| In Part I, I dealt with the introduction and transition of Alexander's op-ed, which argued that not only are liberals overtly condescending toward conservatives, but they're woven their condescension into four overarching narratives.
I took on each of Alexander's alleged liberal narrative of condescension in the next four parts of my series. In Part 2, I dealt with the "vast right-wing conspiracy" narrative, which more or less consciously attempts to grapple with the reality of rightwing hegemonic warfare. In Part 3, I dealt with the alleged "voters are dupes" narrative, which has a kernel of truth to it, but mostly consists of Alexander misunderstanding or ignoring the point of progressive criticisms of Democratic elitism. In Part 4, I pointed out that the "conservatives rely on racial appeals" narrative had been promulgated by no less crucial a conservative icon than the late Lee Atwater, and in Part 5 I dealt the narrative that "conservatives are driven purely by emotion and anxiety -- including fear of change" as opposed to liberals relying on reason, in part by quoting the likes of conservative icons Edmund Burke and Richard Kirk who made the same sort of argument themselves, claiming that it was a good thing, not something to be ashamed of.
Then, in my final diary, Part 6, I dealt with the underwhelming conclusion of Alexander's column.
And now, onto the week's news in liberal condescension....
80% of Americans Are Condescending Liberals
As part of the "vast rightwing conspiracy" narrative, Alexander argued that:
This worldview was on display in the popular liberal reaction to the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Rather than engage in a discussion about the complexities of free speech in politics, liberals have largely argued that the decision will "open the floodgates for special interests" to influence American elections, as the president warned in his State of the Union address. In other words, it was all part of the conspiracy to support conservative candidates for their nefarious, self-serving ends.
By that point in my second diary, I had already written 4,000 words or so, which is why I simply said:
Alas, this diary is getting too long already, and I'll have to leave untangling that one to you readers as an exercise. I'll just say one thing: John Paul Stevens a conspiracy nut? Who knew?
Now, however, it turns out that 80% of the American people agree with Stevens, and disagree with Court's activist conservative minority. That's an awful lot of condescending liberals, don'tcha think? In fact, it might even be a conspiracy:
Our latest ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that 80 percent of Americans likewise oppose the ruling, including 65 percent who "strongly" oppose it, an unusually high intensity of sentiment.
Seventy-two percent, moreover, support the idea of a legislative workaround to try to reinstate the limits the court lifted.
The bipartisan nature of these views is striking in these largely partisan times. The court's ruling is opposed, respectively, by 76, 81 and 85 percent of Republicans, independents and Democrats; and by 73, 85 and 86 percent of conservatives, moderates and liberals. Majorities in all these groups, ranging from 58 to 73 percent, not only oppose the ruling but feel strongly about it.
Even among people who agree at least somewhat with the Tea Party movement, which advocates less government regulation, 73 percent oppose the high court's rejection of this particular law. Among the subset who agree strongly with the Tea Party's positions on the issues - 14 percent of all adults - fewer but still most, 56 percent, oppose the high court in this case.
Wow! 56% of those who strongly agree with the Tea Party are condescending liberals! Who knew?!!!
CPAC: Conservative Condescension & Beyond On Parade
But even more troubling for Alexander's grand theory of liberal condescension was the rather outfront display of the modern conservative soul at CPAC this week, and the deeper one looks into that soul, the more troubling it becomes. I'm not talking primarily about the organized Bircher & Birther fringe, but rather about the entire gestalt. As Jamison Foser at Media Matters reminded us, "CPAC has always been a welcoming venue for the far-right fringe" .... "it's just that the conservative movement is more and more comfortable directly associating with its nuttier elements." Indeed, CPAC had the effect of blurring erasing the line between "liberal narratives" and, well, reporting. For example, Salon's War Room tried to make sense of the condescending Obama teleprompter narrative, first noting:
At least four prominent Republicans yesterday took swipes at the president for his frequent use of teleprompters....
Of course, Rubio, DeMint, Keene and Baldwin were all, themselves, standing in front of teleprompters. At least Dick Armey, former congressman and current Tea Party agitator, took note of the shiny things in front of his face, even as he ploughed right through to his joke.
And then trying to puzzle out just exactly what it all meant:
Too bad CPAC isn't like the United Nations, with translators on hand to make foreign messages intelligible. What's the rap on President Obama even supposed to be here? I'm able to make out a couple possible interpretations.
1. Obama with all his slick, teleprompted rhetoric, is pulling a fast one on the American people. This is the theory Adam Nagourney goes with, writing at the New York Times' Caucus blog,
Mr. Obama, of course, has shown that he is plenty adept at speaking with or without a teleprompter, but the ribbing speaks to a bigger point: Many conservatives here believe that Mr. Obama used his speaking abilities to sneak a big-government agenda on to a public that is in fact not really supportive of his view of the role of government.
.... The gist here, long a favorite on the right, is that Obama is some kind of Marxist at heart, and without the nagging of his speechwriter-minders placed right in front of his face, he would start railing about how it's time to expropriate the expropriators.
But can that really be it? Do conservatives actually think that the president is sneaking an agenda past the electorate by addressing them in public? Wouldn't it be much sneakier to never talk to reporters or give speeches?
2. Obama is actually an idiot who couldn't convince anyone of anything without his speechwriters. Jon Chait at the New Republic takes up this argument, pointing to a wealth of examples in the right-wing blogosphere. As he points out, the idea of the president as "mindless drone" has somehow survived the bruising he gave the House Republicans last month, as well as the presidential debates.
.... [A]t their core, these ideas about the president and teleprompters are two heads of the same hydra that we've now seen all over the American right-wing: the idea that the president is a Manchurian candidate of some kind. It shows up in the birther arguments of course, and in the idea that ACORN stole the election. It's there in the fear that the president is a secret Muslim, or the co-conspirator of all kinds of radical wackjobs. Even the recent mini-fracas about how Obama put his feet on the Oval Office desk is indicative of this. Refute one paranoid theory about the president, of course, and you just see three more come at you. When one thing Orly Taitz says is proven false, she just jumps to the next idea.
At the core of this is a simple refusal to believe that this president could possibly be legitimate, even when he does exactly the same things that his predecessors did (or that all politicians do). The prevalence of teleprompter jokes at CPAC is one small mark of the penetration into the mainstream of hydra-headed conspiracism about Obama.
The "hydra-headed conspiracism" is a classic expression of the hold that a semi-permanent state of paranoid fantasy has on today's conservative movement. As Simon Maloy from Media Matters goes on to note, after quoting from Salon:
[N]ot to be overlooked are the many straight-faced assertions made during yesterday's CPAC speeches that explicitly demonstrate the paranoid depths the movement conservatives are mining.
Florida senate candidate Marco Rubio accused Democrats of secretly implementing "statist" policies with the end result of turning America into something resembling the communist-run Cuba his parents escaped....
Washington Post columnist George Will expounded on the administration's designs to "create" a fiscal crisis in order to enlarge the government....
And who knows what kind of lunatic conspiracism we'll hear tomorrow from keynote speaker Glenn Beck? He's already on record expressing his belief that President Obama represents the final seconds of a 100-year "time bomb" set by shadowy progressive agents in the early 20th century, the purpose of which was to establish a "socialist utopia."
It's an interesting dynamic to consider, actually. Conservatives regard the president as too incompetent to get through a simple speech without the aid of a teleprompter, but they also see him as diabolically ingenious enough to secretly enact shadowy conspiracies to undermine the very foundations of the United States.
Ir may seem to defy all logic, but that's not really true. It's only logical logic that it defies. Psychological logic is a whole different can of wormholes.
Ego-Defense & Ego-Construction Mechanisms
I want to recall a pair of diaries I did back in 2008. First was "The Ontology of Snark: A Prelude". In it, I wrote about defense mechanisms and politics. In the introduction, I wrote:
Ego defense mechanisms range from primative to sohpisticated. Wikipedia notes:In George Eman Vaillant's (1977) categorization defences form a continuum regarding to their psychoanalytical developmental level [7]. Levels are:
- Level I - psychotic defences (i.e. psychotic denial, delusional projection)
- Level II - immature defences (i.e. fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
- Level III - neurotic defences (i.e. intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
- Level IV - mature defences (i.e. humour, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)
Snark, of course, is a form of humor, a Level IV, mature defense. Psychotic denial and delusional projection, OTOH, are Level 1 psychotic defenses. |
In terms of defense mechanisms, the majority of conservative discourse seems to revolve around levels one and two. (Neoliberalism tends to revolve around level three--the intellectualization that refuses to recognize, much less engage in countering the conservative/GOP "total war" approach to politics, or Obama's reaction formation that I discussed several weeks ago.)
But there's also something even deeper, more primitive going on. In the companion diary, "Beyond The Ontology of Snark-Spliting And Projective Identification From Infancy To World Politics", I wrote about even more primative processess: splitting and projective identification, about which I wrote:
In contrast to the ego defense mechanisms, the these two processes first appear before the ego is formed, even before a clear sense of "me" and "not-me" exists, and play import roles in the process of early development out of which the stabilized ego emerges. However, that is hardly the end of them. Rather these mechanisms persist throughout the developmental process, and indeed, throughout life. Projective identification has been associated with a wide range of mature phenomena; it has been seen as the foundation of empathy, as well as being the basis of the therapeutic relationship-indeed, as the foundation of all human relations, according to some. Splitting is even more primitive, and as such, arguably underlies virtually all psychological processes, one way or another.
In the diary, I went on to discuss splitting and projective identification in terms of how they function with the framework of two basic existential "positions" described by British psychotherapist Melanie Klein in the 1940s, the paranoid-schizoid position and the depressive position. We take the paranoid-schizoid position first:
Description
Anxiety is experienced by the early infant's ego both through the internal, innate conflict between the opposing life and death drives (manifested as destructive envy) and by interactions in external reality.
A child seeks to retain good feelings and introjects good objects, whilst expelling bad objects and projecting bad feelings onto an external object. The expulsion is motivated by a paranoid fear of annihilation by the bad object.
Klein describes this as splitting, in the way that it seeks to prevent the bad object from contaminating the good object by separating them via the inside-outside barrier.
The schizoid response to the paranoia is then to excessively project or introject those parts, seeking to keep the good and bad controlled and separated. Aggression is common in splitting as fear of the bad object causes a destructive stance.
The child's ego does not yet have the ability to tolerate or integrate these two different aspects, and thus uses 'magical' omnipotent denial in order to remove the power and reality from the persecuting bad object.
This splitting, projection and introjection has a frighteningly disintegrative effect, pulling apart the fragile ego.
Projective identification is commonly used to separate bad objects whilst also keeping them close, which can lead to confused aggression.
Let's go back to Simon Maloy's closing observation:
It's an interesting dynamic to consider, actually. Conservatives regard the president as too incompetent to get through a simple speech without the aid of a teleprompter, but they also see him as diabolically ingenious enough to secretly enact shadowy conspiracies to undermine the very foundations of the United States.
This seemingly bizarre contradiction is actually quite typical of the paranoid-schizoid position. Feelings of omnipotence and utter helplessness can well up suddenly, each leading to intense projections--into the mother in early infancy, and into virtually anyone later in life. Feeling omnipotence, the projection onto a percieved enemy is that of clownish incompetence. Feeling utter helplessness, the projection is one of diabolical hidden power. The conspiracist fantasy--whose modern form derives from the myth of the Bavarian Illuminati as the masterminds behind the French Revolution--is a shared fantasy that combines these polar opposite projects and seeks to mediate their seeming incongruity--as well as the cauldron of fears implicated in the paranoid-schizoid position that produces them in the first place.
Of course, these polar opposites can't be sensibly combined, but that's not a problem for conspiracists in the throes of paranoid-schizoid ideation. In fact, the inability to sensibly resolve anything mirrors their inner state of turmoil and terror. It is true to their experience, and thus commands assent, while more rational explanations are not just distrusted but are often attacked with rage, just as the paranoid-schizoid infant may attack the mother.
In contrast, the Depressive position is more mature, capable of reflection and reincorporation of what was blindly projected in the paranoid-schizoid position:
Description
The initial depressive position
The initial depressive position is a significant step in integrative development which occurs when the infant discovers that the hated bad breast and the loved good breast are one and the same. The mother begins to be recognized as a whole object who can be good and bad, rather than two part-objects, one good and one bad. Love and hate, along with external reality and internal phantasy, can now also begin to co-exist.
As ambivalence is accepted, the mother can be seen as fallible and capable of both good and bad. The infant begins to acknowledge its own helplessness, dependency and jealousy towards the mother. It consequently becomes anxious that the aggressive impulses might have hurt or even destroyed the mother, who they now recognize as needed and loved. This results in 'depressive anxiety' replacing destructive urges with guilt.
The general depressive position
In the more general depressive position, projective identification is used to empathize with others, moving parts of the self into the other person in order to understand them.
To some extent, this is facilitated when the other person is receptive to this act. The experience that the projecting person through their identification is related to the actions and reactions of the other person.
When the thoughts and feelings are taken back inside the projecting person from the other person, they may be better able to handle them as they also bring back something of the other person and the way they appeared to cope. It can also be comforting just to know that another person has experienced a troublesome part of the self.
The depressive position is thus a gentler and more cooperative counterpoint to the paranoid-schizoid position and acts to heal its wounds.
I would argue that about 40% of Bush supporters--20% of the electorate--were capable of entering into the depressive position, which is how they were able, over time, to stop approving of his job as President. The other 60% simply could not gain the critical perspective that the depressive position affords. For whatever reason, they could not even begin to reflect on their own condition. This is the 30% of the electorate base that most readily embraced all manner of bizarre fantasies about Obama, about ACORN, about anything that might hold back the reality of conservatism's utter and complete failure after 70 years in waiting.
That 40% of Bush supporters was there for courting, if not the taking. But instead, Obama tried to reach out and negotiate with the 60% that could never be reached, the 60% either trapped in the paranoid-schizoid position, or incapable of breaking politically with those who were so trapped. By the very nature of the paranoid-schizoid position, those trapped in it have a tendency to respond hostilely to shows of friendliness. When the mother is most sympathetic and compassionate toward the infant, that's just when it feels safest for most profound rage to well up within the infant, and to be expressed. But even so, feeling "safest" is not feeling safe in the fragmented world of the paranoid-schizoid position. That is the chief difference between the two positions so far as the possibility of moving forward is concerned. The same dynamic will start in the depressive state, but the expression of rage against the mother is not overwhelmingly entangled in fears of annihilation and other fantasies, and thus a sufficiently sustained a connection with--a projection into--the mother is possible, and from that a taking back of the projections becomes possible as well.
In short, when Obama focused attention away from the voters and towards the political actors in Versailles, he was looking for love in all the wrong places. Instead of empowering former Bush supporters who had demonstrated a capacity to reflect and re-evaluate--the natural bipartisan partners that his rhetoric would indicate he wanted--Obama empowered the hardcore base that was psychologically incapable of responding positively to his overtures. And the fact that Obama chose this no-win approach is itself indicative of a profound psychological incapacity of his own, a topic to be more fully explored at another time. Also worth noting--and deferring for another time--is the fact that certain hardcore Obama supporters have a curiously parallel incoherence in their views to that of his rightwing foes. They too see him as simultaneously helpless and transcendentally powerful, beyond comparing to any other political figure they have known.
Coda
After that plunge into the depths, I'd like to finish on slightly more up-beat note. And for this, I turn to Digby, who demonstrated the true order of things wrt condescension. Conservatives start it:
At CPAC this morning, Young America's Foundation spokesman Jason Mattera kicked off his speech by suggesting progressives are ugly, rambling, druggies:
MATTERA: It's always a delight to participate in CPAC. This is like our Woodstock. Except, unlike the left gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences, and our notion of freedom doesn't consist of snorting cocaine...which is certainly one thing that separates us from Barack Obama.
And then liberals (in the person of Digby) snark back:
For some reason, I find the assertion that they speak in complete sentences to be the funniest part of that.
You see, condescension isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's not like rape. We don't respond to rapists by raping them, because rape is inherently evil. But when someone takes money from someone else by committing fraud, for example, we do take money from them in the form of civil judgments. There are some things that are only evil in certain contexts, and not others. And condescension is one of those sorts of things. Think of spat-upon high school nerds in their universe far, far away, looking down on the "mundanes" who make their lives a living hell on a daily basis. Condescension can be a godsend.
When people try to dehumanize you, the way conservatives routinely try to dehumanize anyone they don't like, there are a lot of ways you can respond. Regarding them as somewhat lesser for it is not only factually accurate, it's emotionally and psychologically healthy as well. You can regard them as such silently, or you can say something snarky, something condescending, heavens to Betsy, even something downright mean just to let them know that they're really not the superior beings they desperately wish to believe they are. By pushing back against their attack on you, or anyone else, you are doing a positive good, and there's no need at all to feel apologetic about it.
Of course, you can get carried away. That's something to guard against, all other things being equal. But in today's political climate, where nothing is equal, it's darned near the least of our worries.
This takes us back to the typology of defense mechanisms from "The Ontology of Snark: A Prelude", and what I said about snark vs. Beck/Bircher/Birther psychotic denial:
- Level I - psychotic defences (i.e. psychotic denial, delusional projection)
- Level II - immature defences (i.e. fantasy, projection, passive aggression, acting out)
- Level III - neurotic defences (i.e. intellectualization, reaction formation, dissociation, displacement, repression)
- Level IV - mature defences (i.e. humour, sublimation, suppression, altruism, anticipation)
Snark, of course, is a form of humor, a Level IV, mature defense. Psychotic denial and delusional projection, OTOH, are Level 1 psychotic defenses. |
As I wrote before, the majority of conservative discourse seems to revolve around levels one and two. But the left blogosphere--despite its sprinkling of paranoid level one personages, places and recurrent narratives--is, in my experience, far and away the most level four playing field in the political landscape today.
No wonder that conservatives and Versailles want to make out that that's a bad thing.
Snark on! |
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