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Democrats Are, In Fact, Cracking Down at the Border
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
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No, it's not an argument, and it's not about blame, it's about the causation of an emotional narrative that gets constructed, and it's that emotional narrative that drives irrational levels of political support.
Your criticism of my comment is rational.
Rationally it's clear that Trump causes Trumpism, his followers are stupid or misfits for going along with it.
But that overlooks my purpose. I'm answering why they do it, I'm telling you the irrational and emotional causes... Not who is rationally "to blame" on a logical level. That's already known.
Because the thing is - people are often driven by their emotions. For many people, right now on the planet you have to live on, for many of those people - logic and reason are after thoughts... Things they decorated their excuses with after the (emotional) fact. It's the superficial dressing they put on and over their emotions, and often on their emotional wounds.
...and all this may be what determines the election outcome.
Okay, let's go down this road. I think you've touched on something important, so I genuinely want to get this.
How have the left played a "huge emotional role" in the polarization? I suppose you could argue that "the libs" or progressives have essentially started to shun those who they find don't agree with them on certain key issues (abortion/birth control, immigration, etc.).
But how does this differ from how political discourse has been for the last few decades? People want to act like cancel culture is this new thing that Millenials invented, but societies have utilized shame in order to shun unwanted or undesirable opinions forever. Really, the only thing that's changed from my perspective is that people have started drawing lines in the sand, and conservative reactionaries stamp all over the lines, then go Pikachu-face when they're boycotted.
So I have a personal example, and I'll keep it brief because there's a lot of really detailed nuance here.
I was holding a meeting about 2 years ago, and someone recommended a follow up sub-committee meeting. I told them I'd pull together a small group of people to hold a "pow wow". An Asian-American girl in the meeting who's your prototypical hyper-aware leftist reached out to me after the meeting. She handled it 100% professionally and exactly the way she should have, and she politely said, "I didn't want to say something during the meeting because I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I do cringe a bit when you call your meetings a 'pow wow.' I just thought you should be aware." I thanked her for pointing it out, apologized that it was something I'd always said almost unconsciously, and told her I'd try to do better in the future.
I've thought about that interaction for years. There's something in my lizard brain that feels almost offended that she'd call me out for something like that. I consider myself to be a keenly aware left-leaning person, and I'm quite sensitive to racial or sexuality-based jokes. I run in some conservative circles, so these kinds of jokes are common. Though this particular confrontation shouldn't bother me, for some reason deep down it does. My irrational, emotional brain wants to say, "That's not fair! You know I didn't mean anything by it! I'm not racist!", and my rational brain just says, "No big deal, be better in the future."
I can't explain why it's so deeply unsettling to be called out for doing something racist when I clearly didn't mean it that way. But it does help me understand a right-leaning person who's used to building social capital by telling racially-charged jokes that were probably very funny 10-15 years ago. Suddenly they're not just living in a culture that doesn't find those things funny, they're surrounded by people who readily call them "racist" for repeating jokes they've probably heard dozens of times from other people. I do not think those kinds of people are racist, I just think they grew up surrounded by subconsciously-racialized tropes, and they're simply reflecting those tropes back out into the world. And I now know how deeply painful it can be to be called a racist when you 100% didn't intend it that way. I'm sure there's a spectrum of intent and personal reflection, and some people fall closer to the "racist" end of the spectrum, plus some people think more or less about how they're perceived by other people, but I understand their pain now. I cringe when the left so readily throws out these labels, not because they're not true on some level, but because they're "othering" to people who might be sandwiched between cultural sub-groups, and those kinds of attacks aren't going to make those people more reflective or open to your arguments.
Yes, that feeling about having said Pow Wow, and being called out on it in the most gentle and polite manner, must he a very small version of the inciting incident many MAGA types probably went through, or feel they went through.
Abd where you were self aware enough to reel in that indignant feeling of being corrected, they can't. They didn't have that, for whatever reason.
It may have been knee jerk, it may have been poor cultural timing, or part of a group looking to exclude them for any reason, it may have been part of their divorce, or maybe they just weren't politically aware enough to deal and cope with being called out. Or maybe they were just a bit slow. But whatever it is, they're stuck there and so are gonna try to alter society to what they said, rather than admit they were out of line, or out of date with current standards of propriety.
Interestingly enough Thomas Piketty the Marxist theorist who wrote Capital in the Twenty First century, predicted that as the wealth gap got larger society would return to Victorian era ideas around social classes, the idea of not marrying below your station, and of not fraternizing with commoners or the poor, or bwong uncouth like them.
I don't know if this might be part of that, but it seems you understand some of the emotional aspects of gow someone slips into the MAGA mindset. The sense of betrayal they must feel.
100%. It's fucking weird to empathize with people I've hated for so long, even if only microscopically. I still don't know how to reach them, but I feel it.
I appreciate the anecdote, because I think it's happened to all of us. I had a similar interaction with someone who balked at my usage of the word "homeless" (I live in a city, so it's come up once or twice), insisting that I should instead call them "unhoused".
I think the important point in your anecdote is saying "it's unsettling and angering to be called out for doing/saying something racist when you in fact are not racist". My stance on this issue is that everyone's a little bit *-ist. Instead of concluding "people can do and say racist things while not being racist", I think a more helpful conclusion would be "people do and say racist shit all the time without meaning it because we have a lot of racism built into our brains".
I agree with you on the othering, however. I dislike when people try and put racists, sexists, etc. in a timeout corner, mostly because it seems to be with the aim of declaring themselves A Good Person rather than actually affecting any social change. I think it's more helpful to say "hey, look, we're all born with a lot of baggage from our environments and parents, and we don't get to choose how our brains are molded".
Yeah I completely agree. Implicit bias is a universal human trait, and I've consciously tried to be aware of the times it rears its ugly head. That's why I was so caught off guard, because I'm usually on the lookout for stuff like that. My best friend is a director at a media company, and he's spent nearly 2 years carefully documenting his interactions with a black, female subordinate of his. She's generally a really bad employee, a poor worker, antagonistic to colleagues, and all around a sour human being, but he can't discipline her the way he disciplines his other employees because she and her sister (who works under another director) readily claim that they're being discriminated against, no matter how innocuous the interaction or how mundane the offense. They've had to fire white, cis male employees with better track records because they're afraid that if they fire her she'll take them to court. He's a lifelong Republican who registered as a Democrat after 2016 and voted straight-ticket Dem this election, but he regularly confides in me that he's deeply frustrated with the way he has to interact with these sisters. He has to constantly look over his shoulder, he has to treat her with kit gloves, and he has to document every word he speaks to her so there's a detailed record of their conversations. I'm not saying she's not actively discriminated against in her daily life because I'm sure she 100% is, but I'm also not saying she's not taking advantage of this cultural moment to re-construct the power dynamic with the white male supervisor below her, no matter the needs of the business. This is why blue collar Trump supporters so routinely crow about people "playing the race card", because some people actually do.
We're not in a healthy place as a society, and extremists/activists on both sides are really bad at self-reflection.
That's anecdotal, but it does display the frustrations that people have with what they perceive as injust wokeness.
I think it's important to mention that shitty people are everywhere and in all shapes and colors; these two may just stand out because he does feel like he has to walk on eggshells around them.
What I will say is that I think it's a mistake to assume that people who are minorities or other discriminated classes are also progressive by nature. In a perfect world, your race and gender would have nothing to do with what political ideology you subscribe to, but we live in a far from perfect world.
I'm not sure where I made that assumption?
I didn't say you did, but I can see how you got there.
I don't think cancel culture is a thing. You literally can't cancel anyone in this day and age. Ben Shapiro, Hulk Hogan, Jordan Peterson, Trump, Elon Musk, none of these people who "got cancelled" ever suffered anything other than an opportunity to get their names out there. The controversy is the point, they got clicks out of it. So there's that. Cancelling isn't a thing. It just gets you views.
...that usurps the politics of shame, and it's a very recent change. It now functions as a signal amplifier and makes things into a constant moralization machine. A machine that creates judgementalness. Like, an unnatural and exhaustive amount of judgementalness which starts to come off as fragility. Frailty, weakness, "victim culture" whatever you want to call it. It's a space ripe for trolls who want more views. Like there's a reason Matt Walsh can make millions from the "documentaries" he makes.
Anyways, I don't have a coherent answer for you. I've come to the conclusions I have, seen what I've seen and tried to explain it - it's all very new to me. I realized whilst trying to explain the garbage truck thing on here today.
...that there's two narratives on Trump the garbage man, and that they don't connect, and only one explains Trump's strange behaviours, appearances, and strategies.
Some of the credit for me seeing this, goes to monitoring right wing spaces, and videos like this one from ShoeOnHead - who says she's a progressive leftist, but essentially supports and explains the positions of young right wing men.
...and that probably ties into part of it, gender, race, class, ethnicity. These things are close to people's emotions. To their emotional identities.
I don't think I'm giving a good explanation here because I'm still figuring out how to explain it. But it has to do with
the digital landscape changing the function and profitablity of the politics of shame (Jordan Peterson brags about it this way "I've figured out how to monetize the Social Justice Warriors").
The moralization and judgemental landscape this creates being ripe for more trolling.
Identities being core to what emotionally drives people's responses. Whether that's fragile white masculinity, or Black Lives Mattering, or Trans rights.
An exploitative fascist like Trump coming along who understands PR.
All of this coming together at once creates a digital and emotional landscape that can be manicured by fascists in a way that may get them into office.
Re: coherent answer, that's okay. I'm rarely coherent.
Cancel culture is most certainly a thing. It has the effect of saying to people "hey, if you don't change your views, then your life is going to be a little more unpleasant." You'll get dirty looks when you order coffee with your MAGA hat on, or get laughed at when you drive your Cybertruck down the street. No one is entitled to not have these things happen to them, so in my mind they're fair game.
The reason cancel culture has largely failed is because instead of hearing numerous people say "hey, your opinions and actions make me a little uncomfortable to engage with you as I normally would another person, and so I'm going to not engage with you", conservatives have instead retreated to their own corner (think treehouse that says No Girls Allowed) to all gather and complain that no one else will play with them. In short, they've taken the wrong lesson from it.
The way that podcasts and other methods of engagement have changed the way shame works is an example of this, not evidence that it doesn't work. I would argue that if your identity is built largely on being disrespectful of certain groups of people and looking down upon them, your identity doesn't really deserve to exist. I disagree that Trump "understands" just about anything he says. He has ridden a wave of podcast bros, crypto fanatics, undercover racists, gun nuts, and other people who have taken the wrong lesson from the admittedly annoying moralizing that people have sent their way.
Fascists have most certainly taken advantage of the landscape to boost recruitment and foment dissatisfaction and anger, but I think once again, we're learning the wrong lesson. We need to stop being so tolerant of those who do not in turn show tolerance.
But they do exist, and they're winning the average of polls right now, by 0.4%. They're in place to win the election. That's the problem, they do exist. It's not about that, it's about why they exist.
If you're still "arguing" something, then I don't think you get what I'm saying. There's not a rational explanation. It's emotional. They're operating on emotional paradigms and responses.
Someone wearing a MAGA cap hence, can't be proof cancel culture still exists. You explained peoples reaction to the hat, as cancel culture; the shame the wearer gets, the looks, how uncomfortable that must be - but you didn't explain why the MAGA person still wears the hat!
They've not been cancelled - they're trying to be. They want that level of attention.
They're wearing the hat to "flaunt the law". They're wearing it as a fuck you, I'm part of the club that I think is cool, and we're on Trump's side and they'll all defend anything I do in this hat so you better watch out. It's the Christian side, the family side, the white side, the side that sticks together and are sick of woke, left, moralists. "Tell me I'm wrong, so I can tell you I don't care what you think!" That's their mindset.
They're people who will use the N word if you discuss ethics and morality with them too long. Because that would show you they don't care about that stuff, it hurt when it got pinned on them (before they found MAGA). They didn't like the shame, so now they bask in it, and they think they're good and true and right for doing so. Because no one has a right to judge them (except maybe Trump).
That's not cancel culture working.
They want the intolerance you want to be shown to them. They're celebrating that Biden called them garbage, they see it a chance for a response, and as proof of their emotional position.That: "See! The left were the bad guys all along, they are the moralist bullies we said they were. Mean to us for no good reasons." That's their premise.
They want those things so they can claim that they're being bullied. It's Christianity all over again - a group of people who historically have been pandered to and coddled claim that everyone is being mean to them and so we should be instituting some sort of theocratic state. That'll show them.
I'm not arguing with them, though, am I? I'm making the argument to you and others who (seemingly) aren't all the way down the rabbit hole.
My overarching purpose with all these comments is to dispute the idea that the left is somehow responsible for how the right has gone full-on fascist over the past 4 election cycles. The right is responsible for their own logical and moral failings.
No, the left aren't in any way responsible for the right's fascism, but understanding the role they/we have played in the Trumpist manufacture of a kind of "emotional pornography" that gets used in their propaganda narrative for their fascist outlook, might help in better responding to it, and avoiding the further adoption of that role in the cycle of its production.
Having an emotional role, a part you fall into playing in something, isn't quite the same as being responsible for it. Because this role just comes naturally for a lot of people.
But yeah, thanks you for clarifying your purpose, the right will try regardless, so I agree with what your purpose, and that the left is not responsible for the right, even if the right will sometimes use the left's outrage as a cog in their propaganda machine.
Using shame isn't new. Using shame in this particular way at this particular time appears to be a poor strategy. It's deliberately divisive and conservative reactionaries aren't the only ones who are motivated to vote against it. By now many people who call themselves liberal and have a history of reliably voting for Democrats oppose it too. I think Nate Silver does a good job of expressing why in the context of Israel, although he's looking at a much bigger picture. Most of these people are still voting for Democrats, because Harris is a centrist and Trump is, well, Trump. It's still not helping.
Lemmy is a place where it often seems like leftist views are almost universal among Democrats, but Lemmy is not representative of the large majority of Democratic voters. I don't think most Harris voters (as opposed to just the vocal Democrats online) despise Republicans.
I needed that Nate Silver article. Thanks for linking.