"NatCons" are purely a DC/Internet phenomenon. They have next to no base in the real world of voters. And the majority of people claiming NatCon identity are grifters riding what they perceive as the hot new thing.
The grifter accusation isn't quite right, but it isn't wrong either. About half-true, and it isn't just the NatCons; it's a much broader phenomenon.
After having observed the evolution of a lot of similar scenes over a long time, I would say there is a kind of natural-selection / evolutionary process at work driven by two kinds of market pressure.
First, there is an, "information wants to be free but creators need to get paid" problem. In this case, "advocacy wants to be free, but advocates need to get paid." It takes a lot of time, skill, and effort to be constantly 'in the arena' and especially to become the go-to guy on an issue of current controversy, interest, and importance. I read someone describe it as being "Like more than two full-time jobs." It just takes a lot of money to make skilled people with good alternative opportunities take big risks (e.g., getting cancelled or blacklisted) on efforts which are uncertain and temporary. That's like having to compensate certain pro-athletes in contact-sports a lot because they are only in their prime and able to earn money for a few years, and they risk getting seriously disabled or otherwise damaged for life in the process.
Second is that 'the attention economy' is zero sum what with there being only 24 hours in a day and people having only so much spare time after work and family for entertainment or politics or whatever. And the competition for that attention, i.e., a kind of ephemeral 'fame', is just brutal.
So what ends up happening is that the only quality people who stick around and maintain consistently high levels of productivity are the ones who can pass the high thresholds of the necessary amounts of earned income and gained attention. And that necessarily translates into types who are both skilled and putting constant effort into salesmanship, marketing, relentless self-promotion, and money-raising. The general incentives to get a larger, most provocable (thus brand-loyal, emotionally committed) audience creates the same dumbing-down and sensationalist effects as one sees in general from social media, in "he who pays the piper, calls the tune" fashion.
Which is not necessary 'grift', but by its very nature has a very 'grift-ish' feel to it, from the audience's perspective. Or to put it another way, it feels way more grift-ish than one imagines it would or should feel, if one distilled the purely intellectual or rhetorically serious elements out of it, as if it were some bloodless academic paper or motion being filed in court.
My impression is that this problem tends to be more pronounced in right-wing political advocacy, likely as a result of the progressives having the clear upper hand in prestige publishing, the cultural commanding heights of institutions with influence over public opinion, and in general of dictating who is respectable and who gets cancelled.
Also, outside the NYT subscriber base, most other outlets of advocacy simply are not able to pay for themselves without additional donations and patronage, as indeed National Review apparently never has, resulting in the persistent anxieties of financial desperation and endless pitches for cruises and wine clubs or cheesy, kitschy "merch and schwag", which always feels kinda grifty in a way far beyond the tote-bag hawking for NPR / PBS "giving weeks".
Now of course any opportunity to gain money and attention via lies and arson of social capital is going to attract all manner of frauds and charlatans and miscreants and so forth, and to be fair it's not always easy to tell the difference because the optimal behaviors are determined by the character of the market incentives, and thus likely to appear similar whether the proponents are being completely Real or totally Fake.
There is also the very real problem of a 'non-profit' advocacy group becoming so focused and skilled on the money-raising that this solicitation starts to take over on the level of 'corporate culture' and even displace the primary mission, much as 'woke social justice' has displaced the purported primary mission of many media and educational institutions. Combined with a lack of financial and personal discipline, this can quickly degenerate into bad situations like the one which has developed at the NRA (and which some more responsible insiders are trying to gradually reverse). The SPLC started as a scammy grift, but with the ouster of its founding generation seems to have transitioned into an 'only' 90% fraudulent enterprise.
In my impression, most right-wing causes are about 15% genuine grifter, 70% of people who are more or less genuine but who are compelled to behave in grift-ish seeming ways because of the market pressures described above, and 15% of perfectly sincere people who might as well be 'tenured' in that the long-term expected path of their income and lifestyle is secure and well-insulated from public regard or volatility in any particular issue's salience.
That last 15% who can afford to drop almost all the griftishness are often literally tenured in terms of being professors, or else feel confident in the long-term continuance of being patronized by independently wealthy individuals or institutions. The trouble is that if such an individual advocate starts to feel bulletproof, then the opposition just moves upstream and starts to target their sponsoring institutions with all the usual array of pressuring tactics.
The values-neutral sanity that you remember fondly may simply not have been a stable equilibrium. Or maybe it only worked when the USSR was around as a cautionary fable about the excessive power of the state.
I think more people are recognizing that you can't defeat your passionate idealistic opponent (as wok-ists no doubt are) by appearing to believe in nothing. A positive vision is required.
One strange aspect of this dialectic is the disappearance of materialism, or indeed much if any acknowledgement of physical reality or economics at all. We went from Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" to debates over putting social security in a lockbox to "money printer go brrrr" while the discourse veers towards one in which one dream debates another dream.
1) Said he "never supported BLM" and "its the antithesis of everything we believe in"
2) Is anti-mask
3) Is anti-vaccine mandate
4) Accepted Donald Trumps endorsement
5) Supports qualified immunity for cops
6) Believe that CRT should be banned from schools by legislation and that parents should be able to ban books
Would say a "centrist classical liberal" like Tyler Cowen stand behind these statements? Would he fight for them in the electoral arena?
Glenn said these things *politely*, but he didn't pull punches or water down his views. According to the #NEVERTRUMP crowd all of these things should be disqualifying.
I want a candidate that will let people show their faces again. Tyler can't even be moved to say that masks are wrong, and always says that he personally thinks they are righteous and that good people should wear them and those that don't like it should stop complaining.
I want my K-12 schooling for be boring 3Rs and babysitting. I don't want to have a knock down drag out fight with unelected administrators over ideological school content as my full time job. I think kids in purple and blue areas shouldn't be forced into CRT indoctrination against their will. Just take it off the table. They are children and we are forced into the public schools against our will. This isn't the place for "debate".
I think that when the left burned down our cities someone that went and tried to stop it is a *hero*. What did the classical liberals do? Bitch on the internet while it all burned down.
And I'll say this. Too much Jesus in the schools might not be my first preference, but the Christian schools were the only ones around here that defied the mask mandate from the governor. Empirically, Jesus is the only thing that let my kids smile. Classical liberalism did jack shit to help my kids.
Do you want Jesus in the public school curriculum? If so, do you favor excising the establishment clause of the first amendment? Or do you favor eliminating the public school system? Or are you simply encouraging people to abandon the public schools and enroll their children in Christian schools?
I'm making the observation that something that would have bothered me and not been what I wanted for my kids, a religious focused education, no longer bothers me. My kids attend religious schools now when I wouldn't have considered that two years ago. The fact that only Christians showed real courage and protected the children through this unprecedented descent into dystopia I never believed possible these last two years has literally converted me enough that I want my kids to grow up this way now.
I think a values neutral public education is an ideal but I don't know if it's possible. The only people that stood up to the prog blob these last two years were the Christians. It seems you need values to fight values. The secular right did literally nothing except bitch on the internet. They didn't risk their jobs. They didn't run for office with a plan. Generally they wouldn't even criticize half of what was being done.
Results, Results, Results. The Christian Right got results for my kids. The classical liberals didn't. They couldn't even defend my kids right to show their smiles.
I'm not so sure Jesus is much mentioned in public schools these days, though I'm sure it varies widely from state to state. I do know that any mention of Christian religion has to be handled with delicacy to avoid chants of "Separation of church and state." On the other hand, there are conservatives demanding that the Christian God be reintroduced into public education, and they're not talking about mentioning the deity as one possible philosophical option, but as the center of the curriculum. And this goes along with what Arnold was talking about, the willingness of partisans at the margins of all sides of our political spectrum being willing to sacrifice constitutional protections for their preferred governmental policies. I was wondering where "forumposter" is on this spectrum.
If you actually dig into the polls you'll find that, like everything else, the wording is all that matters. So you can indeed get a CNN headline saying "parents support mask mandates" if you do a phone poll with the question "should schools follow CDC guidance to stop the spread of COVID". And since masks are part of the CDC guidance, the clockbait articles all report that parents support masking.
But then you actually click on the link to the report and you find that when they ask the question "does you think parents should determine if their kids wear masks" then a majority support parental choice.
So direct simple questions reveal people hate masks. More importantly, what is the revealed preference? That's the only preference I care about. Revealed preference is that probably 90%+ of people go maskless whenever they aren't being forced, at least outside of deep blue areas. Even Pelosi takes off her masks when she thinks the cameras are off.
Some more Exit Poll info:
1) People who listed COVID as their main issue was only 15% of the electorate and 84% voted Youngkin. It is the only issue on which Terri won a majority, he lost on taxes, economy, education, and abortion. There is a reason they are pushing COVID 24/7.
I can believe that our most mentally ill 15% really truly support all the mandates. For the rest I think their COVID stance is just whatever they think they are supposed to say and then they act the way they want when they are free to do so.
Still, those that show the courage to oppose are superior to those that hide their true preference.
2) Of people who voted for Glenn Youngkin, 73% were vaccinated according to exit polls. If Youngkin voters were a state, they would be the most vaccinated in the country.
3) From the exit polling it's clear that a strong majority of Youngkin voters fall into the camp of "oppose vaccine mandates, are personally vexed". This matches that mainstream GOP view. There really isn't a controversy here.
4) If only those that support a vaccine mandate could vote, Terry would have gotten 80% of the vote. If the unvaccinated weren't allowed to vote, Glenn would have lost by well over 10%.
I'm reminded of this passage when reading classical liberals horror at the idea of a coalition with Trumpists and their ilk. It's Rufo, the guy who has had the most success opposing wokism.
"You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it."
I am also convinced by Indian Bronson here. His point is that wokism and CRT is the logical conclusion of liberalism which a) cares most about oppression and inequality and b) denies sub group differences can exist if not caused by oppression. Given that reality seems to disagree with b, what other outcome to liberalism than wokism could there possibly be?
If I believed that NatCons were secretly logical and reality-based and just cynically exploiting voters emotions to win elections, it would be something of a relief, but I don't quite believe they're not genuinely as crazy as they sound. In any case, this whole spiel sounds just like progressives' pitch to non-progressives on climate change: "we're in a life-or death situation, this is the most important issue ever, so you have to be willing to compromise all of your beliefs and support us 100%... oh, but we're not willing to compromise even on 5th tier issues to gain even a single vote from outside of our base, almost as if we don't really believe it's a life or death situation worth compromising anything to build a broader coalition."
I think the idea that there's a some massive block of socially conservative people ready to throw out free speech and impose a "virtuous" society is a massive Turing test fail.
Like, I'm sure the few remaining Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan types might like this idea, generally speaking the social conservative movement looks completely spent. The abortion laws that have been passed lately have the definite whiff of "last stand" about them.
Otherwise sensible conservatives have being polite to them for years, but my guess is that they're looking to the Supreme Court right now to bail them out of their toleration and servicing this small interest group. Because if the Court doesn't, and suddenly outlaws abortion, it will be a political disaster for the Republicans.
And that's how you know you've failed the Turing test. You're picturing support for social conservatism as something that might have a huge, untapped reservoir of support. But in practice, it takes about three seconds to realize that a social conservative victory would be met with much more protest and consternation than praise.
I don't think there is going to be any blowback over abortion. I've never met a person that likes abortion, nor someone that their vote would be driven by it. I suspect that the number of people that would vote pro-choice is maybe 15%, kind of like the COVID die hards. All of them would have voted Democrat anyway.
I think Ross Douthat's observation that pro-choice is basically a mile wide but and inch deep is true. If you're a secular liberal its the response you're suppose to give when asked. But very few want to think about the subject and would feel bad if they or someone they knew got an abortion.
Overturning Roe v Wade might redirect some energy from national to state politics, but I don't believe its going to be some bid win for democrats.
This sounds like the conservative equivalent of Pailine Kael musing that she doesn't know anyone that voted for Nixon. Maybe not where you live, but in general, resolutely pro-choice people make up way more than 15%. I've always lived in cities, and have met almost no pro-life people (even when I lived in a rich suburb it was about 50/50). While it's true that many pro-choice people are fine with some late term abortion restrictions, it's also true that many pro-lifers are fine with legal early term abortion. The reason why the Mississippi law is arguably ideal for pro-lifers to neuter Roe, precisely because it's way more moderate than what serious pro-lifers want. If swing states started pushing laws any more (maybe even as) restrictive as that, I think Democratic turnout would go way up in those states and likely flip them.
Why wouldn't it just become another issue where things settle toward the median voter of whatever the polity in question is? It seems to me that Roe was a judicial overreach that enshrined a position far to the left of the median voter. If its overturned we will hash it out like we hash out anything else in a democracy. I just don't see someone thinking "I was going to vote GOP, but not if they won't theoretically let me kill something that looks like a baby".
I've mostly lived in cities my whole life and I've been secular at least as much as religious, and I've never met anyone that was passionately pro-choice. The level of energy on the issue just seems dramatically lower then the pro-life side.
Freedom is built on traditional values, if by traditional values Tracisnski means (as I do) the prohibition and punishment of murder, bodily harm, theft, and fraud, and taking personal responsibility for one's fate. This country is where it is today because transgressions haven't been swiftly, certainly, and consistently punished, and because personal responsibility has been cast aside for the (supposed) benefit of certain groups. There are two for the effective rejection of traditional values by those in a position to inculcate and enforce them (elected officials, political leaders, the media and entertainment industry, and educators). One is the ascendancy of sob-sisters who believe that poverty is the root of all bad deeds and punishment should be replaced by "reform" (hah!). The other, overlapping, impetus for leniency is the knowledge (which one dare not be expressed openly) that certain groups are more likely than others to transgress traditional values.
"NatCons" are purely a DC/Internet phenomenon. They have next to no base in the real world of voters. And the majority of people claiming NatCon identity are grifters riding what they perceive as the hot new thing.
The grifter accusation isn't quite right, but it isn't wrong either. About half-true, and it isn't just the NatCons; it's a much broader phenomenon.
After having observed the evolution of a lot of similar scenes over a long time, I would say there is a kind of natural-selection / evolutionary process at work driven by two kinds of market pressure.
First, there is an, "information wants to be free but creators need to get paid" problem. In this case, "advocacy wants to be free, but advocates need to get paid." It takes a lot of time, skill, and effort to be constantly 'in the arena' and especially to become the go-to guy on an issue of current controversy, interest, and importance. I read someone describe it as being "Like more than two full-time jobs." It just takes a lot of money to make skilled people with good alternative opportunities take big risks (e.g., getting cancelled or blacklisted) on efforts which are uncertain and temporary. That's like having to compensate certain pro-athletes in contact-sports a lot because they are only in their prime and able to earn money for a few years, and they risk getting seriously disabled or otherwise damaged for life in the process.
Second is that 'the attention economy' is zero sum what with there being only 24 hours in a day and people having only so much spare time after work and family for entertainment or politics or whatever. And the competition for that attention, i.e., a kind of ephemeral 'fame', is just brutal.
So what ends up happening is that the only quality people who stick around and maintain consistently high levels of productivity are the ones who can pass the high thresholds of the necessary amounts of earned income and gained attention. And that necessarily translates into types who are both skilled and putting constant effort into salesmanship, marketing, relentless self-promotion, and money-raising. The general incentives to get a larger, most provocable (thus brand-loyal, emotionally committed) audience creates the same dumbing-down and sensationalist effects as one sees in general from social media, in "he who pays the piper, calls the tune" fashion.
Which is not necessary 'grift', but by its very nature has a very 'grift-ish' feel to it, from the audience's perspective. Or to put it another way, it feels way more grift-ish than one imagines it would or should feel, if one distilled the purely intellectual or rhetorically serious elements out of it, as if it were some bloodless academic paper or motion being filed in court.
My impression is that this problem tends to be more pronounced in right-wing political advocacy, likely as a result of the progressives having the clear upper hand in prestige publishing, the cultural commanding heights of institutions with influence over public opinion, and in general of dictating who is respectable and who gets cancelled.
Also, outside the NYT subscriber base, most other outlets of advocacy simply are not able to pay for themselves without additional donations and patronage, as indeed National Review apparently never has, resulting in the persistent anxieties of financial desperation and endless pitches for cruises and wine clubs or cheesy, kitschy "merch and schwag", which always feels kinda grifty in a way far beyond the tote-bag hawking for NPR / PBS "giving weeks".
Now of course any opportunity to gain money and attention via lies and arson of social capital is going to attract all manner of frauds and charlatans and miscreants and so forth, and to be fair it's not always easy to tell the difference because the optimal behaviors are determined by the character of the market incentives, and thus likely to appear similar whether the proponents are being completely Real or totally Fake.
There is also the very real problem of a 'non-profit' advocacy group becoming so focused and skilled on the money-raising that this solicitation starts to take over on the level of 'corporate culture' and even displace the primary mission, much as 'woke social justice' has displaced the purported primary mission of many media and educational institutions. Combined with a lack of financial and personal discipline, this can quickly degenerate into bad situations like the one which has developed at the NRA (and which some more responsible insiders are trying to gradually reverse). The SPLC started as a scammy grift, but with the ouster of its founding generation seems to have transitioned into an 'only' 90% fraudulent enterprise.
In my impression, most right-wing causes are about 15% genuine grifter, 70% of people who are more or less genuine but who are compelled to behave in grift-ish seeming ways because of the market pressures described above, and 15% of perfectly sincere people who might as well be 'tenured' in that the long-term expected path of their income and lifestyle is secure and well-insulated from public regard or volatility in any particular issue's salience.
That last 15% who can afford to drop almost all the griftishness are often literally tenured in terms of being professors, or else feel confident in the long-term continuance of being patronized by independently wealthy individuals or institutions. The trouble is that if such an individual advocate starts to feel bulletproof, then the opposition just moves upstream and starts to target their sponsoring institutions with all the usual array of pressuring tactics.
The values-neutral sanity that you remember fondly may simply not have been a stable equilibrium. Or maybe it only worked when the USSR was around as a cautionary fable about the excessive power of the state.
I think more people are recognizing that you can't defeat your passionate idealistic opponent (as wok-ists no doubt are) by appearing to believe in nothing. A positive vision is required.
One strange aspect of this dialectic is the disappearance of materialism, or indeed much if any acknowledgement of physical reality or economics at all. We went from Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid" to debates over putting social security in a lockbox to "money printer go brrrr" while the discourse veers towards one in which one dream debates another dream.
Glenn Youngkin:
1) Said he "never supported BLM" and "its the antithesis of everything we believe in"
2) Is anti-mask
3) Is anti-vaccine mandate
4) Accepted Donald Trumps endorsement
5) Supports qualified immunity for cops
6) Believe that CRT should be banned from schools by legislation and that parents should be able to ban books
Would say a "centrist classical liberal" like Tyler Cowen stand behind these statements? Would he fight for them in the electoral arena?
Glenn said these things *politely*, but he didn't pull punches or water down his views. According to the #NEVERTRUMP crowd all of these things should be disqualifying.
I want a candidate that will let people show their faces again. Tyler can't even be moved to say that masks are wrong, and always says that he personally thinks they are righteous and that good people should wear them and those that don't like it should stop complaining.
I want my K-12 schooling for be boring 3Rs and babysitting. I don't want to have a knock down drag out fight with unelected administrators over ideological school content as my full time job. I think kids in purple and blue areas shouldn't be forced into CRT indoctrination against their will. Just take it off the table. They are children and we are forced into the public schools against our will. This isn't the place for "debate".
I think that when the left burned down our cities someone that went and tried to stop it is a *hero*. What did the classical liberals do? Bitch on the internet while it all burned down.
And I'll say this. Too much Jesus in the schools might not be my first preference, but the Christian schools were the only ones around here that defied the mask mandate from the governor. Empirically, Jesus is the only thing that let my kids smile. Classical liberalism did jack shit to help my kids.
"Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Do you want Jesus in the public school curriculum? If so, do you favor excising the establishment clause of the first amendment? Or do you favor eliminating the public school system? Or are you simply encouraging people to abandon the public schools and enroll their children in Christian schools?
I'm making the observation that something that would have bothered me and not been what I wanted for my kids, a religious focused education, no longer bothers me. My kids attend religious schools now when I wouldn't have considered that two years ago. The fact that only Christians showed real courage and protected the children through this unprecedented descent into dystopia I never believed possible these last two years has literally converted me enough that I want my kids to grow up this way now.
I think a values neutral public education is an ideal but I don't know if it's possible. The only people that stood up to the prog blob these last two years were the Christians. It seems you need values to fight values. The secular right did literally nothing except bitch on the internet. They didn't risk their jobs. They didn't run for office with a plan. Generally they wouldn't even criticize half of what was being done.
Results, Results, Results. The Christian Right got results for my kids. The classical liberals didn't. They couldn't even defend my kids right to show their smiles.
Thanks.
I'm not so sure Jesus is much mentioned in public schools these days, though I'm sure it varies widely from state to state. I do know that any mention of Christian religion has to be handled with delicacy to avoid chants of "Separation of church and state." On the other hand, there are conservatives demanding that the Christian God be reintroduced into public education, and they're not talking about mentioning the deity as one possible philosophical option, but as the center of the curriculum. And this goes along with what Arnold was talking about, the willingness of partisans at the margins of all sides of our political spectrum being willing to sacrifice constitutional protections for their preferred governmental policies. I was wondering where "forumposter" is on this spectrum.
I've seen those polls and they are trash.
If you actually dig into the polls you'll find that, like everything else, the wording is all that matters. So you can indeed get a CNN headline saying "parents support mask mandates" if you do a phone poll with the question "should schools follow CDC guidance to stop the spread of COVID". And since masks are part of the CDC guidance, the clockbait articles all report that parents support masking.
But then you actually click on the link to the report and you find that when they ask the question "does you think parents should determine if their kids wear masks" then a majority support parental choice.
So direct simple questions reveal people hate masks. More importantly, what is the revealed preference? That's the only preference I care about. Revealed preference is that probably 90%+ of people go maskless whenever they aren't being forced, at least outside of deep blue areas. Even Pelosi takes off her masks when she thinks the cameras are off.
Some more Exit Poll info:
1) People who listed COVID as their main issue was only 15% of the electorate and 84% voted Youngkin. It is the only issue on which Terri won a majority, he lost on taxes, economy, education, and abortion. There is a reason they are pushing COVID 24/7.
I can believe that our most mentally ill 15% really truly support all the mandates. For the rest I think their COVID stance is just whatever they think they are supposed to say and then they act the way they want when they are free to do so.
Still, those that show the courage to oppose are superior to those that hide their true preference.
2) Of people who voted for Glenn Youngkin, 73% were vaccinated according to exit polls. If Youngkin voters were a state, they would be the most vaccinated in the country.
3) From the exit polling it's clear that a strong majority of Youngkin voters fall into the camp of "oppose vaccine mandates, are personally vexed". This matches that mainstream GOP view. There really isn't a controversy here.
4) If only those that support a vaccine mandate could vote, Terry would have gotten 80% of the vote. If the unvaccinated weren't allowed to vote, Glenn would have lost by well over 10%.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2021/november/exit-polls/virginia/governor/0
"People who listed COVID as their main issue was only 15% of the electorate and 84% voted *Youngkin*."
*Youngkin* should read Terri
I'm reminded of this passage when reading classical liberals horror at the idea of a coalition with Trumpists and their ilk. It's Rufo, the guy who has had the most success opposing wokism.
"You can’t persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That’s why the campaign to prove that you’re “the real liberal” or “more antiracist than the antiracists” is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they’re not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of “no enemies to the left”—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can “recapture the centre” and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That’s not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You’ll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That’s reality. We’ll see if they heed it."
https://niccolo.substack.com/p/the-dushanbe-interviews-christopher
I am also convinced by Indian Bronson here. His point is that wokism and CRT is the logical conclusion of liberalism which a) cares most about oppression and inequality and b) denies sub group differences can exist if not caused by oppression. Given that reality seems to disagree with b, what other outcome to liberalism than wokism could there possibly be?
https://indianbronson.substack.com/p/critical-race-theory-and-its-discontents
Gotta love the sense of humor.
If I believed that NatCons were secretly logical and reality-based and just cynically exploiting voters emotions to win elections, it would be something of a relief, but I don't quite believe they're not genuinely as crazy as they sound. In any case, this whole spiel sounds just like progressives' pitch to non-progressives on climate change: "we're in a life-or death situation, this is the most important issue ever, so you have to be willing to compromise all of your beliefs and support us 100%... oh, but we're not willing to compromise even on 5th tier issues to gain even a single vote from outside of our base, almost as if we don't really believe it's a life or death situation worth compromising anything to build a broader coalition."
I think the idea that there's a some massive block of socially conservative people ready to throw out free speech and impose a "virtuous" society is a massive Turing test fail.
Like, I'm sure the few remaining Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan types might like this idea, generally speaking the social conservative movement looks completely spent. The abortion laws that have been passed lately have the definite whiff of "last stand" about them.
Otherwise sensible conservatives have being polite to them for years, but my guess is that they're looking to the Supreme Court right now to bail them out of their toleration and servicing this small interest group. Because if the Court doesn't, and suddenly outlaws abortion, it will be a political disaster for the Republicans.
And that's how you know you've failed the Turing test. You're picturing support for social conservatism as something that might have a huge, untapped reservoir of support. But in practice, it takes about three seconds to realize that a social conservative victory would be met with much more protest and consternation than praise.
I don't think there is going to be any blowback over abortion. I've never met a person that likes abortion, nor someone that their vote would be driven by it. I suspect that the number of people that would vote pro-choice is maybe 15%, kind of like the COVID die hards. All of them would have voted Democrat anyway.
I think Ross Douthat's observation that pro-choice is basically a mile wide but and inch deep is true. If you're a secular liberal its the response you're suppose to give when asked. But very few want to think about the subject and would feel bad if they or someone they knew got an abortion.
Overturning Roe v Wade might redirect some energy from national to state politics, but I don't believe its going to be some bid win for democrats.
This sounds like the conservative equivalent of Pailine Kael musing that she doesn't know anyone that voted for Nixon. Maybe not where you live, but in general, resolutely pro-choice people make up way more than 15%. I've always lived in cities, and have met almost no pro-life people (even when I lived in a rich suburb it was about 50/50). While it's true that many pro-choice people are fine with some late term abortion restrictions, it's also true that many pro-lifers are fine with legal early term abortion. The reason why the Mississippi law is arguably ideal for pro-lifers to neuter Roe, precisely because it's way more moderate than what serious pro-lifers want. If swing states started pushing laws any more (maybe even as) restrictive as that, I think Democratic turnout would go way up in those states and likely flip them.
Why wouldn't it just become another issue where things settle toward the median voter of whatever the polity in question is? It seems to me that Roe was a judicial overreach that enshrined a position far to the left of the median voter. If its overturned we will hash it out like we hash out anything else in a democracy. I just don't see someone thinking "I was going to vote GOP, but not if they won't theoretically let me kill something that looks like a baby".
I've mostly lived in cities my whole life and I've been secular at least as much as religious, and I've never met anyone that was passionately pro-choice. The level of energy on the issue just seems dramatically lower then the pro-life side.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/18/more-americans-now-say-government-should-take-steps-to-restrict-false-information-online-than-in-2018/ft_21-08-16_techgovtmisinfo_2/
Freedom is built on traditional values, if by traditional values Tracisnski means (as I do) the prohibition and punishment of murder, bodily harm, theft, and fraud, and taking personal responsibility for one's fate. This country is where it is today because transgressions haven't been swiftly, certainly, and consistently punished, and because personal responsibility has been cast aside for the (supposed) benefit of certain groups. There are two for the effective rejection of traditional values by those in a position to inculcate and enforce them (elected officials, political leaders, the media and entertainment industry, and educators). One is the ascendancy of sob-sisters who believe that poverty is the root of all bad deeds and punishment should be replaced by "reform" (hah!). The other, overlapping, impetus for leniency is the knowledge (which one dare not be expressed openly) that certain groups are more likely than others to transgress traditional values.