I appreciate the final moments of introspection. But this is still yet another example of a Democrat who would rather theorize about why people voted Republican, than risk asking them.
Seriously, there are 77 million of them. Just /ask/ them, people. If you don't know anyone who voted Republican, and don't ever watch or read any Republican-slanted news, you've self-isolated yourself, and have no clue what's even happening in America, and shouldn't be talking about politics.
Take this paragraph: "The other focuses on cultural “backlash,” noting how traditionally dominant groups resent the profound liberalisation of Western values in recent decades. This liberalisation is evident in much greater acceptance of multiculturalism, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender equality, especially among younger college-educated professionals who occupy prestigious positions in politics, culture, and the economy."
This is backwards. Republicans see themselves as /defending/ liberalism. Let's go thru your list for some examples why.
The most obvious isn't on your list, 'coz you couldn't put it there without looking ridiculous: Free speech. And I know you're going to pretend the Republicans are as strong against free speech as Democrats, but they aren't. I know you won't believe anything I say on the subject. So ask an LLM to list 30 cases where someone was cancelled for political reasons, and then ask it how many of those people were Democrats. Maybe you'll believe the machine. (Don't ask for a list of Republicans who were cancelled, and then of Democrats who were cancelled. You have to get one list of both in one query, without mentioning Republican or Democrat, or the machine will do separate queries, and return about equal numbers of both.)
Multiculturalism: Democrats are not multicultural. Multiculturalism requires acceptance of foreign cultures. What Democrats accept is a fantasy of their own invention about foreign cultures, which is that they are enlightened, non-violent, tolerant, and morally superior to the West. They go to extreme lengths to ignore or deny that the cause of most of Africa's woes have long been, and continues to be, Islamic violence. They ignore the rabid anti-homosexuality and patriarchy of many foreign religions and cultures. Republicans aren't opposed to immigration; they're opposed to open borders, and immigration policies which result in much more immigration from people in patriarchal, nepotistic, corrupt, illiberal countries than from liberal ones.
LGBTQ+ rights: There are a lot of people who are currently anti-LGBTQ+ at present. This is mostly because trans activists have been playing by the Marxist handbook, which is to say that their tactics are not to gain cultural acceptance (as the gay and lesbian movements did), but to overthrow society. Instead of placing their demands before the public for a vote, as was done to legalize same-sex marriage, they take over school boards and have Presidents issue executive orders. They have consistently refused to discuss their demands, always framing them as non-negotiable "rights", even when they obviously stamp on rights we've already acknowledged as a nation. Title IX, for instance, recognized that women can't compete with men in many sports, and established that women, as a sex, have the right to have their own sports leagues in which they don't need to compete with men. Democrats, after fighting for that right, have now deliberately destroyed it. The typical response of trans activists to attempts to discuss this is to gang up on anyone who tries and spew hate at them. Why are there "Die cis scum" T-shirts, but no "Die trans scum" T-shirts?
This generalizes to everything that differentiates Democrats from Republicans. Democrats have no coherent theory of ethics. They just identify a few sets of underprivileged people, and insist we prioritize making those people happy above everything else. Women are no longer a focus; therefore, the rights of women should be ignored. Blacks are a focus; therefore, the rights of whites should be ignored.
Neither do Democratic morals have any coherent interpretation. "Gender equality" is now a term used for taking rights away from women. We're supposed to accept that a man has the right to declare himself a women--and I have no big problem with that--yet we're supposed to react with horror when a white declares himself to be a black. Yet the differences between male and female are far greater, physiologically and psychologically, than the differences between black and white. If it is a moral outrage to deny a man the right to become a woman, then it is a moral outrage to deny a white the right to become black. That Democrats insist on one but are outraged at the other, proves the basis for their preferences is not moral.
LIkewise, we're told we must utterly transform our society and ourselves by eliminating any thought of sexuality outside of medicine; yet the gender ideology underlying this demand is incoherent. One set of trans people want to /have/ a sexuality. They want that binary distinction between men and women. Another set wants to destroy the concept of sexuality AND of gender, making "gender" a synonym for "lifestyle". These two views are complete opposites, and within the trans community, those early, pre-2015 trans people, who mostly wanted to /transition/ from one sex to another, are silenced and scorned. One trans women, born intersex, broke down and cried on my shoulder about how horribly she's treated by the trans community today.
And let's not even get into the brainwashing of a generation of children to believe there's no difference between men and women! Most people /enjoy/ that difference. Strip them of sex or gender roles, and they don't know who they are anymore, or who they should be.
And they don't know how to mate anymore. Navigating sexual roles has become so complicated, and the masculine so demonized, that about half of our young people today have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Democrats stole the best part of their lives.
Democrats are also intensely racist. This was a deliberate tactic; google "Strategic essentialism." Take Trump's executive order 13950, "Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping". Biden cancelled it on his first day in office. This was reported by every major news agency except Fox as "fighting racism". You read the actual text of that EO at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/28/2020-21534/combating-race-and-sex-stereotyping, and tell me who's the racist.
And then there's the whole long list of terrible, stupid, intentionally destructive things the Democrats have done: Defund the police. Legalize shoplifting. Politicize top scientific journals and scientific professional orgnizations. Hollow out academic disciplines like English Literature to turn them into Marxist evangelism. Open the southern borders, then whine when southern governors ship some of the overflow to their cities. Change the language. Require an Ivy-level degree for any position of power or wealth in the US, then deny conservatives admission to those universities. Don't report on any news that makes the far left look bad. I could list a hundred horrifying far-left actions that you've never heard of if you listen only to pro-Democrat news outlets.
Now before you protest that there is no conspiracy to fill all positions of power with leftists, consider why you wrote "especially among younger college-educated professionals who occupy prestigious positions in politics, culture, and the economy." What's the true direction of causality there?
Republicans today see the Democratic party as nothing but a mouthpiece for an upper-class that wants to create an American aristocracy by controlling the universities, the bureaucracies, and the media, and only letting in either people like them, or people they can bribe to be loyal with special privileges.
On top of that, for many years, Democrats have gone out of their way to demonize, dehumanize, and insult rural people, and America in general. Call them racist, call them Nazis, call them evil, call them stupid. Google the phrase "I hate America", and see how many of the people who said that are Democrats.
They keep calling country people Nazis, even while they're protesting in favor of Hamas, an organization established for the specific purpose of committing genocide against the Jews, voted into power by the Palestinians, and still supported by most of them.
And all the Marxists are on their side! Marxists are every bit as evil and murderous as Nazis. They've murdered many times more people than Nazis did. Why does the Democratic party tolerate Marxists? There's something deeply wrong there.
The culture war is a war between urban cosmopolitan upper-middle-class culture, and the rural middle-class. Just look at an election map that shows votes at the voting-district level, and this is clear. For decades now, rural people have been silenced. They aren't represented in newspapers, in the news, in movies, in books, except as stereotypes. And even then, some city person is hired to play them. They're forced to live under laws written for big cities that destroy their small towns. If they move to a big city, they learn to code-switch their speech to hide where they came from. They are so thoroughly silenced that people like you wax on about Republicans this, Republicans that, without knowing one damn thing about them.
Just before the 2024 election, there was a guy in a small town in NY who'd saved a baby squirrel from a dog, I think, and raised it for years. He made YouTube videos of the squirrel that went viral. Someone reported him to the State for violating some law made for apartment buildings about having rodents, and NY State sent police to raid the man's house. They took the squirrel and killed it. That summarizes the culture war better than anything in your post. City folk stomping on the face of country folk.
Thanks for the comment. It's interesting and valuable to hear your perspective, even if I think your analysis very much succumbs to the same biases I write about in the article.
Thank you for your long and thoughtful defense of Republicans. Unlike most readers here, I have redneck roots and am an Army Vet, so I know MAGA voters and am familiar with most of your argument.
There is one particular statement that is very interesting to me:
“Democrats have no coherent theory of ethics.”
This is perhaps true, as they have abandoned Enlightenment reason and rejected religion, but there is a general feeling of sympathy for the poor and downtrodden that generally guides progressive principles.
What do you think is the guiding theory of ethics for Trump, Musk, and his supporters? I have tried hard to figure out what they might be and am at a loss. What moral, ethical, and philosophical foundation are modern conservative values and actions based upon? I have my own theories, and they are not flattering, but then again I am one of those coastal elites, so I would think that.
Sincerely and in the best of faith, I am awaiting your reply.
I can't make sense of what Trump and Musk are doing. I can easily dismiss Trump as a kind of idiot savant who knows how to make business deals and nothing else. Musk is harder to dismiss. He's extremely smart. I think both of them are using the approaches they took in their businesses, both of which are inappropriate for managing a country. I think both of them are driven by rage now.
The destruction of large government agencies, I can kind of understand. I worked for a lot of big government agencies, and nothing I ever did was ever used for what it was supposed to be used for. The incentives are all wrong. Most work I did for the government was doomed before it started, because key people wanted it to fail, and everyone knew this. Had nothing to do with DEI.
I don't know what "conservative" means anymore. The word means someone who doesn't want rapid change, which today means to seem anyone in favor of the rule of law, equality before the law, free speech, honest good-faith debate leading to compromises, and common courtesy. Which would be... the 36% of voters who didn't vote in 2024?
And I don't want to use the words "centrist" or "moderate". American politics aren't on a right-left dimension. That's a myth the right and the left cooperate on maintaining, 'coz it gives them both power. The right and the left are very similar, very close together. They both want to destroy free speech and liberalism, I think. They both have lost faith in democracy, they both want revenge, they both thrive on hate. Our only hope is that they destroy each other.
I owe you a long and thoughtful reply, and perhaps I will get to it this week, but right now, I am too swamped with life. Thank you very much. I have been thinking much the same thoughts as you have, and you have helped me crystalize some things that have bumping around in my head.
Duty, Honor, Country (the words etched on the entrance to West Point) seem a better Northstar than ever.
They always are. And the US Constitution. Our rights and liberties come from God, but it is the Constitution that provides the structural framework and checks and balances on people who would try to use government power to take them away from us.
I think it’s notable that a good 50% of your post is about the “men identifying as women” issue. Not that you’re wrong, just that it’s notable, in the same way that it’s notable that the “He’s for you, she’s for they/them” ad won Pennsylvania for Trump, and arguably won him the Presidency.
That one issue really did break the camel’s back for many people on the “second era of social justice revolution” as I’ve taken to calling the years from 2012-2022 (the first one being 1965-1975 with very similar rhetoric and goals, though much more focused on race).
I vividly remember having a conversation with some (male) friends in early 2022 where we were like … female to male transsexuals (what we now call “transmen”) are going to be fine. It’ll be just like acceptance of gay marriage or flamboyantly gay people. Live and let live. The existence of small men with no Adam’s apple hurts nobody. But the other way around … this is going to cause some problems. We create segregated safe spaces for women for very very good biological reasons.
The one we didn’t predict *also* breaking the left was youth gender transition and the use of irreversible chemical treatments on minors. Always assumed it would be for adults only.
Not to disagree with your main points, but my post didn't say one word against trans women. It did have 443 words out of 1600 which addressed the subject. But my gripe isn't with trans women, but with the undemocratic and hate-filled way trans activists have acted, and the claims to absolute moral superiority when they aren't even saying anything logically coherent. Also with the demonization and persecution of masculinity which has led so many young men to hate themselves, or to transition just for practical reasons like getting a job.
This has been the genuine sentiment of some of my friends and family. It took me a while (perhaps with a hint of Stockholm syndrome at the thought of 4 more years of Trump) to understand that there is now a real affection between Trump and his supporters, largely inverting Bill Clinton's proposition that "Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line."
I think the hard choice, now that Trump is president, is to recognize the emptiness of the leftist signalling, despite the real and crushing consequences it had. The generic liberal held no malice for generic conservatives or MAGA. The parroting of "messaging" was just lethargic inertia while opportunistic media ecosystems spun out narratives based on compounding reactionism. The loudest among us were never representative, but our silence in the face of obvious mistreatment should never have felt justified.
The question now is whether you are willing to see past the leftist facade in a way that will demand a sober look at your own narrative for what Trump should do. Is he going to break the levers of power, or create new ones with which to entrench himself? It matters a great deal, not just because whatever he does is passed on to whomever is president thereafter, but because an overreactive fear of a leftist version of Trump, taking over the levers Trump is installing, can create the very overreach that ensures their rise to power. Truly, I do not want to know what that looks like, but neither can I pretend like Trump is proportional to what came before, only to the sensational narrative that continues to evolve to compensate for clear overreach.
After thinking a little more, I think that I agree with what Trump is trying to do:
- Enforce immigration laws.
- Stop the Russia-Ukraine war by making it clear to Ukraine that they have to give up some captured territory.
- Start a trade war just with China. China appears to be planning world conquest. Our best chance of stopping them begins with not trading with them. We can afford it better than they can. They can't sell much to their own people, because their own people are too poor to afford what China makes.
- Reduce the budget.
These are probably the most-important things for the US President to do now, and Trump is the only candidate who recognized that. But I hate the way he implements everything he does, with chaos, confusion, waste, uncertainty, injustice, overreaching, unkindness, arrogance. And I certainly don't trust him not to try to seize power again.
I generally agree, but with the strong caveat that what looks like Trump "recognizing" the importance of some matters is really just a contrast effect compared to the pathological ignoring and offloading from previous administrations. Most of us recognized the problems, failed to generate any real solutions, and now Trump is acting (out) in those relevant areas, for better or for worse.
I should add that I am most critical of his approach to Ukraine such that, even if some pragmatic concessions need be made, Trump has weakened Ukraine's position routinely and embarrassingly. So I'll not be giving him credit in this arena, regardless of outcome, and this despite it being a pet peeve of mine when leftists generally refuse to give him credit when it is due.
It's possible that Trump did that tactically. Showing Ukraine respect would mean including them in all talks to make it clear that any treaty was between two independent nations, Ukraine and Russia; and showing Zelensky respect. But a treaty between Ukraine and Russia would be as worthless as the previous agreement between them. Trump has to let Putin know that any treaty is personal, between him and Putin, not between Ukraine and Russia.
That's the best excuse I can make for him, anyway.
The fairest I can be here is to say that if that were true, I would not be able to see it. To take the possibility seriously, if Trump were that level of mastermind, then he would know he would lose support among those like me as a matter of opportunity cost for his general style of communication and governance. To me, the simplest explanation will remain the contrasting effect where, "the powers that be" have become so entrenched behind the noise of complexity (which they did had no reason to prevent or now to remedy), that sudden, obnoxious directness can be "brilliantly effective," regardless of strategic fidelity. I won't be shedding tears for the ill begotten and ill fated china shop, nor for the bull wreaking perhaps necessary havoc within it.
Immigration laws are not being followed (maybe they are following the immigration laws they wish we had, but you have to change the laws before implementing your fantasy laws).
Trade war with just China? Why all the “reciprocal” tariffs on all the NonChina countries?
Reducing the budget? Doge/Musk efforts at the federal gov + tax-cutting bills for the rich will not do that.
I mostly agree with these goals. But I strongly oppose doing anything in violation of the US Constitution. Our liberties and the checks on government power are rare in the course of human history. Many people fought and died to bestow them on us. We have a duty to preserve them for our country now and in the future. Trump and the people he has appointed in his administration do not seem to care about that. In some respects, they seem to be intentionally trying to erode constitutional guardrails.
I have no hope that Trump will improve matters. I'd rather talk about what Republicans and Democrats can do together to reign him in or get rid of him. Neither impeachment, nor a declaration by the Cabinet and the VP that he's unfit, are out of the question. Trump will not be careful not to offend and terrorize the half of Republican Congress members, nor the half of the Cabinet, needed to get rid of him. If he keeps on like he's been going, he won't have many friends left in a year.
You're right that too often people theorize about others instead of just talking to them, and that’s a real loss. It disconnects us from the human reality behind the politics.
A few things in your comment stood out to me, especially the idea that many Republicans see themselves as defending liberal values like free speech, fair treatment, and equal rights, and feel that modern liberalism has lost sight of those same values. That resonates with something I’ve been trying to understand better: how people on opposite sides often appeal to the same moral foundations but interpret the threats differently.
For instance, when you say trans activists have moved away from public consensus-building and toward institutional enforcement, that’s a critique I’ve heard from others, too. I have heard it even from people who strongly support trans rights. How would you distinguish between asserting rights for a marginalized group and what you see as overreach?
Also, I’m curious: you talked about Democrats focusing only on some underprivileged groups, and ignoring others. If you could design a political movement that honored all groups fairly (rural and urban, white and Black, male and female), what would that look like to you? What principles would it be built on?
I don’t agree with every point you raised (truthfully, my mind was flooded with counterexamples, as happens automatically when we read things we disagree with), but I hear how hurt and excluded you feel from the national conversation, and I want to understand that better. This frustration doesn’t come out of nowhere; it comes from feeling unseen. I’m sincerely trying to see more clearly.
To be aware of the phenomena of being the problem described is the first step. The second step is to stop being the problem. For the latte drinking anti-NASCAR set, eat at McDonalds once in a while, go to a NASCAR race. It will be like a trip to a foreign country - fascinating, enjoyable, memorable and you'll still get to sleep in your own bed that night.
The third step is to actively push back on the problem. When your social circle pours disdain on the others via the signalling, be prepared in advance to gently push back. Don't allow them the prestige of dunking on the superhero movie, or a coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Rather, gently counter-signal with the good that is clearly and undeniably present in the other side.
A key idea grabbed me a few years ago: "There is no constituency for moderation or reasonableness". Aristotle would be embarrassed. Republicans primary other Repubs for being RINO. Dems dump on moderate Dems. Everyone forgets; "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." For instance, many Dem leaders oppose Open Primaries and RCV, but they would likely enlarge the general election tent and win more often.
Good point and also my experience! Do go to NASCAR, or a drag race, or the sprint car race BUT take enough of those sponge ear plugs for everyone in your group (it is clearly in bad taste to sell them there). With the ear plugs the noise stops being a problem and the low frequency base you feel in your gut becomes part of the experience.
The last section saved the piece from, as you yourself seem to recognize, a strong sense of smug judgementalism.
I think a key element here is that the American system does not permit people to directly support what they might believe to be a sensible mix of policies but instead forces them to choose between two individuals representing broad ideologies. There is an increasing sense that both sides are going off the rails. I don't think you can understand Trump without reflecting on the fact that he was, to take one example, running against a party that had as a core plank of its social policy the attempt to make it effectivelly illegal to assert that men and women are physically different in important ways. That's something that would have been considered total lunacy and farce for most of human history.
You literally just said that "to assert that men and women are physically different in important ways" "perfectly describes the quest for a return to monolithic Patriarchy."
You know, it was interesting to me, observing my own reactions to this piece, how annoying and smug it seemed—and how frustrated I was by that, as I count you as an excellent analytical thinker whose essays I look forward to precisely because they challenge my own thinking in productive ways. (I am BTW an overeducated professional and lifelong Democrat.) So I skipped down to your final section, and I was fascinated to feel a palpable sense of relief. OK, I thought, Dan recognizes the possible frailties in what he has presented and the way he has presented it. Phew!
On the substance itself, while I recognize there is a worldwide phenomenon, I am not sure every manifestation has the same roots. In the US, one thing I think is very important to recognize is that it is reasonable to assess that the Democrats (not just Harris, but the Democratic Party) lost this election, rather than that Trump won it. I say this because, while, yes, there is a seemingly unshakable core of Trump voters—and additional voters did migrate to Trump in 2024–it was also the case that many more people did not vote at all in 2024 than did not vote in 2020. We don’t yet have a full sense of why, but from various analyses and polling done so far, it’s probably fair to say the reasons people stayed home varied quite a lot, sharing only in common that the Democrats were not offering anything much that would improve their lives, and in some instances were touting policies actively detrimental to their lives. (I suspect this may also be true for many of the voters that shifted to Trump this time around.) I have to say that, while I voted for Harris, I can see many strong, reasonable bases for those views. (My own reasons for voting for Harris were fairly abstract, eg, preserving democracy.)
So, for myself, I am much more interested in understanding what demotivated those who didn’t vote, in all their variety—or shifted their vote for the first time in 2024—as opposed to understanding those who voted for Trump twice. Now, I grant you, part of my predilection here is that I am the black sheep, both in having an advanced degree and in being a Democrat, in my huge (and I mean huge) extended family. They have voted for the Republicans always. The biggest reason they give is they don’t want government taking their hard-earned money in taxes, because that money always gets misspent, and not for their benefit. They don’t all love Trump, they just hate “big government,” and Democrats are, to them, always on the side of “Big Government.” If you were to talk with my mother (still going at 96), she will have well-thought out explanations for these views. We may disagree (I almost always do), but she is no dummy—after dad decamped, she put herself through college at age 50 and became expert at helping businesses put in phone systems, something she learned from scratch at that age. She doesn’t call herself “cybersr” for nothing😎).
It agues that Kamala lost primarily because she and her idiot advisors failed to understand, and, consequently, failed to inform voters, that Donald Trump caused our inflation problem, not Joe Biden. Oh, and also, Democrats have totally alienated straight male voters. Mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are non-white. No man wants to belong to a party that considers him an evil oppressor - and the enemy.
I'm glad you got to the more self-reflective part at the end, since there did seem to be some selective focus in the earlier parts of the piece. On the issue of it being a puzzle why Trump supporters support him despite his incompetence, how are you evaluating Trump's competence? Do Trump's supporters think he's incompetent? If there's disagreement there, is there a way to resolve that in an unbiased way, or is subjective political judgment the best that can be done?
I think the two-party nature of American politics also makes it hard to look at any coalition in isolation -- for example the story of RFK Jr types is probably not completely about being pulled in by Trump but also about being pushed away by Progressives who were leaning hard into a framing about expertise and institutions. Each coalition gets the other coalition's anti-stories "for free".
As a long time and unrepentant finance bro, I know I must guard against thinking about things in purely economic terms. Economics famously assumes that people are rational, which is to say that they are more or less capable of perceiving their self-interest and acting accordingly. But this is often not the case. In 2018 I wrote a Substack post titled “The Tribe has Spoken” which explored some of the less rational forces underlying our nation’s political divide. In retrospect there is very little in that piece that I would change today. However, I would point out that it was written before the onset of Covid, and since then things have gotten much, much worse.
The post mainly homed in on two topics: the tribal nature of human beings and something Friedrich Nietzsche called “ressentiment.” Ressentiment is the feeling of powerlessness and resentment that society’s disgruntled “losers” feel toward the perceived “winners” – convenient and often imaginary scapegoats. I am no Nietzsche scholar (does anyone really get him?), but I believe that ressentiment today is a pervasive force in American politics on both sides of the political divide. Everyone feels aggrieved, and many – especially on the right – are convinced that their birthright has been stolen from them by sinister “elites.” It is a supreme irony that this was a central theme of J. D. Vance’s bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy.”
These days, I'm not sure what to say. I'm torn between responding in pundit mode, as in "The disturbing phenomena of the rise of measles cases certainly indicates a crisis in public confidence, and we must examine how intellectuals and government public health officials have contributed to this sorry state of affairs by being insufficiently respectful of conservative values, and explore how not be smug and arrogant about vaccines. After all, bloodletting was once Establishment Medicine.". Versus just rip-roaring ranting at the state of the world "THE MEASLES IS BACK! Do you get it?! A disease almost wiped out by vaccination has returned - virtually entirely due to RIGHT-WING LIES! THESE ARE LYING LIARS WHO LIE!!!"
Let me put it this way: There needs to be some philosophical system for when liberals can take their own side in an argument. Yes, I know, there is absolutely no need to tell me, unchecked that leads to fanaticism. But I tell you, no limits in the other direction leads to, well, self-flagellation over Donald Trump and ilk and all we see now.
I think I'm going to assign the original journal article, and then this piece and all the comments, on the first day of my political science course next semester.
IMO, the FPTP voting system is just too good a match for human nature. We vote strategically for the candidate that everyone else is voting for, i.e. the biggest strongest alliance. (Trump: "My alliance is the biggest and the strongest!" Electorate: "OK, you've got my vote!") We'd be far better off with a system such as approval voting which optimizes for selecting a consensus candidate.
Good post. (I’m a sucker for structural, McLuhan-style explanations for things.)
FPTP is supercharged in the US with the Presidential system, the Electoral College, and only having two parties.
But it’s a real thing here in Canada too.
All of this is also exacerbated by instant global zero-cost electronic communication where nobody has to look their rival in the eye and see that they are human too (ie the movement of nearly all social interaction to the Internet).
Yes, I wonder if part of the reason why US politics seem dysfunctional is simply its large population, which reduces the empathetic sense of community. If you look at other high-population democracies, they score even worse than the US in the Economist Democracy Index, IIRC.
And individual US *states* seem to have more functional politics than at the federal level, suggesting political dysfunction may *not* be something inherent to American culture. Actually, if all you knew about Americans was reading what we say about each other online, I think you'd be quite surprised about how friendly Americans are to each other on the street, even if they're strangers. There's a remarkable disconnect between internet hostility, and the warmth you find IRL (depending on the locale at least). For some reason, no one discusses this disconnect.
One thing that confuses me: I understand that Canada and the UK also have regional representation with FPTP, but they don't have just two parties the way the US does. For some reason, third parties thrive in Canada/UK even with FPTP. What's up with that? Why has no 3rd party in the US managed to score a few seats in Congress? You mention the Presidential election, but in principle I'm not sure that should matter. I think maybe it's because no 3rd party has attempted a "regional representation" strategy. For example, given that the Mormons have traditionally voted for the GOP but also tend to dislike Trump, I think Romney could succeed with a regional Mormon party which only aims to win in Utah.
Another question is how to foster empathy in large populations over the internet...
Good question on how there are 3rd parties here in Canada! In addition to our two main parties (Liberal and Conservative) we have two credible third parties (not counting the Greens).
The Bloc Québecois is an extreme regional-interests party (some would say, to the point of being traitors) so that one has a rational explanation and is common around the world though as you said, not the USA. Maybe the USA really did have better social cohesion back in the day.
The one that’s harder to explain is our New Democratic Party (NDP) which started as a left-wing union-based party (they originally pioneered universal health care in Canada, in their earlier incarnation the CCF) but who have kind of abandoned working-class cultural values and are now more of the social justice / deindustrialization party. So still left, just a slightly different axis.
The dynamics aren’t *that* different though and some of this just may be the vagaries and random chances of history. On the right we had a further-right party called Reform, which ultimately merged with the Progressive Conservatives (with some name changes in the interim) in the “unite the right” effort of the early 2000s that created today’s Conservative Party (CPC). There is a new farther-right anti-immigration party called the People’s Party (PPC) but they’re marginal.
And the NDP and LPC *almost* merged under Trudeau. They had an alliance in Parliament for 3 years but never pulled the trigger on actually merging.
All of which is to say — I think you’re right that FPTP mostly just allows for two main parties and regional parties. The existence of the NDP as a true third party here in Canada is tenuous. And I think the European style voting systems have their own pain around taking forever to form a government as coalitions are formed, but they are better for some of the polarization issues.
Hanania recently argued that MAGA is mentally ill. To me, this is on par with Marxist theories of “false consciousness”—a higher IQ version of Hanania’s ad hominem. Your approach makes more sense. People are rational even when they are biased, ignorant or low IQ. Democracy has warts.
My brother typically spends three days a week on a golf course and he was baffled by fellow members whining about egg prices. His comment is: "they have two Mercedes, a second home, they dine out two nights a week, and they're worried about egg prices??" What they are doing is clearly loyalty signaling but these folks are college educated, typically business owners, but also professionals.
This is a dimension of the alliance not related to class but to temperament. This is the zero-sum, I got mine, aggressive, self-confident, and vigilant cohort who guard their status and are raising a middle-finger to those who think they can take it away.
I think the truth is much simpler: nearly everyone lives in an economic equilibrium. Disruptions cause discomfort, whether you're in the bottom income quintile or the top.
Well, I agree but my point was that the reason these people align themselves with the far right is not the erosion of the middle class. It is the emotional appeal to vigilance in opposition to straw men who could erode their wealth and status despite all evidence that the status quo is actually working quite well for them. These are also people whose personalities are high on the competitive/aggressive scale so fight, fight, fight, is compelling regardless that what they may be burning down is an environment in which they are thriving.
There is an entire book about this political phenomenon called "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. It's even longer than this article. I prefer to look at this problem in Karl Popper's analysis of Open versus Closed Societies. Open Societies tolerate multiple points of view, multiple faiths and multiple ethnicities. There is open competition for ideas, and getting to the truth is an important value. Closed societies like Russia, Iran, China value conformity, allegiance to authority, state monopoly on ideology, religion, and economic planning. The United States, under Donald Trump is heading for a Closed Society, with a closed economy, shuttered press, Christian nationalist state monopoly on religion, and state ideological control over education and the study of history. Think Iran or maybe Handmaid's Tale.
Funny; I read both "Origins of Totalitarianism" and "The Open Society and its Enemies" as indictments of the left. Mostly because they /literally are/. Both treat totalitarian Marxism as basically the same as totalitarian Nazism. 1/3 of The Open Society and its Enemies is against Marxism.
Nazism is right wing not left wing. Putin is a fascist, his ideologue Dugin is a fascist. Right wing extremists like Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, and Donald Trump, admire Vladimir Putin because they are fascists. Donald Trump idolizes Hitler, he often says he would like the same kind of generals that Hitler had! The Nazis hated the left and ended up exterminating them once they gained power. There is no threat to democracy from the left at the present moment, but there is one hell of a threat to democracy from the right in the form of Maga! Popper had to leave Austria because of the Nazis, not the communists. He definitely saw both communism and fascism as a threat to the open society. Leftism does not equal marxism, just as rightism doesn't equal fascism, but people on the extreme left are often marxists and people on the extreme right are always fascists. The main difference between communists and fascists, is that communists see the communist state as always right, ideology of the communist party as the only legitimate ideology, and political decisions of the communist party as the only legitimate decisions. Fascists, on the other hand are more fixated on a "strong" leader, and ideology or party are not as important. Fascists glorify violence and the destruction of liberal values and institutions like the rule of law, equality before the law. Fascists hate feminism, because they believe woman's place is in the home having and raising babies for the motherland (J.D. Vance)
Thank you. Karl Popper is one of my heroes. Neither the WOKE left nor the MAGA right ever take the trouble to question, let alone falsify their beliefs or engage in real discussion, which is, as Popper emphasized, how we get closer to the truth. As Mr. Williams' article points out, critical thought will get you rejected from either group.
Loved the introspection at the end. My least pleasant realisation in recent times is how much my leftishist liberalism (when I was a bit of a 'name' on Twitter) was an act. It was designed to foster alliances with the kind of people I preferred to identify myself as similar to. I didn't realise it at the time. I loved feeling superior (with my education, leftfield cultural tastes & generally cosmopolitan vibe) and now it annoys me that I was so smug. One of my most satisfying bits of redemption has been having no opinion at all on Trump's tariffs thing and instead waiting to see how it plays out in 12 months or so. The best thing is that I've never felt calmer or more contented.
Just read this today... I smiled when I got to your added-on 5th point.
Throughout the piece, I had been catching myself wanting to object, along the order of "But... but... but... The excesses of the MAGA right you are talking about are roughly SYMMETRICAL with the excesses of the contemporary Progressive far left... and, as a lifelong liberal-but-not-radical Democrat, I was aware of these issues ON THE LEFT, and bothered by them, already, circa 2013 - so, before MAGA was even born. For the theory to have any "legs" at all, it needs to be symmetrically applicable. And I don't see that here..."
Or, to put it another way, we all need to remember that the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign was, or, at very least, began as, "populist devotion". I think it is perilous for the left-of-center among us to forget that there were many in '16 who started out supporting Bernie, and, after he fell out of contention, switched, not to Hillary, but to Trump! And it's at least as perilous, I think, to forget how many in the chattering classes were utterly perplexed BY that phenomenon. I have my own thoughts on that, too long for this Comment, but suffice to say that I have still not seen an airtight explanation of what that Bernie-to-Trump phenomenon was all about.
I think you are on to something, here, but you probably need a collaborator, perhaps from a bit right-of-center - someone not so prone to knee-jerking this theory into an "Us Good - Them Flawed" kind of thing - as, indeed, you 'caught yourself' doing, and reflected upon, in Point 5. The culture presently does not often use "populism" to describe some of the excesses of the far left, but populism is what a lot of that is, and for your theory to hold up, it's got to capture behavior at both wings at least close to equally well.
It is also interesting to note that we live in a time and place wherein every possible opinion or point-of-view about quite literally everything is now freely available via the internet, especially in the realm of religion, culture and his-story too.
Which is to point out that we now have no choice but to critically examine all of our inherited presumptions and beliefs.
Perhaps many and/or most of them are well and truly past their useful use-by-date, and indeed are causative factors of the current polycrisis
Which of course raises the question as how to do so.
Perhaps we should use the Truth Social website or maybe Steve Bannon's war room.
I appreciate the final moments of introspection. But this is still yet another example of a Democrat who would rather theorize about why people voted Republican, than risk asking them.
Seriously, there are 77 million of them. Just /ask/ them, people. If you don't know anyone who voted Republican, and don't ever watch or read any Republican-slanted news, you've self-isolated yourself, and have no clue what's even happening in America, and shouldn't be talking about politics.
Take this paragraph: "The other focuses on cultural “backlash,” noting how traditionally dominant groups resent the profound liberalisation of Western values in recent decades. This liberalisation is evident in much greater acceptance of multiculturalism, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, and gender equality, especially among younger college-educated professionals who occupy prestigious positions in politics, culture, and the economy."
This is backwards. Republicans see themselves as /defending/ liberalism. Let's go thru your list for some examples why.
The most obvious isn't on your list, 'coz you couldn't put it there without looking ridiculous: Free speech. And I know you're going to pretend the Republicans are as strong against free speech as Democrats, but they aren't. I know you won't believe anything I say on the subject. So ask an LLM to list 30 cases where someone was cancelled for political reasons, and then ask it how many of those people were Democrats. Maybe you'll believe the machine. (Don't ask for a list of Republicans who were cancelled, and then of Democrats who were cancelled. You have to get one list of both in one query, without mentioning Republican or Democrat, or the machine will do separate queries, and return about equal numbers of both.)
Multiculturalism: Democrats are not multicultural. Multiculturalism requires acceptance of foreign cultures. What Democrats accept is a fantasy of their own invention about foreign cultures, which is that they are enlightened, non-violent, tolerant, and morally superior to the West. They go to extreme lengths to ignore or deny that the cause of most of Africa's woes have long been, and continues to be, Islamic violence. They ignore the rabid anti-homosexuality and patriarchy of many foreign religions and cultures. Republicans aren't opposed to immigration; they're opposed to open borders, and immigration policies which result in much more immigration from people in patriarchal, nepotistic, corrupt, illiberal countries than from liberal ones.
LGBTQ+ rights: There are a lot of people who are currently anti-LGBTQ+ at present. This is mostly because trans activists have been playing by the Marxist handbook, which is to say that their tactics are not to gain cultural acceptance (as the gay and lesbian movements did), but to overthrow society. Instead of placing their demands before the public for a vote, as was done to legalize same-sex marriage, they take over school boards and have Presidents issue executive orders. They have consistently refused to discuss their demands, always framing them as non-negotiable "rights", even when they obviously stamp on rights we've already acknowledged as a nation. Title IX, for instance, recognized that women can't compete with men in many sports, and established that women, as a sex, have the right to have their own sports leagues in which they don't need to compete with men. Democrats, after fighting for that right, have now deliberately destroyed it. The typical response of trans activists to attempts to discuss this is to gang up on anyone who tries and spew hate at them. Why are there "Die cis scum" T-shirts, but no "Die trans scum" T-shirts?
This generalizes to everything that differentiates Democrats from Republicans. Democrats have no coherent theory of ethics. They just identify a few sets of underprivileged people, and insist we prioritize making those people happy above everything else. Women are no longer a focus; therefore, the rights of women should be ignored. Blacks are a focus; therefore, the rights of whites should be ignored.
Neither do Democratic morals have any coherent interpretation. "Gender equality" is now a term used for taking rights away from women. We're supposed to accept that a man has the right to declare himself a women--and I have no big problem with that--yet we're supposed to react with horror when a white declares himself to be a black. Yet the differences between male and female are far greater, physiologically and psychologically, than the differences between black and white. If it is a moral outrage to deny a man the right to become a woman, then it is a moral outrage to deny a white the right to become black. That Democrats insist on one but are outraged at the other, proves the basis for their preferences is not moral.
LIkewise, we're told we must utterly transform our society and ourselves by eliminating any thought of sexuality outside of medicine; yet the gender ideology underlying this demand is incoherent. One set of trans people want to /have/ a sexuality. They want that binary distinction between men and women. Another set wants to destroy the concept of sexuality AND of gender, making "gender" a synonym for "lifestyle". These two views are complete opposites, and within the trans community, those early, pre-2015 trans people, who mostly wanted to /transition/ from one sex to another, are silenced and scorned. One trans women, born intersex, broke down and cried on my shoulder about how horribly she's treated by the trans community today.
And let's not even get into the brainwashing of a generation of children to believe there's no difference between men and women! Most people /enjoy/ that difference. Strip them of sex or gender roles, and they don't know who they are anymore, or who they should be.
And they don't know how to mate anymore. Navigating sexual roles has become so complicated, and the masculine so demonized, that about half of our young people today have never had a boyfriend or girlfriend. Democrats stole the best part of their lives.
Democrats are also intensely racist. This was a deliberate tactic; google "Strategic essentialism." Take Trump's executive order 13950, "Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping". Biden cancelled it on his first day in office. This was reported by every major news agency except Fox as "fighting racism". You read the actual text of that EO at https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/28/2020-21534/combating-race-and-sex-stereotyping, and tell me who's the racist.
And then there's the whole long list of terrible, stupid, intentionally destructive things the Democrats have done: Defund the police. Legalize shoplifting. Politicize top scientific journals and scientific professional orgnizations. Hollow out academic disciplines like English Literature to turn them into Marxist evangelism. Open the southern borders, then whine when southern governors ship some of the overflow to their cities. Change the language. Require an Ivy-level degree for any position of power or wealth in the US, then deny conservatives admission to those universities. Don't report on any news that makes the far left look bad. I could list a hundred horrifying far-left actions that you've never heard of if you listen only to pro-Democrat news outlets.
Now before you protest that there is no conspiracy to fill all positions of power with leftists, consider why you wrote "especially among younger college-educated professionals who occupy prestigious positions in politics, culture, and the economy." What's the true direction of causality there?
Republicans today see the Democratic party as nothing but a mouthpiece for an upper-class that wants to create an American aristocracy by controlling the universities, the bureaucracies, and the media, and only letting in either people like them, or people they can bribe to be loyal with special privileges.
On top of that, for many years, Democrats have gone out of their way to demonize, dehumanize, and insult rural people, and America in general. Call them racist, call them Nazis, call them evil, call them stupid. Google the phrase "I hate America", and see how many of the people who said that are Democrats.
They keep calling country people Nazis, even while they're protesting in favor of Hamas, an organization established for the specific purpose of committing genocide against the Jews, voted into power by the Palestinians, and still supported by most of them.
And all the Marxists are on their side! Marxists are every bit as evil and murderous as Nazis. They've murdered many times more people than Nazis did. Why does the Democratic party tolerate Marxists? There's something deeply wrong there.
The culture war is a war between urban cosmopolitan upper-middle-class culture, and the rural middle-class. Just look at an election map that shows votes at the voting-district level, and this is clear. For decades now, rural people have been silenced. They aren't represented in newspapers, in the news, in movies, in books, except as stereotypes. And even then, some city person is hired to play them. They're forced to live under laws written for big cities that destroy their small towns. If they move to a big city, they learn to code-switch their speech to hide where they came from. They are so thoroughly silenced that people like you wax on about Republicans this, Republicans that, without knowing one damn thing about them.
Just before the 2024 election, there was a guy in a small town in NY who'd saved a baby squirrel from a dog, I think, and raised it for years. He made YouTube videos of the squirrel that went viral. Someone reported him to the State for violating some law made for apartment buildings about having rodents, and NY State sent police to raid the man's house. They took the squirrel and killed it. That summarizes the culture war better than anything in your post. City folk stomping on the face of country folk.
Thanks for the comment. It's interesting and valuable to hear your perspective, even if I think your analysis very much succumbs to the same biases I write about in the article.
Thank you for your long and thoughtful defense of Republicans. Unlike most readers here, I have redneck roots and am an Army Vet, so I know MAGA voters and am familiar with most of your argument.
There is one particular statement that is very interesting to me:
“Democrats have no coherent theory of ethics.”
This is perhaps true, as they have abandoned Enlightenment reason and rejected religion, but there is a general feeling of sympathy for the poor and downtrodden that generally guides progressive principles.
What do you think is the guiding theory of ethics for Trump, Musk, and his supporters? I have tried hard to figure out what they might be and am at a loss. What moral, ethical, and philosophical foundation are modern conservative values and actions based upon? I have my own theories, and they are not flattering, but then again I am one of those coastal elites, so I would think that.
Sincerely and in the best of faith, I am awaiting your reply.
I can't make sense of what Trump and Musk are doing. I can easily dismiss Trump as a kind of idiot savant who knows how to make business deals and nothing else. Musk is harder to dismiss. He's extremely smart. I think both of them are using the approaches they took in their businesses, both of which are inappropriate for managing a country. I think both of them are driven by rage now.
The destruction of large government agencies, I can kind of understand. I worked for a lot of big government agencies, and nothing I ever did was ever used for what it was supposed to be used for. The incentives are all wrong. Most work I did for the government was doomed before it started, because key people wanted it to fail, and everyone knew this. Had nothing to do with DEI.
I don't know what "conservative" means anymore. The word means someone who doesn't want rapid change, which today means to seem anyone in favor of the rule of law, equality before the law, free speech, honest good-faith debate leading to compromises, and common courtesy. Which would be... the 36% of voters who didn't vote in 2024?
And I don't want to use the words "centrist" or "moderate". American politics aren't on a right-left dimension. That's a myth the right and the left cooperate on maintaining, 'coz it gives them both power. The right and the left are very similar, very close together. They both want to destroy free speech and liberalism, I think. They both have lost faith in democracy, they both want revenge, they both thrive on hate. Our only hope is that they destroy each other.
I owe you a long and thoughtful reply, and perhaps I will get to it this week, but right now, I am too swamped with life. Thank you very much. I have been thinking much the same thoughts as you have, and you have helped me crystalize some things that have bumping around in my head.
Duty, Honor, Country (the words etched on the entrance to West Point) seem a better Northstar than ever.
They always are. And the US Constitution. Our rights and liberties come from God, but it is the Constitution that provides the structural framework and checks and balances on people who would try to use government power to take them away from us.
Nailed it.
I think it’s notable that a good 50% of your post is about the “men identifying as women” issue. Not that you’re wrong, just that it’s notable, in the same way that it’s notable that the “He’s for you, she’s for they/them” ad won Pennsylvania for Trump, and arguably won him the Presidency.
That one issue really did break the camel’s back for many people on the “second era of social justice revolution” as I’ve taken to calling the years from 2012-2022 (the first one being 1965-1975 with very similar rhetoric and goals, though much more focused on race).
I vividly remember having a conversation with some (male) friends in early 2022 where we were like … female to male transsexuals (what we now call “transmen”) are going to be fine. It’ll be just like acceptance of gay marriage or flamboyantly gay people. Live and let live. The existence of small men with no Adam’s apple hurts nobody. But the other way around … this is going to cause some problems. We create segregated safe spaces for women for very very good biological reasons.
The one we didn’t predict *also* breaking the left was youth gender transition and the use of irreversible chemical treatments on minors. Always assumed it would be for adults only.
Not to disagree with your main points, but my post didn't say one word against trans women. It did have 443 words out of 1600 which addressed the subject. But my gripe isn't with trans women, but with the undemocratic and hate-filled way trans activists have acted, and the claims to absolute moral superiority when they aren't even saying anything logically coherent. Also with the demonization and persecution of masculinity which has led so many young men to hate themselves, or to transition just for practical reasons like getting a job.
This has been the genuine sentiment of some of my friends and family. It took me a while (perhaps with a hint of Stockholm syndrome at the thought of 4 more years of Trump) to understand that there is now a real affection between Trump and his supporters, largely inverting Bill Clinton's proposition that "Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line."
I think the hard choice, now that Trump is president, is to recognize the emptiness of the leftist signalling, despite the real and crushing consequences it had. The generic liberal held no malice for generic conservatives or MAGA. The parroting of "messaging" was just lethargic inertia while opportunistic media ecosystems spun out narratives based on compounding reactionism. The loudest among us were never representative, but our silence in the face of obvious mistreatment should never have felt justified.
The question now is whether you are willing to see past the leftist facade in a way that will demand a sober look at your own narrative for what Trump should do. Is he going to break the levers of power, or create new ones with which to entrench himself? It matters a great deal, not just because whatever he does is passed on to whomever is president thereafter, but because an overreactive fear of a leftist version of Trump, taking over the levers Trump is installing, can create the very overreach that ensures their rise to power. Truly, I do not want to know what that looks like, but neither can I pretend like Trump is proportional to what came before, only to the sensational narrative that continues to evolve to compensate for clear overreach.
After thinking a little more, I think that I agree with what Trump is trying to do:
- Enforce immigration laws.
- Stop the Russia-Ukraine war by making it clear to Ukraine that they have to give up some captured territory.
- Start a trade war just with China. China appears to be planning world conquest. Our best chance of stopping them begins with not trading with them. We can afford it better than they can. They can't sell much to their own people, because their own people are too poor to afford what China makes.
- Reduce the budget.
These are probably the most-important things for the US President to do now, and Trump is the only candidate who recognized that. But I hate the way he implements everything he does, with chaos, confusion, waste, uncertainty, injustice, overreaching, unkindness, arrogance. And I certainly don't trust him not to try to seize power again.
I generally agree, but with the strong caveat that what looks like Trump "recognizing" the importance of some matters is really just a contrast effect compared to the pathological ignoring and offloading from previous administrations. Most of us recognized the problems, failed to generate any real solutions, and now Trump is acting (out) in those relevant areas, for better or for worse.
I should add that I am most critical of his approach to Ukraine such that, even if some pragmatic concessions need be made, Trump has weakened Ukraine's position routinely and embarrassingly. So I'll not be giving him credit in this arena, regardless of outcome, and this despite it being a pet peeve of mine when leftists generally refuse to give him credit when it is due.
It's possible that Trump did that tactically. Showing Ukraine respect would mean including them in all talks to make it clear that any treaty was between two independent nations, Ukraine and Russia; and showing Zelensky respect. But a treaty between Ukraine and Russia would be as worthless as the previous agreement between them. Trump has to let Putin know that any treaty is personal, between him and Putin, not between Ukraine and Russia.
That's the best excuse I can make for him, anyway.
The fairest I can be here is to say that if that were true, I would not be able to see it. To take the possibility seriously, if Trump were that level of mastermind, then he would know he would lose support among those like me as a matter of opportunity cost for his general style of communication and governance. To me, the simplest explanation will remain the contrasting effect where, "the powers that be" have become so entrenched behind the noise of complexity (which they did had no reason to prevent or now to remedy), that sudden, obnoxious directness can be "brilliantly effective," regardless of strategic fidelity. I won't be shedding tears for the ill begotten and ill fated china shop, nor for the bull wreaking perhaps necessary havoc within it.
How can
We believe these are actual goals?
Immigration laws are not being followed (maybe they are following the immigration laws they wish we had, but you have to change the laws before implementing your fantasy laws).
Trade war with just China? Why all the “reciprocal” tariffs on all the NonChina countries?
Reducing the budget? Doge/Musk efforts at the federal gov + tax-cutting bills for the rich will not do that.
I mostly agree with these goals. But I strongly oppose doing anything in violation of the US Constitution. Our liberties and the checks on government power are rare in the course of human history. Many people fought and died to bestow them on us. We have a duty to preserve them for our country now and in the future. Trump and the people he has appointed in his administration do not seem to care about that. In some respects, they seem to be intentionally trying to erode constitutional guardrails.
I have no hope that Trump will improve matters. I'd rather talk about what Republicans and Democrats can do together to reign him in or get rid of him. Neither impeachment, nor a declaration by the Cabinet and the VP that he's unfit, are out of the question. Trump will not be careful not to offend and terrorize the half of Republican Congress members, nor the half of the Cabinet, needed to get rid of him. If he keeps on like he's been going, he won't have many friends left in a year.
You're right that too often people theorize about others instead of just talking to them, and that’s a real loss. It disconnects us from the human reality behind the politics.
A few things in your comment stood out to me, especially the idea that many Republicans see themselves as defending liberal values like free speech, fair treatment, and equal rights, and feel that modern liberalism has lost sight of those same values. That resonates with something I’ve been trying to understand better: how people on opposite sides often appeal to the same moral foundations but interpret the threats differently.
For instance, when you say trans activists have moved away from public consensus-building and toward institutional enforcement, that’s a critique I’ve heard from others, too. I have heard it even from people who strongly support trans rights. How would you distinguish between asserting rights for a marginalized group and what you see as overreach?
Also, I’m curious: you talked about Democrats focusing only on some underprivileged groups, and ignoring others. If you could design a political movement that honored all groups fairly (rural and urban, white and Black, male and female), what would that look like to you? What principles would it be built on?
I don’t agree with every point you raised (truthfully, my mind was flooded with counterexamples, as happens automatically when we read things we disagree with), but I hear how hurt and excluded you feel from the national conversation, and I want to understand that better. This frustration doesn’t come out of nowhere; it comes from feeling unseen. I’m sincerely trying to see more clearly.
To be aware of the phenomena of being the problem described is the first step. The second step is to stop being the problem. For the latte drinking anti-NASCAR set, eat at McDonalds once in a while, go to a NASCAR race. It will be like a trip to a foreign country - fascinating, enjoyable, memorable and you'll still get to sleep in your own bed that night.
The third step is to actively push back on the problem. When your social circle pours disdain on the others via the signalling, be prepared in advance to gently push back. Don't allow them the prestige of dunking on the superhero movie, or a coffee at Dunkin Donuts. Rather, gently counter-signal with the good that is clearly and undeniably present in the other side.
A key idea grabbed me a few years ago: "There is no constituency for moderation or reasonableness". Aristotle would be embarrassed. Republicans primary other Repubs for being RINO. Dems dump on moderate Dems. Everyone forgets; "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." For instance, many Dem leaders oppose Open Primaries and RCV, but they would likely enlarge the general election tent and win more often.
I used to go to the drag races in Englishtown, NJ. The people were great, but it was too damn loud.
Good point and also my experience! Do go to NASCAR, or a drag race, or the sprint car race BUT take enough of those sponge ear plugs for everyone in your group (it is clearly in bad taste to sell them there). With the ear plugs the noise stops being a problem and the low frequency base you feel in your gut becomes part of the experience.
The last section saved the piece from, as you yourself seem to recognize, a strong sense of smug judgementalism.
I think a key element here is that the American system does not permit people to directly support what they might believe to be a sensible mix of policies but instead forces them to choose between two individuals representing broad ideologies. There is an increasing sense that both sides are going off the rails. I don't think you can understand Trump without reflecting on the fact that he was, to take one example, running against a party that had as a core plank of its social policy the attempt to make it effectivelly illegal to assert that men and women are physically different in important ways. That's something that would have been considered total lunacy and farce for most of human history.
Your last example perfectly describes the quest for a return to monolithic Patriarchy.
You literally just said that "to assert that men and women are physically different in important ways" "perfectly describes the quest for a return to monolithic Patriarchy."
Why, yes I did.
You know, it was interesting to me, observing my own reactions to this piece, how annoying and smug it seemed—and how frustrated I was by that, as I count you as an excellent analytical thinker whose essays I look forward to precisely because they challenge my own thinking in productive ways. (I am BTW an overeducated professional and lifelong Democrat.) So I skipped down to your final section, and I was fascinated to feel a palpable sense of relief. OK, I thought, Dan recognizes the possible frailties in what he has presented and the way he has presented it. Phew!
On the substance itself, while I recognize there is a worldwide phenomenon, I am not sure every manifestation has the same roots. In the US, one thing I think is very important to recognize is that it is reasonable to assess that the Democrats (not just Harris, but the Democratic Party) lost this election, rather than that Trump won it. I say this because, while, yes, there is a seemingly unshakable core of Trump voters—and additional voters did migrate to Trump in 2024–it was also the case that many more people did not vote at all in 2024 than did not vote in 2020. We don’t yet have a full sense of why, but from various analyses and polling done so far, it’s probably fair to say the reasons people stayed home varied quite a lot, sharing only in common that the Democrats were not offering anything much that would improve their lives, and in some instances were touting policies actively detrimental to their lives. (I suspect this may also be true for many of the voters that shifted to Trump this time around.) I have to say that, while I voted for Harris, I can see many strong, reasonable bases for those views. (My own reasons for voting for Harris were fairly abstract, eg, preserving democracy.)
So, for myself, I am much more interested in understanding what demotivated those who didn’t vote, in all their variety—or shifted their vote for the first time in 2024—as opposed to understanding those who voted for Trump twice. Now, I grant you, part of my predilection here is that I am the black sheep, both in having an advanced degree and in being a Democrat, in my huge (and I mean huge) extended family. They have voted for the Republicans always. The biggest reason they give is they don’t want government taking their hard-earned money in taxes, because that money always gets misspent, and not for their benefit. They don’t all love Trump, they just hate “big government,” and Democrats are, to them, always on the side of “Big Government.” If you were to talk with my mother (still going at 96), she will have well-thought out explanations for these views. We may disagree (I almost always do), but she is no dummy—after dad decamped, she put herself through college at age 50 and became expert at helping businesses put in phone systems, something she learned from scratch at that age. She doesn’t call herself “cybersr” for nothing😎).
I'd be interested in your thoughts about my post
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
It agues that Kamala lost primarily because she and her idiot advisors failed to understand, and, consequently, failed to inform voters, that Donald Trump caused our inflation problem, not Joe Biden. Oh, and also, Democrats have totally alienated straight male voters. Mostly white ones, but increasingly many who are non-white. No man wants to belong to a party that considers him an evil oppressor - and the enemy.
I'm glad you got to the more self-reflective part at the end, since there did seem to be some selective focus in the earlier parts of the piece. On the issue of it being a puzzle why Trump supporters support him despite his incompetence, how are you evaluating Trump's competence? Do Trump's supporters think he's incompetent? If there's disagreement there, is there a way to resolve that in an unbiased way, or is subjective political judgment the best that can be done?
I think the two-party nature of American politics also makes it hard to look at any coalition in isolation -- for example the story of RFK Jr types is probably not completely about being pulled in by Trump but also about being pushed away by Progressives who were leaning hard into a framing about expertise and institutions. Each coalition gets the other coalition's anti-stories "for free".
Great piece. I'm so glad there are people as obsessed as I am with figuring these things out.
I apologize; this message is rather long, but I thought I'd share a selection from my one of my recent posts.
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/why-kamela-lost-in-nine-simple-charts
As a long time and unrepentant finance bro, I know I must guard against thinking about things in purely economic terms. Economics famously assumes that people are rational, which is to say that they are more or less capable of perceiving their self-interest and acting accordingly. But this is often not the case. In 2018 I wrote a Substack post titled “The Tribe has Spoken” which explored some of the less rational forces underlying our nation’s political divide. In retrospect there is very little in that piece that I would change today. However, I would point out that it was written before the onset of Covid, and since then things have gotten much, much worse.
The post mainly homed in on two topics: the tribal nature of human beings and something Friedrich Nietzsche called “ressentiment.” Ressentiment is the feeling of powerlessness and resentment that society’s disgruntled “losers” feel toward the perceived “winners” – convenient and often imaginary scapegoats. I am no Nietzsche scholar (does anyone really get him?), but I believe that ressentiment today is a pervasive force in American politics on both sides of the political divide. Everyone feels aggrieved, and many – especially on the right – are convinced that their birthright has been stolen from them by sinister “elites.” It is a supreme irony that this was a central theme of J. D. Vance’s bestseller “Hillbilly Elegy.”
https://charles72f.substack.com/p/the-tribe-has-spoken
These days, I'm not sure what to say. I'm torn between responding in pundit mode, as in "The disturbing phenomena of the rise of measles cases certainly indicates a crisis in public confidence, and we must examine how intellectuals and government public health officials have contributed to this sorry state of affairs by being insufficiently respectful of conservative values, and explore how not be smug and arrogant about vaccines. After all, bloodletting was once Establishment Medicine.". Versus just rip-roaring ranting at the state of the world "THE MEASLES IS BACK! Do you get it?! A disease almost wiped out by vaccination has returned - virtually entirely due to RIGHT-WING LIES! THESE ARE LYING LIARS WHO LIE!!!"
Let me put it this way: There needs to be some philosophical system for when liberals can take their own side in an argument. Yes, I know, there is absolutely no need to tell me, unchecked that leads to fanaticism. But I tell you, no limits in the other direction leads to, well, self-flagellation over Donald Trump and ilk and all we see now.
Citing a Hanania article on why right wing-populists lie on immigration is peak comedy
( fow people who know how he got popular )
I think I'm going to assign the original journal article, and then this piece and all the comments, on the first day of my political science course next semester.
IMO, the FPTP voting system is just too good a match for human nature. We vote strategically for the candidate that everyone else is voting for, i.e. the biggest strongest alliance. (Trump: "My alliance is the biggest and the strongest!" Electorate: "OK, you've got my vote!") We'd be far better off with a system such as approval voting which optimizes for selecting a consensus candidate.
Good post. (I’m a sucker for structural, McLuhan-style explanations for things.)
FPTP is supercharged in the US with the Presidential system, the Electoral College, and only having two parties.
But it’s a real thing here in Canada too.
All of this is also exacerbated by instant global zero-cost electronic communication where nobody has to look their rival in the eye and see that they are human too (ie the movement of nearly all social interaction to the Internet).
Yes, I wonder if part of the reason why US politics seem dysfunctional is simply its large population, which reduces the empathetic sense of community. If you look at other high-population democracies, they score even worse than the US in the Economist Democracy Index, IIRC.
And individual US *states* seem to have more functional politics than at the federal level, suggesting political dysfunction may *not* be something inherent to American culture. Actually, if all you knew about Americans was reading what we say about each other online, I think you'd be quite surprised about how friendly Americans are to each other on the street, even if they're strangers. There's a remarkable disconnect between internet hostility, and the warmth you find IRL (depending on the locale at least). For some reason, no one discusses this disconnect.
One thing that confuses me: I understand that Canada and the UK also have regional representation with FPTP, but they don't have just two parties the way the US does. For some reason, third parties thrive in Canada/UK even with FPTP. What's up with that? Why has no 3rd party in the US managed to score a few seats in Congress? You mention the Presidential election, but in principle I'm not sure that should matter. I think maybe it's because no 3rd party has attempted a "regional representation" strategy. For example, given that the Mormons have traditionally voted for the GOP but also tend to dislike Trump, I think Romney could succeed with a regional Mormon party which only aims to win in Utah.
Another question is how to foster empathy in large populations over the internet...
Good question on how there are 3rd parties here in Canada! In addition to our two main parties (Liberal and Conservative) we have two credible third parties (not counting the Greens).
The Bloc Québecois is an extreme regional-interests party (some would say, to the point of being traitors) so that one has a rational explanation and is common around the world though as you said, not the USA. Maybe the USA really did have better social cohesion back in the day.
The one that’s harder to explain is our New Democratic Party (NDP) which started as a left-wing union-based party (they originally pioneered universal health care in Canada, in their earlier incarnation the CCF) but who have kind of abandoned working-class cultural values and are now more of the social justice / deindustrialization party. So still left, just a slightly different axis.
The dynamics aren’t *that* different though and some of this just may be the vagaries and random chances of history. On the right we had a further-right party called Reform, which ultimately merged with the Progressive Conservatives (with some name changes in the interim) in the “unite the right” effort of the early 2000s that created today’s Conservative Party (CPC). There is a new farther-right anti-immigration party called the People’s Party (PPC) but they’re marginal.
And the NDP and LPC *almost* merged under Trudeau. They had an alliance in Parliament for 3 years but never pulled the trigger on actually merging.
All of which is to say — I think you’re right that FPTP mostly just allows for two main parties and regional parties. The existence of the NDP as a true third party here in Canada is tenuous. And I think the European style voting systems have their own pain around taking forever to form a government as coalitions are formed, but they are better for some of the polarization issues.
Hanania recently argued that MAGA is mentally ill. To me, this is on par with Marxist theories of “false consciousness”—a higher IQ version of Hanania’s ad hominem. Your approach makes more sense. People are rational even when they are biased, ignorant or low IQ. Democracy has warts.
My brother typically spends three days a week on a golf course and he was baffled by fellow members whining about egg prices. His comment is: "they have two Mercedes, a second home, they dine out two nights a week, and they're worried about egg prices??" What they are doing is clearly loyalty signaling but these folks are college educated, typically business owners, but also professionals.
This is a dimension of the alliance not related to class but to temperament. This is the zero-sum, I got mine, aggressive, self-confident, and vigilant cohort who guard their status and are raising a middle-finger to those who think they can take it away.
I think the truth is much simpler: nearly everyone lives in an economic equilibrium. Disruptions cause discomfort, whether you're in the bottom income quintile or the top.
Well, I agree but my point was that the reason these people align themselves with the far right is not the erosion of the middle class. It is the emotional appeal to vigilance in opposition to straw men who could erode their wealth and status despite all evidence that the status quo is actually working quite well for them. These are also people whose personalities are high on the competitive/aggressive scale so fight, fight, fight, is compelling regardless that what they may be burning down is an environment in which they are thriving.
There is an entire book about this political phenomenon called "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. It's even longer than this article. I prefer to look at this problem in Karl Popper's analysis of Open versus Closed Societies. Open Societies tolerate multiple points of view, multiple faiths and multiple ethnicities. There is open competition for ideas, and getting to the truth is an important value. Closed societies like Russia, Iran, China value conformity, allegiance to authority, state monopoly on ideology, religion, and economic planning. The United States, under Donald Trump is heading for a Closed Society, with a closed economy, shuttered press, Christian nationalist state monopoly on religion, and state ideological control over education and the study of history. Think Iran or maybe Handmaid's Tale.
Funny; I read both "Origins of Totalitarianism" and "The Open Society and its Enemies" as indictments of the left. Mostly because they /literally are/. Both treat totalitarian Marxism as basically the same as totalitarian Nazism. 1/3 of The Open Society and its Enemies is against Marxism.
Nazism is right wing not left wing. Putin is a fascist, his ideologue Dugin is a fascist. Right wing extremists like Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, and Donald Trump, admire Vladimir Putin because they are fascists. Donald Trump idolizes Hitler, he often says he would like the same kind of generals that Hitler had! The Nazis hated the left and ended up exterminating them once they gained power. There is no threat to democracy from the left at the present moment, but there is one hell of a threat to democracy from the right in the form of Maga! Popper had to leave Austria because of the Nazis, not the communists. He definitely saw both communism and fascism as a threat to the open society. Leftism does not equal marxism, just as rightism doesn't equal fascism, but people on the extreme left are often marxists and people on the extreme right are always fascists. The main difference between communists and fascists, is that communists see the communist state as always right, ideology of the communist party as the only legitimate ideology, and political decisions of the communist party as the only legitimate decisions. Fascists, on the other hand are more fixated on a "strong" leader, and ideology or party are not as important. Fascists glorify violence and the destruction of liberal values and institutions like the rule of law, equality before the law. Fascists hate feminism, because they believe woman's place is in the home having and raising babies for the motherland (J.D. Vance)
Thank you. Karl Popper is one of my heroes. Neither the WOKE left nor the MAGA right ever take the trouble to question, let alone falsify their beliefs or engage in real discussion, which is, as Popper emphasized, how we get closer to the truth. As Mr. Williams' article points out, critical thought will get you rejected from either group.
Loved the introspection at the end. My least pleasant realisation in recent times is how much my leftishist liberalism (when I was a bit of a 'name' on Twitter) was an act. It was designed to foster alliances with the kind of people I preferred to identify myself as similar to. I didn't realise it at the time. I loved feeling superior (with my education, leftfield cultural tastes & generally cosmopolitan vibe) and now it annoys me that I was so smug. One of my most satisfying bits of redemption has been having no opinion at all on Trump's tariffs thing and instead waiting to see how it plays out in 12 months or so. The best thing is that I've never felt calmer or more contented.
Just read this today... I smiled when I got to your added-on 5th point.
Throughout the piece, I had been catching myself wanting to object, along the order of "But... but... but... The excesses of the MAGA right you are talking about are roughly SYMMETRICAL with the excesses of the contemporary Progressive far left... and, as a lifelong liberal-but-not-radical Democrat, I was aware of these issues ON THE LEFT, and bothered by them, already, circa 2013 - so, before MAGA was even born. For the theory to have any "legs" at all, it needs to be symmetrically applicable. And I don't see that here..."
Or, to put it another way, we all need to remember that the Bernie Sanders 2016 campaign was, or, at very least, began as, "populist devotion". I think it is perilous for the left-of-center among us to forget that there were many in '16 who started out supporting Bernie, and, after he fell out of contention, switched, not to Hillary, but to Trump! And it's at least as perilous, I think, to forget how many in the chattering classes were utterly perplexed BY that phenomenon. I have my own thoughts on that, too long for this Comment, but suffice to say that I have still not seen an airtight explanation of what that Bernie-to-Trump phenomenon was all about.
I think you are on to something, here, but you probably need a collaborator, perhaps from a bit right-of-center - someone not so prone to knee-jerking this theory into an "Us Good - Them Flawed" kind of thing - as, indeed, you 'caught yourself' doing, and reflected upon, in Point 5. The culture presently does not often use "populism" to describe some of the excesses of the far left, but populism is what a lot of that is, and for your theory to hold up, it's got to capture behavior at both wings at least close to equally well.
It is also interesting to note that we live in a time and place wherein every possible opinion or point-of-view about quite literally everything is now freely available via the internet, especially in the realm of religion, culture and his-story too.
Which is to point out that we now have no choice but to critically examine all of our inherited presumptions and beliefs.
Perhaps many and/or most of them are well and truly past their useful use-by-date, and indeed are causative factors of the current polycrisis
Which of course raises the question as how to do so.
Perhaps we should use the Truth Social website or maybe Steve Bannon's war room.