other than "the left successfully undermined the center-left" or "they were always 'Nazi-fanciers' [sic]".
A passage:
"A consensus on antitrust that spanned Democrats and Republicans allowed search and e-commerce companies to build up enormous market power, while the 1996 Communications Decency Act’s Section 230 allowed platform companies great freedom to regulate online spaces without much external accountability as they emerged ...
"All this worked really well with the politics of Silicon Valley. It was much easier for Silicon Valley tech people to be ‘staunch allies’ in a world where Democratic politicians bought into neoliberalism and self-regulation. In February 2017, David Broockman, Greg Ferenstein and Neil Malhotra conducted the only survey I’m aware of on the political ideology of Silicon Valley tech elites. As Neil summarized the conclusions:
"Our findings led us to greatly rethink what we think of as “the Silicon Valley ideology,” which many pundits equate with libertarianism. In fact, our survey found that over 75% of technology founders explicitly rejected libertarian ideology. Instead, we found that they exhibit a constellation of political beliefs unique among any population we studied. We call this ideology “liberal-tarianism.” Technology elites are liberal on almost all issues – including taxation and redistribution – but extremely conservative when it comes to government regulation, particularly of the labor market. Amazingly, their preferences toward regulation resemble Republican donors.
I certainly can't dispute his account of "Silicon Valley ideology", which is almost certainly far less interesting than its insiders or its 'imagined' opponents think.
But we just had an adolescent girl- the response to whose mental derangement was to give her girlpower shooting lessons and put her in a school run by an oddball Protestant sect - given total freedom to have her hatred/mania fed like a swelling tick by dark online spaces which are completely opaque to the normie rest of us (so much so it's almost embarrassing to mention her, is it not? - as the cognitive dissonance is hard to bear); so that instead of hanging herself or taking an overdose, like any good self-loathing nutter in the past, she instead shot up her classroom after the fashion of her idols, whom she presumably discussed 24/7 on the internet.
I don't really care whether people call government regulation "Democrat" when they like it/want it, "Republican" or NIMBY when they don't like it, or on Tuesdays.
For the love of the English language, though - and if you have any glimmer of a notion that we might someday need words to have meanings - please don't suggest the status quo is "conservative" in *any* respect.
Would you apply the institutionalist/brokenist distinction to those of us who identify neither with right nor left but with a consistent view of liberty? Or would we be, necessarily, brokenists? Personally, I am pro-brokenism.
Cato would be libertarian-institutionalist, David Friedman or Balaji Srinivasan would be libertarian-brokenist