This week, I participated in TPM Cafe's book discussion of Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics, which I also wrote about here last weekend. I was going to write something longer about it this weekend, and I still intend to do that tomorrow, but I want to write something more focused on spurring further discussion in light of Dan's diary earlier today, Exploiting conservative character flaws and weaknesses. I want to key of this passage in particular:
Liberals need to understand that the psychological differences they have with conservatives go beyond mere opinions or factual beliefs, but to issues of thinking style, temperament and even core personality traits. There is ample psychological research that demonstrates that conservatives and liberals are not merely "flip sides of the same coin" like most centre-fetishizing village types believe. Instead, there are deep asymmetries between the camps, and an awareness of that is vital to finding strategies that accent liberal strengths and exploit conservative weaknesses.
In my view, the problem that progressives face is multi-faceted. Here are just a few examples:
First of all conservative's authoritarian tendencies predispose them to follow orders. This makes it relatively easy to organize for fighting--be it physical, political, military or whatever.
Second, the conservative's cognitive strengths and propensities are specifically related to fighting. Among other things, they tend to see the world in black-and-white terms, and seeing things in black-and-white terms is much more conducive to fighting.
Third, this is reinforced by their value tendencies--their heightened orientation to identify with high-status ingroups and demonize and despise out-groups. This makes it much easier to organize for mass attacks on whatever target is identified.
Fourth, conservatives tend to experience divergent ideas as well as individuals and groups as a form of existential threat. In their minds, gay marriage really does threaten to destroy marriage as we know it (and the more marriages they've had, the more threatening this may be, however hypocritical--or even downright silly--it may seem to us.
I could go on, but you get the point. Conservatives really are wired for fighting, in multiple different ways. OTOH, liberals are wired for lots of things, too. We've definitely wired for understanding how stuff works, we're curious, we're interested in exploring what we don't know. And since we don't know how to fight as well as conservatives do in a hard-wired sense, then why shouldn't we be interested in that?
Plus, of course, we're wired for humor. It's no accident that Al Franken is a very funny guy--and yet funny with a long history of serious intent.
So how do we make the most of these--and other--liberal strengths? This is an open thread for discussing your ideas in answer to that question. I'm going to integrate the results of this discussion into the diary I'm working on for tomorrow.
p.s. One thing Dan said that I disagree with--though in a somewhat subtle way:
Too often over the past number of years, you find liberals lamenting the "circular firing squad" while grudgingly admiring the lock-step conservative façade and wishing to emulate it. No. No. No.
I understand what he's saying, and agree with it in a fundamental sense: We need to find ways of acting that are true to our values and cognitive styles and strengths. That's the main post of his diary, and I agree 100%. But it's also true that learning how to adapt and use different tools for different jobs--to think situationally--is also a liberal strength. And so while it's a bad idea to want to be like that all the time, I think it's a good idea to be able to act like that on occassion, when it would be particularly good to do so. We maybe don't want to be fast-ball pitchers. But we want to be able to throw one when we need to.
|
STATE BLOGS
