How Much/How Many Republicans are Truly Well Intended?

[Elixir]

By well intended, I mean having the interests of voters in mind. Of course the people whose interests Republican politicians have in mind are voters, but how many of them? Mow many voters do they intend to benefit significantly? And how many of them truly believe that it's ok if anyone not able to thrive in the top-down trickle-down economy they are pushing is condemned to a life of misery, along with their children?

Even among the right wingers on this forum, I don't detect the level of detachment from the plight of the less fortunate (except one poster) that is reflected in the form of the new Reich that is emerging. How is that reconciled? Heightened tolerance for cognitive dissonance? Elaborate rationalization? Maybe it's utter submission to the basest instincts of lust and greed, to the exclusion of all else. But I can't help wondering if some of them aren't just the nicest, most generous and humble people you'd ever want to meet, afflicted only by Post-Turtle Syndrome.

Discuss...

 

[rousseau]

I suspect that a lot of conservative leaning people lack a moral conscience, and that this might be inherent in the way their brain is wired.

The well intentioned politician who doesn't choose the side of progressive politics is rare.

 

[Elixir]

I suspect that a lot of conservative leaning people lack a moral conscience, and that this might be inherent in the way their brain is wired.

Did they all (mostly) grow up in similar environments that make a virtue of suppressing empathy? Or are you speaking to a genetic variant that inhibits it?

The well intentioned politician who doesn't choose the side of progressive politics is rare.

I hear conservatives say that about "liberal democrats" ... it sure would be an interesting thing to quantify. Any ideas?

 

[rousseau]

Did they all (mostly) grow up in similar environments that make a virtue of suppressing empathy? Or are you speaking to a genetic variant that inhibits it?

The well intentioned politician who doesn't choose the side of progressive politics is rare.

I hear conservatives say that about "liberal democrats" ... it sure would be an interesting thing to quantify. Any ideas?

I think if you do some digging you'll find quantifiable differences between those who identify as liberal and conservative, when averaged out. Likely a combination of genetic and environmental factors, but it's interesting to note that conservatism is highly correlated with poverty and ignorance, while liberalism is almost universally associated with the educated classes. That probably says something about the efficacy of the two ideologies and the mindset needed to conclude with either.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Johnathan Haidt had some good thoughts about this, and some interesting research that has been done concerning the subject. His book The Righteous Mind is recommended. Here's a short TED talk. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, and I'm no psychologist either. It's not that Republicans don't have morals, or empathy (although it often looks that way to liberals), it's that they have different moral priorities.

Also, it's a complex issue and not something that can attributed to a single cause. Many Republicans are also very religious, and the Christian version of "love" can often be very damaging in and of itself. Apply that to public policy and well...

 

[Elixir]

Johnathan Haidt had some good thoughts about this, and some interesting research that has been done concerning the subject. His book The Righteous Mind is recommended. Here's a short TED talk. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, and I'm no psychologist either. It's not that Republicans don't have morals, or empathy (although it often looks that way to liberals), it's that they have different moral priorities.

Also, it's a complex issue and not something that can attributed to a single cause. Many Republicans are also very religious, and the Christian version of "love" can often be very damaging in and of itself. Apply that to public policy and well...

I was thinking about how the effects of religion play into this. I seems as if "I'll pray for you/them/him/her" quashes any sympathetic pain they might experience...

 

[rousseau]

Johnathan Haidt had some good thoughts about this, and some interesting research that has been done concerning the subject. His book The Righteous Mind is recommended. Here's a short TED talk. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, and I'm no psychologist either. It's not that Republicans don't have morals, or empathy (although it often looks that way to liberals), it's that they have different moral priorities.

Also, it's a complex issue and not something that can attributed to a single cause. Many Republicans are also very religious, and the Christian version of "love" can often be very damaging in and of itself. Apply that to public policy and well...

I was thinking about how the effects of religion play into this. I seems as if "I'll pray for you/them/him/her" quashes any sympathetic pain they might experience...

I'd think religious and conservative belief are both an effect of their specific mind-set, rather than religiosity impacting the political side of things.

It's not so much that conservatism is by it's nature 'bad', but most instances of conservative ideology in the world today are objectively ineffective toward the end of universal human rights, and so a certain kind of person is going to realise this, and another type of person is not.

Similarly, as an atheist board we can all agree that Christian belief is enormously stupid. So in the same way, a certain kind of person doesn't think their way out of Christian belief, and another kind of person does.

I'd think if you were to look at classical conservative traits you'd find a high inclination toward nationalism, social darwinism, and racial bias, which are the exact opposite of the things you'd expect from a morally just person, toward the end of universal human rights.

Now if you want to define 'morality' as 'looking after the people that actually matter to me', then many conservatives are great.

Anyway, I'm probably being too blunt, but fuck it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Republicans, yes, plenty.

Republicans in office, basically zero. The decent ones don't support the party anymore.

 

[Elixir]

Republicans, yes, plenty.

Republicans in office, basically zero. The decent ones don't support the party anymore.

That's the dichotomy that puzzles me. Why do republican voters elect people who have no intention of serving their interests?

 

[Valjean]

Perhaps Republicans are unaware of the Princeton study: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organised interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the US political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favour policy change, they generally do not get it.

 

[Valjean]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GBAsFwPglw

 

[prideandfall]

Republicans, yes, plenty.

Republicans in office, basically zero. The decent ones don't support the party anymore.

That's the dichotomy that puzzles me. Why do republican voters elect people who have no intention of serving their interests?

two reasons:
1. the poor, uneducated, culturally (and probably genetically, it's the south after all) inbred knuckle-draggers who consistently vote in the republican lunatics that the rest of us go slack-jawed at genuinely believe that any day now their next paycheck is going to be for 5 million dollars, or that scratch ticket is going to make them rich, or whatever delusion they have about going from a working poor rural missourian to a millionaire.
they believe this is going to happen so hard that it's reality to them, much like how christians believe their fantasy so hard they can't process the concept of a world outside of their hallucination.
because of this, they view the world through the idea that tomorrow they're going to be one of those rich people, and because they're poor and paranoid and selfish they don't want taxes or the other poors to steal any of their riches.
so, they vote for people who support no taxes for the rich and no help for the poor, because that will totally benefit them next week when they're rich.

2. generally, abortion. specifically, jesus freaks.

 

[Jarhyn]

My parents are republicans. But they are also good people, I. General. The problem I see with them is that they have particular blind spots, where they don't really think things through to the conclusions demanded by their premises; they don't push hard enough on their beliefs.

So when discussing income, they can't see past the 'value' of the work' to the responsibility for the worker. They talk about being responsible with tax dollars and being selective in healthcare, when the reality behind that position is 'fuck it, just let the poor people die'. They see the babies, but they don't see the reality of what a baby means to a poor household.

And of course, a lot of it comes from being raised in a world where they have never been forced to look at the dirty, painful, 'unfortunate' world. They've never lived near crime, they've never had black friends, they've never really been involved with any kind of serious drug use. They've never been in a situation that they were too poor to pay bills or seek medical care.

The issue is that they have never had a hard life chew them up and spit them out. They have lived too comfortably, so while they see a machine that makes people suffer, they don't understand how the inner workings of that machine function

 

[Tigers!]

That's the dichotomy that puzzles me. Why do republican voters elect people who have no intention of serving their interests?

two reasons:
1. the poor, uneducated, culturally (and probably genetically, it's the south after all) inbred knuckle-draggers who consistently vote in the republican lunatics that the rest of us go slack-jawed at genuinely believe that any day now their next paycheck is going to be for 5 million dollars, or that scratch ticket is going to make them rich, or whatever delusion they have about going from a working poor rural missourian to a millionaire.

Being from Australia I lack the nuances of US political thought but didn't the South vote Democrat for decades in the 20th century, until the 80s at least? Now they don't?
Genetics would have trouble explaining that rapid turn-around.

- - - Updated - - -

Even among the right wingers on this forum, I don't detect the level of detachment from the plight of the less fortunate (except one poster) that is reflected in the form of the new Reich that is emerging. How is that reconciled? Heightened tolerance for cognitive dissonance? Elaborate rationalization? Maybe it's utter submission to the basest instincts of lust and greed, to the exclusion of all else. But I can't help wondering if some of them aren't just the nicest, most generous and humble people you'd ever want to meet, afflicted only by Post-Turtle Syndrome.

Discuss...

Do you really ever pay any attention to those you write off as 'right-wingers'?

In Australia we call the 'Post'Turtle Syndrome 'the Peter Principle' - someone is elevated about their level of competence.

 

[Trausti]

two reasons:
1. the poor, uneducated, culturally (and probably genetically, it's the south after all) inbred knuckle-draggers who consistently vote in the republican lunatics that the rest of us go slack-jawed at genuinely believe that any day now their next paycheck is going to be for 5 million dollars, or that scratch ticket is going to make them rich, or whatever delusion they have about going from a working poor rural missourian to a millionaire.

Being from Australia I lack the nuances of US political thought but didn't the South vote Democrat for decades in the 20th century, until the 80s at least? Now they don't?
Genetics would have trouble explaining that rapid turn-around.

The nuance you're missing is that it is perfectly acceptable to denigrate lower class White voters as "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do; in contrast, it is absolutely forbidden to called lower class Black or Latino voters "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do. Mind you, many of the same voters prideandfall defames as "poor, uneducated" voted for Obama in '08 and '12. But because they voted for Obama in those years, they were spared the slander.

 

[prideandfall]

Being from Australia I lack the nuances of US political thought but didn't the South vote Democrat for decades in the 20th century, until the 80s at least? Now they don't?

basically what happened is this:
the democratic party was a bunch of corrupt racists for like 200 years, and the republicans were the sort of stoic old men with beards thinking seriously about the responsibility of governing.
then the 50s and 60s hit and a bunch of southern democrats were like "wait, this whole treating blacks like obsolete farm equipment thing is kinda fucked up, we should probably view them people or something" and all the southerners went ape shit and quit voting for them.
at around the same time, the republican party went with their Southern Strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy) to basically say "hey all you racist white supremacist shit-cocks: we're here for you!"

then over the next 20-30 years as the democrats shifted more and more towards demographics that pushed them into a specifically progressive liberal ideology (namely bring pro-choice, pro-social safety net, for workers rights and fair pay, for education and caring about the environment and such) and the republicans shifted into catering more to jesus freaks and Captain Planet villains, we wound up where we are today: in the US the democrats are a centrist-to-right-leaning political party that generally want to sort of lead the country and try to more or less enrich everyone and make the country and its people more prosperous and well off.
the republicans want a jesusland oligarchy where blacks and women are property and only rich land owning white men are considered people.

 

[Elixir]

Do you really ever pay any attention to those you write off as 'right-wingers'?

Yes, Tigers, I do. I listen and think, listen some more... and over the last 20 years or so, have heard nothing substantial from the political right that wasn't transparently designed to serve the interests of Corporations and rich people. Yet.... poor people keep electing them, as they promise change, which never comes.

In Australia we call the 'Post'Turtle Syndrome 'the Peter Principle' - someone is elevated about their level of competence.

It might seem a minor distinction, but "Post Turtle" describes someone in a high position who didn't get there by themself, doesn't know how they got there, and doesn't know what to do once there.

 

[Tigers!]

The nuance you're missing is that it is perfectly acceptable to denigrate lower class White voters as "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do; in contrast, it is absolutely forbidden to called lower class Black or Latino voters "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do. Mind you, many of the same voters prideandfall defames as "poor, uneducated" voted for Obama in '08 and '12. But because they voted for Obama in those years, they were spared the slander.

Thank you for pointing that out. I was not unsurprised by that. We are starting to see the similar situation arising in Australia

 

[prideandfall]

The nuance you're missing is that it is perfectly acceptable to denigrate lower class White voters as "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do; in contrast, it is absolutely forbidden to called lower class Black or Latino voters "poor, uneducated" to explain why they vote the way they do. Mind you, many of the same voters prideandfall defames as "poor, uneducated" voted for Obama in '08 and '12. But because they voted for Obama in those years, they were spared the slander.

no, because obama can be accurately described as lame, ineffectual, more bombast than savvy, a figurehead more than a leader, and a host of other critiques about a pretty tame and milquetoast president who gave up too easily on a lot of important fights so really wasn't much to champion for if you're a progressive, but who also *generally* did his job as a political leader and kept the country functioning and didn't horribly fuck anything up.
that was my prediction for his legacy when he was elected, and it's turned out to be pretty much the case.

trump what happens when a Ludacris song gets turned into a person and coated in cheeto dust, and most prominent republican politicans for the last 35-40 years have been jesus freak racists who have gone out of their way to systematically dismantle social progress and degrade the state of the country culturally and economically.
this isn't about opinions or partisanship, this is a simple function of reality: overall, liberal and progressive states (and countries) do better socially, culturally, and economically than conservative, nationalist, neocon states (and countries)
and in a place like the US where it fluctuates between ideologies, you can see the impact in real time - the country does better when a democrat is in office, and horrible shit happens when a republican is in office.

this isn't because democrats are better than republicans, this is because liberalism is better than conservatism in terms of political ideology, and this is borne out by reality day in and day out.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

Johnathan Haidt had some good thoughts about this, and some interesting research that has been done concerning the subject. His book The Righteous Mind is recommended. Here's a short TED talk. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, and I'm no psychologist either. It's not that Republicans don't have morals, or empathy (although it often looks that way to liberals), it's that they have different moral priorities.

Also, it's a complex issue and not something that can attributed to a single cause. Many Republicans are also very religious, and the Christian version of "love" can often be very damaging in and of itself. Apply that to public policy and well...

I found his book very eye opening. I put it up there with Selfish Gene and Guns, Germs & Steel for books that truly introduced me to thoughts I wouldn't have had otherwise.