How to help conservatives be more humane

[Jarhyn]

A couple of them are from these very forums. I have seen all of these arguments used (though not usually at the same time) to attack pretty much every government service. Usually they come from the "libertarian" crowd of the conservative sphere; it is very Ayn Rand.

Yes, that's the whole idea. If governments can never do anything right, then they should not be trusted to protect people.

True, yet the Randian proof that the government can't hold limes is participating or taking over the government and then acting like you don't know what a fucking grocery bag is: WhY CaN'T I Hold all ThEeSE LiMeS?!?

 

[lpetrich]

The Authoritarians (home page) - Angry Floof links to the book: TheAuthoritarians.pdf

Authoritarian personality:

1. a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society
2. high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities
3. a high level of conventionalism

Right-wing A'ism he defines as support of an existing system. Thus, if one believes in the legitimacy of some ruling Communist Party, one can psychologically be a RWA even though one is politically left-wing.

You could have left-wing authoritarian followers as well, who support arevolutionary leader who wants to overthrow the establishment. I knew a few in the 1970s, Marxist university students who constantly spouted their chosen authorities, Lenin or Trotsky or Chairman Mao. Happily they spent most of their time fighting with each other, as lampooned in Monty Python’s Life of Brian where the People’s Front of Judea devotes most of its energy to battling, not the Romans, but the Judean People’s Front. But the left-wing authoritarians on my campus disappeared long ago. Similarly in America “the Weathermen” blew away in the wind. I’m sure one can find left-wing authoritarians here and there, but they hardly exist in sufficient numbers now to threaten democracy in North America. However I have found bucketfuls of right-wing authoritarians in nearly every sample I have drawn in Canada and the United States for the past three decades. So when I speak of “authoritarian followers” in this book I mean right-wing authoritarian followers, as identified by the RWAscale.

Authoritarian people have been willing to defend:

• a police burglary of a newspaper office to get confidential information.
• drug raids carried out without search warrants because judges wouldn’t give them.
• denial of right to assemble to peacefully protest government actions.
• “dirty tricks” played by a governing party on the opposition during an election.
• immigration office discrimination against radical speakers.
• placing agents provocateurs in organizations to create dissension and bad press relations.
• burning down the meeting place of a radical organization.
• unauthorized mail openings.

The last string of studies I want to lay before you regarding authoritarian submission concerns authoritarians’ willingness to hold officials accountable for their misdeeds. Or rather, their lack of willingness--which catches your eye because high RWAs generally favor punishing the bejabbers out of misdoers. But they proved less likely than most people to punish a police officer who beat up a handcuffed demonstrator, or a chief of detectives who assaulted an accused child molester being held in jail, or--paralleling the trial of U.S. Army Lt. William Calley--an Air Force officer convicted of murder after leading unauthorized raids on Vietnamese villages.

...
In fact they’d send just about anyone to jail for a longer time than most people would, from those who spit on the sidewalk to rapists. However, as noted earlier, authoritarian followers usually would go easy on authorities who commit crimes, and they similarly make allowances for someone who attacks a victim the authoritarian is prejudiced against.

...
Why are high RWAs extra-punitive against law-breakers? For one thing, they think the crimes involved are more serious than most people do, and they believe mo rein the beneficial effects of punishment. But they also find “common criminals” highly repulsive and disgusting, and they admit it feels personally good, it makes them glad, to be able to punish a perpetrator. They get off smiting the sinner; they relish being “the arm of the Lord.” Similarly, high RWA university students say that classmates in high school who misbehaved and got into trouble, experienced “bad trips” on drugs, became pregnant, and so on “got exactly what they deserved” and that they felt a secret pleasure when they found out about the others’ misfortune.

Which suggests authoritarian followers have a little volcano of hostility bubbling away inside them looking for a (safe, approved) way to erupt.

 

[lpetrich]

With such strong believers in punitiveness, it will be an uphill struggle, because that will mean convincing them that many people don't deserve as much punishment, or even no punishment at all.

BA and his colleague Gerry Sande did in 1987 some wargarming with 5 male psychology students playing as NATO vs. the Warsaw Pact.

The low RWA teams did not interpret the ambiguous moves at the beginning of the game as serious threats and thus seldom made threatening moves. The high RWAs on the other hand usually reacted to the opening Warsaw Pact moves aggressively, and sowed a whirlwind. Over the course of the simulation, the high RWA teams made ten times as much threat as the low teams did, and usually brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

BS and a colleague in the Soviet Union both asked some college students about the Cold War:

For example, did the USSR start the arms race, or the USA? Would the United States launch a sneak nuclear attack on the Soviet Union if it knew it could do so without retaliation? Would the USSR do that to the United States? Does the Soviet Union have the right to invade a neighbor who looks like it might become allied with the United States? Does the USA have that right when one of its neighbors starts cozying up to the USSR?

... We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government’s version of the Cold War more than most people did.

... Gidi Rubinstein similarly found that high RWAs among both Jewish and Palestinian students in Israel tended to be the most orthodox members of their religion, who tend to be among those most resistant to a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict.

 

[lpetrich]

So it's one side's RWA's vs. the other side's RWA's.

Then something called the Global Change Game, where one starts at the present and simulates near-future world history. It's played with a big map that's divided up into regions like North America, Africa, India, and China. The 50 - 70 participants are divided between them, and one member of each team becomes the leader, one of the Elites. Each leader is in charge of the region's bank account, and decides what to spend on each. Each leader can also pocket some of that region's money and compete for "Richest Person".

The simulation is run for 2 1/2 hours, for 40 simulated years.

Some low RWA's tried it, they choose 7 male and 3 female Elites, and the Pacific Rim Elite suggested meeting in the "Island Paradise of Tasmania". The others agreed, and they created a sort of United Nations. They reduced their armed forces, and no wars or threats of war occurred. They cooperated on mutually beneficient trades, sustainable development, and the like, and they were able to provide food, healthcare, and jobs for nearly all the 8.7 billion people. The Elites diverted relatively little money into their pockets. The main failure was 300 million African deaths and 100 million Indian ones, but that was small by the standard of runs of this game.

Some high RWA's tried it, and their elites were all male. The Middle East raised its oil price by a factor of 2, and that was only the beginning of their aggressions. The ex-USSR invaded North America, and NA responded with nuclear weapons, causing a big nuclear war. The game was reset to two years before, and the ex-USSR invaded China instead, killing 400 million people. The Middle East Elite called for a "United Nations" meeting, but the others didn't take any action.

The world then got worse and worse, with several crises, and 1.7 billion people died. The Elites had twice as much pocketed money as the low-RWA ones.


North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, Ex-USSR, India, China, Pacific Rim -- that's 9 of them

 

[lpetrich]

The Libertarian Party poll also solicited opinions on a variety of social issues and economic attitudes. RWA scale scores correlated highest with attitudes against same-sex marriage, abortion, drugs, pornography, women’s equality, unconventional behavior and free speech, and with support for the Patriot Act and America’s “right” to spread democracy by military force. In contrast, the relationships with economic issues (taxation, minimum wage, the public versus private sector, free trade) proved much weaker. The data thus indicate, as do a lot of other findings, that high RWAs are “social conservatives” to a much greater extent that they are “economic conservatives.”

BA says "George W. Bush has been the most authoritarian president in my lifetime, as well as the worst. And that’s not a coincidence."

In the Global Change Game simulation, the more authoritarian people tended to do much worse than the less authoritarian ones.

BA points out that it's important to accept that authoritarian leaders do not act on their own, that they need people willing to follow them. People with strong authoritarian tendencies fit the bill very well.

We saw in chapter 1 that high RWAs are more likely to inflict strong electric shocks in a fake learning experiment in which they choose the punishment level, are more likely to sentence common criminals to long jail sentences, are more likely to be prejudiced, are more willing to join “posses” organized by authorities to hunt down and persecute almost any group you can think of, are more mean-spirited, and are more likely to blame victims of misfortune for the calamities that befall them. So while on the surface high RWAs can be pleasant, sociable, and friendly, they seemingly have a lot of hostility boiling away inside them that their authorities can easily unleash.

... it turns out in experiments that a person’s fear of a dangerous world predicts various kinds of authoritarian aggression better than any other unpleasant feeling I have looked at.

... I have discovered in my investigations that, by and large, high RWA students had simply missed many of the experiences that might have lowered their authoritarianism.

Like knowing someone who is homosexual.

 

[lpetrich]

Bob Altemeyer then discussed his research on religious fundamentalists - mostly Xian ones. They are very big on authoritarianism, yet they tend to consider themselves completely blameless.

BA has done most of his research on authoritarian followers, but he has also done some on authoritarian leaders. He mentions a Social Dominance Orientation scale, a scale that has:

Yes on:
This country would be better off if we cared less about how equal all people are.
Some groups of people are simply not the equals of others.
Some people are just more worthy than others.
No on:
If people were treated more equally, we would have fewer problems in this country.
We should try to treat one another as equals as much as possible.
Increased social equality.

BA mentioned someone finding that there are only two good predictors of prejudice: RWA and SDO. He repeated it, and he found that SDO predicts it better than RWA. The correlation between the two he found to be 0.20 -- not very strong. So high RWA's were not necessarily high SDO's and vice versa. But some people are "Double Highs".

Social dominators and high RWAs have several other things in common besides prejudice. They both tend to have conservative economic philosophies--although this happens much more often among the dominators than it does among the “social conservatives”--and they both favor right-wing political parties.

RWA's and SDO's are different in important ways.

Desire for power: SDO's wanted much more than average, RWA's were close to the average. From the "Power Mad" scale:

High scorers are inclined to be intimidating, ruthless, and vengeful. They scorn such noble acts as helping others, and being kind, charitable, and forgiving. Instead they would rather be feared than loved, and be viewed as mean, pitiless, and vengeful. They love power, including the power to hurt in their drive to the top. Authoritarian followers do not feel this way because they seldom have such a drive to start with.

Empathy, compassion, sympathy: SDO's are very low on it, because anyone worthy of such a thing is a loser who deserves to suffer.

 

[lpetrich]

Religiosity: RWA's are often fundies, while SDO's are often irreligious, their main involvement being for hatching, matching, and dispatching; births, marriages, and deaths.

But SDO's may *seem* to be religious, and they can easily sucker RWA's with displays of seeming religiosity. In "Exploitive Manipulative Amoral Dishonesty", SDO's score high, though RWA's score average. Their idea of the Golden Rule is to do it to them before they do it to you. "Social dominators thus admit, anonymously, to striving to manipulate others, and to being dishonest, two-faced, treacherous, and amoral."

Roots of hostility: "Social dominators show greater prejudice against minorities and women than high RWAs do, but the followers are much more hostile toward homosexuals." and "... unlike high RWAs who fear an explosion of lawlessness, they already live in the jungle that authoritarian followers fear is coming, and they’re going to do the eating."

If this analysis is correct, then social dominators should not score highly on the measures that predict authoritarian aggression among the followers: fear of a dangerous world and self-righteousness. And most of them don’t. Dominators aren’t usually afraid that civilization might collapse and lawlessness ensue. Laws, they think, are not something you should necessarily obey in the first place, so much as things you should not get caught disobeying. And as for self-righteousness, it’s pretty irrelevant to people as amoral as most social dominators tend to be. They may speak of the righteousness of their cause, but that’s usually just to assure and motivate their followers. Might makes right for social dominators.

The mental life of the social dominator:

Persons who score highly on the Social Dominance scale do not usually have all the nooks and crannies, contradictions and lost files in their mental life that we find in high RWAs. Most of them do not show weak reasoning abilities, highly compartmentalized thinking, and certainly not a tendency to trust people who tell them what they want to hear. They’ve got their head together. Nor are most of them dogmatic or particularly zealous about any cause or philosophy. You have to believe in something to be dogmatic and zealous, and what social dominators apparently believe in most is not some creed or cause, but gaining power by any means fair or foul.

... And one of the most useful skills a person should develop, they say, is how to look someone straight in the eye and lie convincingly.

Trying to make a high-SDO person more humane seems like a difficult task, because such a person would say that might makes right, that it is a law of nature that the biggest bullies will win, and that it would be wrong to try to interfere with that.

It's hard to tell what makes someone a SDO.

Deceit and cheating were good tactics because it led to what they wanted.
Taking advantage of “suckers” felt great.
They’ve enjoyed having power and having people afraid of them.
“Losers” deserved what happened to them.
It’s smart to use whatever power you have in a situation to get what you want.
Life boils down to what you can get away with.
People who suffer misfortunes deserve them because they are lazy or dumb or made bad moves.
Their lives have taught them that “Life is a jungle.”

 

[Angry Floof]

I think people who meet the SDO requirement are a small minority and RWAs are pretty common, more like 25% to 50% of a population depending on how religious the culture is. I think his description of SDOs sounds like psychopaths and so they are not going to care about whether they are moral or decent in their regard for their fellow human beings, only that they appear to be because that's what works to influence followers.

But followers, the majority of them, are decent human beings, empathy intact if not high intelligence, and are easily rehabilitated (for want of a better word) if they can be removed from an ideologically toxic environment and made to feel safer about the world in general.

Also, Bob's book on his RWA research, The Authoritarians, is a free ebook and has been linked in my sig for years if anyone's interested. It's about the RWAs, with only mention of SDOs.

 

[lpetrich]

This makes me ask how many criminals are high-SDO's, because such people would likely think that staying on the right side of the law should only be done out of expediency. That is to avoid pissing off the authorities, and to have a stick to beat others with in one's advancement.

It's not very clear what makes someone a high-SDO, less than for high-RWA.

BA then got into experiments in combining high-SDO's with high-RWA's. A high-SDO leader and a high-RWA follower was the nastiest combination, with the leader being very willing to be unscrupulous and nasty and the follower being very willing to go along.


Then the 5 - 10% who score high on both: RWA and SDO -- Double Highs. They are the most prejudiced of all -- they are the "religious" social dominators.

"The Worst of the Lot. One thing has struck me as I’ve studied Double Highs. They’ve usually combined the worst aspects of being a social dominator with the worst aspects of being a high RWA."

Power hungry and high Exploitive-MAD scores like SD's, religious fundie, religious ethnocentric, dogmatic, self-righteous, dangerous-world-believing like RWA's.

Double Highs may find it easier to get RWA support than ordinary SD's, because they don't have to fake being fundies and the like.

Jimmy Carter: “Almost invariably, fundamentalist movements are led by authoritarian males who consider themselves to be superior to others and, within religious groups, have an overwhelming commitment to subjugate women and to dominate their fellow believers.”

 

[lpetrich]

Bob Altemeyer then decided to screen his Global Change Game participants for SDO performance.

He had run it in 1994, when the SDO scale had just been published, and in 1998, he decided to do that again, with screening for SDO.

He first did it with pure RWA's, no DH's. It took twice as long as usual for would-be Elites to stand up and be counted -- they were all very reluctant to lead. The groups tried to solve their problems separately, though without much success. Like in 1994, their rejection of birth control caused trouble for India and Africa. North America and Europe gave a little bit of charity, but not enough.

There were no wars, not even any threats, but all the regions kept their armed forces, and the final death toll was 1.9 billion people, close to a record for a lack of war.

Then a run with some DH's. BA made sure that every group contained one, and also a male RWA, so to avoid female ones automatically deferring to a male DH. The regions got their Elites quickly, in half the usual time. Four of the seven became group leaders, and one who didn't became a sort of co-leader, one who did much of the work of leadership. Another one led a revolution among his group-mates, demanding that all the group's Elite's deals be approved by him. The remaining one stayed quiet.

The Elites did a lot of trading with each other, making the world somewhat better off than in the no-DH case, but did not do any charity or collective action. But the regions did a lot of military buildup, with the stronger ones bullying the weaker ones. Oceana got nuclear weapons, bullied India into submission, and threatened Africa and Latin America. North America offered protection for a price, and the world seemed headed for nuclear war when the simulation ended.

Pacific Rim -> Oceana in that one.

They devoted a lot of resources to military power, and 1.6 billion people died. The Oceana Elite bought nuclear weapons on his own initiative, but while the other Oceana participants didn't like that, they didn't try to stop him. Or bullying India into submission. Or trying to bully Africa and Latin America.

Remarkably, none of the Elites took much money for themselves -- they were preoccupied with making their regions more powerful.

 

[lpetrich]

“X” became a born-again Christian when he was first elected to Congress. He brought a strong drive for power with him to Washington, and he steadily worked his way to the top of the Republican caucus. Colleagues have described him as amoral. “If it wasn’t illegal to do it, even if it was clearly wrong and unethical, (he did it). And in some cases if it was illegal, I think he still did it” said another Republican Congressman. “X”is opposed to equality, and Newsweek commented that he has never been subtle about his uses of the power of Love and Fear. He kept marble tablets of the Ten Commandments and a half-dozen bull-whips in his office when the was theparty whip. He earned the nicknames, “the Hammer,” “the Exterminator,” and the “Meanest Man in Congress.”

When “X” became House majority leader (talk about a big hint!) he imposed a virtual dictatorship on the House of Representatives. He instituted a number of unprecedented changes in House procedures to keep Democrats, and even other Republicans, from having any say in the laws being passed. He drastically revised bills passed by committees and often sent them to the floor from his office for almost immediate votes. He forbade amendments to most of the bills that came to the floor. He excluded Democrats from the House-Senate conference committees formed to iron out differences in bills passed by the two chambers. He allowed special interests to write laws that were passed by the compliant Republican majority. And he allowed unbelievable billions of dollars in pork-barrel GOP projects to be attached to appropriation bills.

He was Tom DeLay, someone who was indicted for money laundering early in 2006, and he eventually resigned. He helped Republicans win the Texas state legislature, and they then gerrymandered the state's US-House districts so that Republicans would win more seats. Republicans also did that in FL, MI, OH, and PA.

BA suspects that the George Bush II administration had Double High tendencies.

I’m not saying, incidentally, that everyone who becomes important in society is a social dominator. People without a dominating bone in their bodies can become leaders of movements for greater equality, for example. One thinks of Gandhi. Conversely, a social dominator can become the leader of a movement for equality and freedom, but after succeeding become just the next dictator in a string of dictators. One thinks of many. I see no reason why social dominators would not head for left-wing movements, if they see those as the faster route to power.

 

[lpetrich]

I don't think that George Bush II had as much of the raw will to power that Tom DeLay had. Dick Cheney may have had more of it.

As to almost immediate votes on bills, that reminds me of something that AOC pointed out. She says that from release to vote now takes 48 hours, instead of an earlier 24 hours -- likely from Tom DeLay. She and her staff like to read bills carefully before voting on them, looking for blatant pork and other such things. As an aside, I don't recall her ever saying much about pork-barrel stuff, even though she's sounded off quite a lot about other forms of misgovernment.


Bob Altemeyer then discussed sending his 30-question RWA-scale survey out to a large number of politicians in several legislators in the US and Canada. He got responses from only 26% of the US legislators that he sent his survey to, mostly US-state legislators.

In all but one of the 50 US legislatures that he sent his survey to, Republicans scored higher than Democrats. The Louisiana House was the only one where D's scored higher than R's. On average, R's scored 40 points higher than D's, out of a maximum of 140.

D's had a lot of variation, while R's crowded together. Southern legislators scored the highest. Politicians scoring high in RWA tended to have these positions:

• not think wife abuse was a serious issue (a weak relationship; see note 12 of Chapter 1)
• have conservative economic philosophies (a moderate relationship)
• score highly on items assessing racial and ethnic prejudice (a moderate relationship)
• reject a law raising the income tax rate for the rich and lowering it for the poor (a moderate relationship)
• favor capital punishment (a sturdy relationship)
• oppose gun control laws (a sturdy relationship)
• favor a law prohibiting television broadcasts from a foreign country’s capital (such as Baghdad during the Gulf War) when the United States is at war with that country (a sturdy relationship)
• favor a law requiring Christian religious instruction in public schools (a sturdy relationship)
• score high in dogmatism (a sturdy relationship)
• oppose a law requiring affirmative action in state hiring that would give priority to qualified minorities until they “caught up” (a sturdy relationship)
• favor a law giving police much less restrictive wiretap, search-and-seizure, and interrogation rules (a strong relationship)
• favor a law outlawing the Communist Party “and other radical political organizations” (a strong relationship)
• oppose the Equal Rights Amendment (a strong relationship)
• favor placing greater restrictions on abortion than “Roe versus Wade” (a strong relationship)
• favor a law restricting anti-war protests to certain sizes, times, and places--generally away from public view--while American troops are fighting overseas (a very strong relationship)
• have a “We were the good guys, the Soviets were the bad guys” view of the Cold War (a very strong relationship)
• oppose a law extending equal rights to homosexuals in housing and employment (a very strong relationship)

 

[lpetrich]

BA continues:

Because they harbor so many authoritarian sentiments, Republican legislators naturally differed from Democrats overall on the matters above. But the differences were sharpest when you compared high RWA versus low RWA lawmakers, whatever their party affiliation. Many high RWA Democrats, and some low RWA Republicans appeared in these samples. The problem, as I see it, does not arise from Republicans per se but from the right-wing authoritarians on both sides of the aisle. But the data make it quite clear that when you see a bunch of Republican lawmakers huddling, you’re probably looking at mainly high RWAs, whereas when (non-southern) Democrats cluster, they’re probably a pretty unauthoritarian lot overall.

It's Southerners who score the highest in RWA, and the Republican Party is now a mainly Southern party, the party of Jefferson Davis.

BA didn't have the SDO scale available, but he asked them to rank such values as Happiness, National Security, and A World at Peace, alongside Freedom and Equality. Almost everybody ranked Freedom the highest, but they did not have a consensus on the rest of the list. Low-RWA lawmakers ranked Equality 3rd, while high-RWA ones ranked Equality 7th.

BA suspects that they are Double Highs, because high-RWA people tend to be followers rather than leaders. Tom DeLay may only be an extreme case.

He then gets into authoritarian politicians talking about freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom.

Despite their pronouncements about freedom-this and freedom-that, high RWA lawmakers would like to pass laws that restrict freedom of the press, the right to protest, the right to privacy, the right to belong to the political organization of one’s choice, and they certainly would trample all over freedom of religion once they madethe teaching of Christianity compulsory in public schools.

They also have a double standard that favors themselves. When someone heckles one of them, they consider it an interference with the freedom of speech of the speaker. When someone heckles someone they dislike, they consider any interference with the heckler an interference with the freedom of speech of the heckler.

 

[Emily Lake]

If you're not defending tribalism, what exactly are you objecting to in this thread?

This is kind of like accusing me of "defending emotionalism" when I object to someone claiming that humans are perfectly rational beings. It's not defending emotionalism, it's acknowledging the reality that emotions are an inherent element of humans and they are part and parcel of our decision-making processes. Pure rationality is a noble ideal... but it is not objective reality. Similarly, humans form groups, and in-group vs out-group dynamics are an inherent element of how we function. The abstract idea of "one tribe" is a noble ideal - it's a concept worth striving for. But your insistence that it is absolute fact is willful ignorance of the real world.

What initially triggered you to respond at all? You said something about liberals thinking they're better than conservatives or something, but that was not at all the point. That was just turning the topic to liberals rather than addressing the issues with conservative mentality and conservative ideology and how they give rise to inhumane societies.

Are you really bothered more by some outgroup ("liberals") saying something critical about conservatives than you are about the very real consequences of conservative selfishness, stupidity, and tribalism?

What triggered me to respond is the blindness to the same behaviors that are being complained about. You insist that we're all one tribe... while simultaneously casting conservatives as "them". You don't talk about conservatives as if they're part of your tribe, you talk about them as if they're an opposing tribe. Do you really not see the inherent contradiction in your position here? "We" are caring, humane, compassionate, and good; "They" are selfish, stupid, and... tribal. That dichotomy, that definitive view of "us = good" and "them = bad" is a hallmark of tribalism. Even the well-intentioned "Oh the poor dears, we have to help them be more like us" is ideological partisanship. You (and the author and many others who view themselves as liberals) complain that conservatives are not humane enough, not compassionate enough... while in the next sentence decrying them as childish, selfish, dumb people who are ruled by fear and a desire to control everyone. You conclude that somehow, liberals need to find a way to control how conservatives think, in order to free them from wanting to control how people think.

Do you genuinely not recognize the lack of humane treatment and compassion involved in casting an entire group of people as bad?

 

[lpetrich]

“Once our government leaders and the authorities condemn the dangerous elements in our society, it will be the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning our country from within.” - part of BA's RWA scale.

BA then gets into Canadian politics, with its multitude of parties. In order by RWA scores: (New Democrats), (Liberals), (Conservatives), with a little bit of overlap between their edges.

He then returns to US politics and discusses the rise of the US Religious Right. Only 40% of the Republican Party, but a very well-organized bloc.

About the Religious Right taking over and imposing its will, he suspects that its unity will last as long as it has an outside enemy. He suspects that Protestants and Catholics will then fight each other, and if the Protestants win, then the Baptists and the Pentecostals will fight each other.

 

[Angry Floof]

If you're not defending tribalism, what exactly are you objecting to in this thread?

This is kind of like accusing me of "defending emotionalism" when I object to someone claiming that humans are perfectly rational beings. It's not defending emotionalism, it's acknowledging the reality that emotions are an inherent element of humans and they are part and parcel of our decision-making processes. Pure rationality is a noble ideal... but it is not objective reality. Similarly, humans form groups, and in-group vs out-group dynamics are an inherent element of how we function. The abstract idea of "one tribe" is a noble ideal - it's a concept worth striving for. But your insistence that it is absolute fact is willful ignorance of the real world.

What initially triggered you to respond at all? You said something about liberals thinking they're better than conservatives or something, but that was not at all the point. That was just turning the topic to liberals rather than addressing the issues with conservative mentality and conservative ideology and how they give rise to inhumane societies.

Are you really bothered more by some outgroup ("liberals") saying something critical about conservatives than you are about the very real consequences of conservative selfishness, stupidity, and tribalism?

What triggered me to respond is the blindness to the same behaviors that are being complained about. You insist that we're all one tribe... while simultaneously casting conservatives as "them". You don't talk about conservatives as if they're part of your tribe, you talk about them as if they're an opposing tribe. Do you really not see the inherent contradiction in your position here? "We" are caring, humane, compassionate, and good; "They" are selfish, stupid, and... tribal. That dichotomy, that definitive view of "us = good" and "them = bad" is a hallmark of tribalism. Even the well-intentioned "Oh the poor dears, we have to help them be more like us" is ideological partisanship. You (and the author and many others who view themselves as liberals) complain that conservatives are not humane enough, not compassionate enough... while in the next sentence decrying them as childish, selfish, dumb people who are ruled by fear and a desire to control everyone. You conclude that somehow, liberals need to find a way to control how conservatives think, in order to free them from wanting to control how people think.

Do you genuinely not recognize the lack of humane treatment and compassion involved in casting an entire group of people as bad?

Honestly, I don't think you have the wherewithal to parse anything I've said.

Humanity is one connected tribe. This is not opinion. It's a fact. Regardless of what you or I or anyone else thinks about it, it's true. Unless you can wipe out technological advancement around the globe, we will not return to an environment of separate tribes who only sometimes interact.

This is not the least bit controversial. No matter how many virtual lines and boundaries and identities we all have in our heads, it is pure delusion to think we are separated in any real way from the rest of humanity. You have to really do some mental tap dancing of denial to think there is any meaningful separation between you and strangers on the other side of the globe.

There are no rival tribes. The tribalism and tribal conflicts we experience are just people like you insisting that their arbitrary mental boundaries are real in any way other than in the real behaviors of people who won't or can't recognize that those identities and boundaries are limited and based in illusion. Wars and conflicts in the world are literally based in illusion, the illusion that there's not enough to go around, that wealth is a zero sum game, that physical dominance is sustainable, that someone else has to suffer or serve or die in order for some to survive and thrive.

Another fact you fail to absorb is that you are perfectly capable of recognizing all this, as does every human. Most people probably wont ever see beyond their own small group tribalism that you describe, but we are nothing if not plastic and adaptable, and literally millions of human beings around the world have moved beyond that small perspective.

One more factor that would apply as well: Whatever assumptions you have established in your subconscious regarding who is US and who is THEM is going to make you feel threatened by the suggestion that the world is bigger than you thought and that it will impinge on you in one way or another eventually. It's a good idea to make the effort to recognize that now rather than having atrocity be the thing that breaks the illusion for you, as is usually what is necessary for right wing authoritarian morons to change their view of anything.

Please don't even respond to me anymore. You're contributing nothing here but petulant temper tantrums at hearing things that challenge your world view.

 

[Emily Lake]

Please don't even respond to me anymore. You're contributing nothing here but petulant temper tantrums at hearing things that challenge your world view.

I don't have a laughing smiley that's laughing quite hard enough for this comment.

 

[Angry Floof]

Please don't even respond to me anymore. You're contributing nothing here but petulant temper tantrums at hearing things that challenge your world view.

I don't have a laughing smiley that's laughing quite hard enough for this comment.

Whatever you say. Thanks for serving as a demonstration of what this thread is about.