That 2014 was the hottest year on record, contradicting the latest claims of climate crisis deniers? (More on that in a post to come.) That there's yet another painful example (the state of Kansas) proving that supply side economics doesn't work? Or growing evidence that Obamacare is working better than even its supporters predicted? So what? The facts--new or accruing old--don't matter, writes Paul Krugman. Not to the true unbelievers.
"And the list goes on. On issues that range from monetary policy to the control of infectious disease, a big chunk of America’s body politic holds views that are completely at odds with, and completely unmovable by, actual experience. And no matter the issue, it’s the same chunk. If you’ve gotten involved in any of these debates, you know that these people aren’t happy warriors; they’re red-faced angry, with special rage directed at know-it-alls who snootily point out that the facts don’t support their position.
The question, as I said at the beginning, is why. Why the dogmatism? Why the rage? And why do these issues go together.. Well, it strikes me that the immovable position in each of these cases is bound up with rejecting any role for government that serves the public interest."
"And why this hatred of government in the public interest? Well, the political scientist Corey Robin argues that most self-proclaimed conservatives are actually reactionaries. That is, they’re defenders of traditional hierarchy — the kind of hierarchy that is threatened by any expansion of government, even (or perhaps especially) when that expansion makes the lives of ordinary citizens better and more secure."
Krugman links to this Corey Robin essay from 2012. It's a political science piece that gets into group psychology, asserting that the support of political or corporate hierarchy often begins with a sense of preserving family hierarchy, or more broadly, the traditional lines of family, gender and racial power.
I'm not sure Robin says this, but this easily extends to class, although it often means supporting a class structure in which you personally are relatively powerless and exploited. It's one of several ways that this formulation supports the sometimes mysterious conjunction of lower middle class (white) conservatives with the interests of billionaires to keep things as they are, so they can keep making their billions in the same way.
Robin doesn't give much supporting evidence for his claims on the private-to-public support for hierarchy, but clearly there are ongoing changes in America that conservatives believe are wrong, and that includes most of those changes. It's clearer in some areas than others--immigration for example--that people feel threatened, when the trends are against them anyway (ironically, to the benefit of the billionaires who fund their politics which first and foremost supports the billionaires' interests.)
But Robin seems on more certain ground when he suggests the reasons for the rabid quality of the right these days:
"There's a fairly simple reason for the embrace of radicalism on the right, and it has to do with the reactionary imperative that lies at the core of conservative doctrine. The conservative not only opposes the left; he also believes that the left has been in the driver's seat since, depending on who's counting, the French Revolution or the Reformation. If he is to preserve what he values, the conservative must declare war against the culture as it is. Though the spirit of militant opposition pervades the entirety of conservative discourse, Dinesh D'Souza has put the case most clearly:
Typically, the conservative attempts to conserve, to hold on to the values of the existing society. But ... what if the existing society is inherently hostile to conservative beliefs? It is foolish for a conservative to attempt to conserve that culture. Rather, he must seek to undermine it, to thwart it, to destroy it at the root level. This means that the conservative must ... be philosophically conservative but temperamentally radical."
And this is where the rabid right and the fundamentalist religious right meet. In religious terms, today's family-hierarchy-destroying, etc. society is terminally sinful, and nothing will save us but a total return to their prescriptive righteousness as interpreted by particular preachers who cherrypick the Bible to support their political agenda. As apostate fundamentalist Frank Schaeffer wrote:
There's another element that Christian fundamentalist leaders have in common with rabid right political leaders (as Schaeffer also notes): anger is good for fundraising.
Fundamentally, rabid right ideologues feel terminally threatened by a range of societal changes, some of them (like climate) emphasized or added to the mix for the benefit of certain billionaires in particular. Each of these issues has an additional set of fears associated with it, particularly climate, which seems to threaten ways of life built around fossil fuels. But basically these changes are threatening, and the response is fear translated into anger, which is fed and rationalized by ideology.
All of these are related to what's called income inequality, but for most people means less money to support lives that cost more every year, regardless of what the inflation numbers say. When you see elements of your life slipping away, you fiercely protect what's left. You don't want to risk losing even more.
But nothing is just one thing. Racial feelings related to status, regional and family history, local culture, all kinds of things play into the formation and expression of this resistance to admitting that there are problems that need new solutions, and not just some hazy and inconsistent return to an old order, or at least the parts of it you'd like to revive.
Whether there's any way to reach these people, or it's best to just write them off as a lost cause and endless energy sink, while devoting all efforts to building political power for supporters of these issues and occasionally contending for the hearts and minds of the muddled middle, are questions for later noodling.
No comments:
Post a Comment