I am starting to believe that a lot of people don't really like egalitarianism. They like hierarchy. They like sucking up to powerful people and getting little favors from them, and they like bullying people below them. The number of people who actually want to deal with other people in an egalitarian way may be pretty small.
About the Vichy analogy: it was kind of understandable that French people did not want to fight the Germans again after all the people they lost in WWI. They lost a whole generation of men, and a lot of towns were destroyed too. But why did the richest, luckiest Americans roll over for Trump? They hadn't really lost anything in the preceding decades; quite the contrary. If he had lost the election, nothing bad would have happened to them. The analogy kind of falls down there. Maybe Americans are really more like the Germans who got on the Hitler bandwagon. It wasn't in their interest but they did it anyway.
Also, why did most American voters feel so angry? Things were actually pretty good: low unemployment, inflation going down, etc. But everybody seemed to think everything was terrible, maybe not for them personally, but generally.
This is a saddening and dawning revelation for me as well. Like I have always known there is a set of people who like being able to boss others around, but it seems they actually like being little toadies in that chain as well. That second part I am only just now beginning to realize. They actually want to be ruled by a king, and get little favors from them as you say.
This was the exact unifying character of the tea-bag party movement. All of the individuals who had internalized this conditioning suddenly found a common popular cause. What we have now is a late-stage manifestation of that desire to be controlled and to control in turn.
It all depends on who the king is, though. The MAGA folks who are happy to surrender to Trump as an open authoritarian do so happy because his king-ship gives them a psychic reward (we have a white father, again, so I am affirmed as a white subject; we have a man's man in charge again, so I am affirmed as a man).
But the same people have shown they will not tolerate the place in a hierarchy if the king looks suspiciously like an enemy of the natural order (the party that has ushered in a Black president, put women on the Supreme Court, made their kids fine with LGBT friends or with being queer themselves, etc.)
I'd guess that the personalities most attached to hierarchy are also the most reactionary against hierarchy "gone wrong."
This is well put. Joshua Greene makes this point in Moral Tribes in challenging what he views as Jonathan Haidt's too-simplistic view of reducing ethics to intuitive value responses: plenty of people who "value authority," or have clear authoritarian tendencies, did not treat Obama's authority as legitimate. Probably most of them, in fact!
I've always thought there was something wrong with Haidt's analysis. I think you put your finger on a big part of it. For him, it's as if every "tribe" is equally benign, although different, and we are being intolerant if we object to authoritarian cultures or something.
I agree. If you think that intuitive value responses are innate, and you're an intuitionist who thinks that ethics *is* just intuitive value responses (e.g., that when we have debates, we're just performing, not meaningfully changing each other's minds), then your ethical views are like the color of your skin, something you cannot help. Haidt views conservatives as a protected class, basically. This puts his "heterodox academy" mission in context: he doesn't want better debates because he can't coherently think better debates would accomplish anything; he wants DEI for right-wingers. Or so I'm convinced.
Weird how a lot of progressives really like him though. Progressives seem a little too eager to be "tolerant" to me, to the point that they're tolerant of intolerance. I have a friend who is in Better Angels. And sure, that's admirable. But he has a hard time saying that the "Reds" are ever wrong, maybe because in Better Angels you don't try to persuade anybody of anything. You just try to understand their point of view.
It may be that the more you suck up to powerful people, the more you lose any self-respect you once had, and you try to get back some of your "self-respect" by bullying the little people, which is obviously not ideal, but I think it works something like that. I think I under-estimate how much people kind of hate themselves for being suck-ups, but they also can't help themselves.
I agree that it's true and important to observe that some people value hierarchy or authority for its own sake -- as well as of course the benefits it affords them -- and view it as a natural state, with egalitarianism as subversive and unnatural. This realization is an antidote to, for example, what I view as naivety among some of my leftist friends who sometimes seem to think that illiberalism can be coaxed into socialism. Yes, these people want government money, but not if it also goes to their enemies -- not if it makes the world fairer, and undermines their relative advantage!
But for what it is worth, I think this view, while consistent among a subset of people, is in the minority. Based on MAGA support, it hovers around 30-40% of people, and from what I understand, this was enough to win an election due to demoralization among Democrats who didn't vote, not people switching sides or converting to this view. This is just to say: the egalitarians can always win over, can always outnumber, those who prize unjustified hierarchy. Without claiming to know what exactly needs to be said or done, I would just say that there is always reason for hope, not cynicism, in swaying *enough* people towards egalitarianism again.
I think kids are instinctively egalitarian. They like it when I treat them with respect, as equals in everything except experience. But the adults I know, even the Democrats, are pretty competitive. In an average conversation, they will subtly bully or troll you for no apparent reason other than one-up-manship. Women do this as much as men. And the same women will NEVER challenge a man on anything, even one of their sons, even if their sons are behaving badly. Feminism to the contrary notwithstanding, they seem to enjoy deferring to men, even when men are wrong. I just don't get it. It's like there's a pecking order that pervades everything.
I think this is some sort of hold-over from European feudalism. I read David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything, and he says that Native Americans did not understand why European soldiers obeyed their "chiefs." The indigenous chiefs held mainly ceremonial roles and could not command unwilling obedience.
Graeber and Wengrow admit that there were some places in the Americas with despotic chiefs, but these chiefs could only terrify people in their immediate surroundings. Most of their "subjects" lived too far away from the chief to have any fear of him. This book is really worth reading for some perspective on our instinctive fear of the Big Man.
The question of nature versus nurture is an interesting one here, to be sure, when thinking about what is to be done. My understanding is that in recent social psychology (thinking here of Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes and related work like Pinker's Blank Slate) there is evidence that our intuited/"System 1" value responses on points like authority/subversion can be genetically inherited, like when comparing adopted children with their adoptive parents -- but even if that's true, that still leaves a lot open. E.g., our intuitive responses are not necessarily our deliberative/"System 2" conclusions, the way we interpret our own intuitions are of course going to be linguistically and culturally relative, and so forth. I would be hesitant to generalize broadly about cultural tendencies toward hierarchy or egalitarianism (the Iroquois Confederacy may have been egalitarian, but the Aztec Empire sure wasn't) but at the very least, I think there's a lot to learn about studying how very different egalitarian societies, like Rojava and Kurdistan movements, form in different contexts.
Yes, Wengrow and Graeber are very much against the idea that native Americans were somehow all more egalitarian or less warlike than Europeans. They do not idealize them at all, and they emphasize the diversity of cultures in N. America at European contact. They reiterate that romantic notions about noble savages are simply false.
However their account of Kondiaronk, the Wendat diplomat, and his debates with French people in N. America makes it clear that the European Enlightenment about equality and liberty drew on Native American ideas. This encounter surprised both sides: Kondiaronk was astounded that French soldiers obeyed their captains without question, and the French soldiers couldn't believe that Wendat chiefs couldn't command the same obedience and yet their society seemed orderly. They literally had no concept of social equality. Likewise, Kondiaronk couldn't understand why French society allowed people to become desperately poor. Wendats didn't do that.
Thank you for the explanation and the link. I look forward to learning more. I'm reminded of Scott Pratt's Native Pragmatism, where he argues that the American pragmatists like William James, John Dewey, and Jane Addams (of whom I'm a fan) were influenced by indigenous thinking and politics -- that might be an interesting resource too.
Yes and yes, and see also my 'Vicarious Absolute Freedom' hobby-horse, first mounted when in quick succession I read someone's 'Fascism is anarchism for one man.' and the speculation that at least some S.&M. 'subs' secretly identify with their 'tops'.
…or, maybe more down-to-earthèdly, there's old work about (non-classical) liberals' and conservatives' Ideal Family structures.
Some of it may be dissatisfaction with being, basically, a consumer and having no sense of mastery, which is easy when everything about you is melting into air. Rigid categories and dependable hierarchy may give security.
Finally (sorry to go on, but you covered wide ground, and well) those with a lot have a lot to lose.
I can't imagine that if Kamala had won, Musk et al would have lost much of anything! Maybe their taxes might have gone up a little. Maybe they would not have been able to pursue AI quite as fast and recklessly, and thus maybe would have made more money a little more slowly.
My impression from reading Ganz and Max Read and other commentators is that many tech titans are in a relatively difficult position: they must keep growing to satisfy their shareholders, but a merely good product cannot sustain such growth, so they must turn to hype and pump valuations with the power of the state (through military contracts, national crypto reserves, and so forth); moreover, after 2020, COVID and the George Floyd protests have radicalized more tech workers, so we are seeing a more clear opposition between tech management and tech workers, with "return to work" being both a way of cracking the whip and trying to get their workers to quit to, again, pump stock valuations. This is not to say that they aren't also merely greedy -- but if this story is right, their vulnerabilities are identifiable. If they're in a race against time, then if we want to oppose them, we just have to slow them down.
They also keep breaking the law, which puts them in jeopardy. A kleptocracy that funnels government money and arranges all things in a way that benefits their position is absolutely necessary for them at this point.
Well said. As just one example: I think if copyright protections are actually enforced on the data they're all seemingly funneling into their LLMs, a lot of these guys are cooked.
I may be wrong, but I think there's a meaningful divide between some Big Tech titans and others in terms of who can grow without Trump's help and who can't, depending on what sort of products they make. I've seen it observed that it is the "attention merchants" who are all over Trump, and less so those who make products that don't depend on social engagement (social media, crypto) or need new government ties (Little Tech surveillance firms like Anduril). That's not to say that a material analysis explains everyone's behavior, but it might make sense of some of the specifics.
Just found out that Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) has been to Maralago and went to the inauguration. He just has a lower profile than the other tech bros it seems.
A comedian observed that if there's one guy not laughing in a large crowd, that's the guy about whom he'll obsess.
Being able to do so much on a whim, any restriction on them feels to them incredibly unjust. Add a Randroid/Romantic view of The Creator's work as the purpose of society, and this gets lifted from a matter of a spoiled child-man's personal pique into the realm of a moral abomination—'Touch ye not the LORD'ʼs Annointed!'.
(This is related to a problem all reformers share: that which has not yet been improved sufficiently looms largest to those it bothers most…and those it bothers most can not usually be expected to have a 'look how far weʼve come' attitude for very long. Soon 'reform' loses legitimacy.)
They're ambivalent though. Many haven't learned to work cooperatively, appreciate the labor of others, or adapt to the people around them so they like hierarchy because they believe we all need some kind of boss to make rules, preferably ones that make life easier for them, and make them believe things are under control. They also want to boss someone. But they don't like being bossed, not really.
At bottom, yes. I believe it's a lack of maturity. Maturity and adulthood are things are supposed to 'just happen' but they don't, not for everyone. Some people are unable or unwilling to relinquish the fundamental traits of childhood--self-centeredness, narcissism, emotional lability are the negative ones--but these are all normal in children and even teens. They have them for various reasons, and also because of how their brains work. I don't know if it's a specific American thing, but when you read the media about the youth, and the hostility toward the youth, you can see that some Americans don't fully understand the difference between childhood and adulthood. It's as if our media cannot accept that children are children, youth are youth, different from adults--but then they accept certain adults behaving as children, and make excuses for them. It's rather odd, for example, to see all the moral panic about the youth. They don't want the youth to be young and have fun, and as adults, they are resentful that they are not still young. Maybe at bottom our culture encourages people not to accept certain basics of reality and human life. People are perhaps too encouraged to believe they should get everything they want, but and never be satisfied with what they have. It creates a good environment for consumerism maybe? But honestly, I don't understand the causes.
It's a kind of narcissism. As I understand it, people pass through two periods in life when narcissism is normal: age 2-3, and then again as young teenagers. Good parents are able to defuse this narcissism appropriately and not too harshly: they let the child know that although they are loved, they are not the center of the universe, that other people exist as subjects, and that you have to take the feelings of other people into account, and that you can't just expect service from other people as an entitlement. I see a lot of people, especially young men, who seem to be stuck in a kind of entitled-teenager phase. They may be working and making money, but they expect to be catered to in all other areas of life.
This attitude--"I must be served"--can be profitable to businesses, because now consumers can pay to have almost everything delivered to their door. So the idea that you might have to cook a meal or wash a dish seems ridiculous. Roombas sweep the floors. I'm not sure if there's a robot that cleans bathrooms. I'm guessing there are a lot of very dirty bathrooms.
Hah.Interesting! What you describe is basically what I did with my kids. I even remember my own childhood narcissism, and the bizarre things I would believe about how special I was. In adulthood it would seem like a kind of madness, yet there are adults that think like this about themselves! I have seen mature, well-adjusted people show little glimmers of narcissism but nothing that takes them over. Sometimes when mature people become ill, they become more childlike and immature and narcissistic. Once in a while, we see people revert for a bit to earlier developmental stages.
But a big difference I see between people who are very paralyzed and incapable of moral reasoning like the people described here is they can’t see themselves from the outside, at all. They lack some kind of self-assessment capacity—maybe because their parents didn’t aid them in developing it or maybe because there is something different about their minds. But the former seems more likely. I suspect this is why they also behave shamelessly. Having shame requires some self-assessment, and this is not something they ever do. And yes, it’s probably cultural, as you mention. In our culture, it can be an advantage! Which is just nuts! You’re the most vile, cringe, immature idiot, and somehow others of the culture celebrate these traits!
I think it can be cultural. Patriarchy and white supremacist ideology both tell people that they are special by virtue of being born with a Y chromosome or white skin, which is irrational, but it has been going on for so long that it seems normal. Also in America, it seems that narcissism is on the rise, according to some researchers. Whereas formerly young people were taught to be modest and to consider others, now they are taught to relentlessly promote themselves and disregard other people for the most part. (When I was in grade school, we had a grade called “consideration,” that referred to your behavior at school. I often got bad consideration grades because I talked too much or asked off topic questions. In retrospect this was not horrible of me to talk and ask questions, but the teachers thought I was being inconsiderate of them.)
My parents had a friend who was born around 1930. She had the most perfect manners of any person I’ve ever know. In any conversation, she would try to draw out anybody who had not spoken yet. (The opposite of school manners where you are supposed to not talk at all.) This is extremely rare now. (It should be noted that her husband bullied her relentlessly, which is often the fate of very well-mannered people.)
It’s considered old-fashioned now to teach children “manners,” but really what a lot of that teaching was about was how to stop being a narcissistic asshole and remember that other people are as real as you are.
Regardless of whether this anger is deserved or not (objectively not, but what is objective reality anymore), the most curious piece of the puzzle is that while America went through periods sometimes much worse and sometimes much better, this time it's democracy that is at fault, we're being told.
There’s a line of skin care products called Vichy and every time I see it I can’t believe they missed the golden opportunity to make “Collaborate with Moisture!” their slogan. Cowards.
Whether it all descends into something worse is an open question, but the mess of contradictions and undisciplined personalities that lead this political formation, plus the impossibility of satisfying the screen-addled, treat-hungry customer service desk fury that brought them to power convinces me that this is going to make Vichy look like the Ming Dynasty in durability terms.
I can easily see a repeated cycle of vaguely adult government when the Monsters From the Id screw-up too obviously, then back to the M.F.t.I.s when the adults fail 0.) to achieve all they promise and 1.) fail to satisfy the Id needs* of that portion of the electorate still in contention, both of which are inevitable.
*e.g., simple, stupid and brutal, solutions, and scapegoats when the solutions aren't.
we should all know by now that "he's not really a nazi he's just trolling" actually makes someone *more* of a nazi
trolling, pulpy edgy memes, cryptogrammatic slang, adolescent puckishness, and autodidactic flirtations have always been the essence of nazi praxis, and larping the provocative aesthetics for the lolz is, as they say, the point
John, if you're talking about institutional anti-Trumpism, like the fricking Democratic Party, then yes, we're in full Vichy mode, but for the suppressed voices of individuals like AOC. In terms of the US left, I'm seeing something different. I may be grasping at straws, but the reason people in my community didn't march with pink pussy hats this time around is a) it didn't work last time (!), b) we're all reading resistance guides that advise against street protests under fascist rule, and c) we're conserving strength and organizing clout for more precise forms of resistance in the coming days.
In my area (greater New Haven) as well as in places like wine country in CA, immigration groups are organizing around the clock to build protections for the undocumented, including appointing guardians for their children in case the parents are deported. It's not getting coverage, and perhaps that for the good.
I share your absolute disgust with the complicity of our institutions. I'm more wait & see regarding popular resistance. Meanwhile, I just want to thank you for your probing intellect and commitment to historical perspective. It's a welcome antidote to the empty outrage on tap from so many right now.
“A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.”
"'They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,' thought Kutuzov."
-- War and Peace
In short - the left/Democrats/anti-Trump, whatever you want to call it, must not lose their determination and grit, but at the same time, must be patient. If Republicans and Trump want to destroy themselves, they must be allowed to do so.
‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’, was always sound. It still is. Love John Ganz but I’m less pessimistic than he is. Opposition should be trenchant of course, but strategic and targeted at the weakest spot of this farcical and dangerous politics.
The fashion designers are going first, apparently, and it's working--the press gives themselves a convenient pass on this because fashion is politics, but the result yesterday was wall-to-wall coverage of Melania's clothes and crickets about the ol' Seig Heil.
Folks this is why we subscribe isn't it? Best thing I've read on this current nightmare. However, one note I maybe would have gone with "jerk idiot asshole." Finish with "asshole" is all I'm saying. IDK just my two cents.
What’s “funny” is that prior to yesterday, I was deluding myself into thinking that the next four years would be reactionary, spastic, but maybe not the end of the world. But after Musk’s sieg heil, my first question to my wife was if we actually need to move out of the States. The people I thought would be as shocked as I am, seem to still believe some institution will save the day.
I agree what he did was awful, but I’m damned if I would emigrate from my own country on account of a drug addled dipshit like Musk. He will get his. One way or another. He doesn’t have trump’s ’faux populist’ shield. He is very vulnerable to the mob he helped create imo.
I’m happy that I got my passport renewed in time, and that I have the means to leave, but the far right seems to be in ascendancy in Europe too. I am fighting despair. Yesterday’s EOs showed the admin is serious about their shock and awe campaign. I hope we have the courage to fight them.
True, but from afar it seems as though they have a sizable population not cool with letting it all happen. Here, passive progressives seem to be blindly expecting to win the next election by keeping status quo with a “better” candidate.
Completely captured the "mood" of the public that both got us to this point and that is today's reality: "It’s a regime of born exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism: the loss of faith in the old verities of the republic".
I appreciate the "revolutionay" rhetoric but what we really need to build — and need to insist that our elected representatives in "blue" districts and States function as — is a loyal opposition. Loyal to the founding principles of the republic, alert to their betrayal, and insisting on an honest history of how those principles have worked (or failed to work) in the past. I thought Amy Klobuchar did a great job of setting that up (tho I haven't read a transcript of her remarks yet) — and I was pleased to see that neither she nor my two Senators (Duckworth and Durbin) voted for the Laken Riley abomination.
In the organiser model there's a thing called "checking your power level". Elon's sieg heiling is not just a troll (although it is that), it's also a loyalty test to see how many lickspittles he has that will publicly humiliate themselves by claiming it wasn't a nazi salute. Turns out there are a lot of them, so no wonder he's laughing.
I have talked to multiple friends since the 2024 election who were flabbergasted when I showed them that he tried to get Pence lynched. One of them is trying to navigate the fires out west and doesn't understand why the press isn't talking more about Donald's comments in relation to that and is for the first time understanding what happened during and after Donald's attempt to steal the 2020 election. If this current media landscape won't serve those people who just now want to learn more, then perhaps there is still some media shaking out to do.
"We all saw and knew what he did when we re-elected him." Nope, not even close.
With respect to what people say about the resistance, people need to stop pointing fingers, and blaming everyone for recent events because the ultimate causes are not some people on social media or even some dumb people running things for the Democrats (and yes, there are lots of dumb people). The billionaires were poised to take power. The only way to have stopped this would have been to murder the whole shift in power to them over the last 20 or so years in the cradle. The ultra-wealthy have been working on this project for 50+ years. One major change was when they began to think more like a class, and formed a gang. This was part of what made Trump so disastrous--he made it possible for various clashing interest groups to cohere. I don't say that it would have happened without him--but they did have all the tools at their disposal. (Yes, it still matters that the government in power both failed to stop them, and enabled them. We could have stopped them but the ultimate causes were not a 'disruption in the normal course of events' caused by specific people very recently.)
Another reason it is ridiculous to blame whomever--the left, liberals, certain leftists, certain liberals--is that a) they'd have to be a main cause to deserve the blame. And they've been doing the same things since the 1970s. You really think it's 'identity politics' that is to blame? Something that started in the 1970s? Both of my universities had identity politics protesters shut down classes. And this was not a big deal. It was a flash in the pan. Nothing that is said now was not said then. Or if you blame the leftier Bernie-ish (or more lefty left) this is equally silly. They also always existed, and were up to basically the same things for decades. But more salient is to me is b) We shouldn't be blaming people unless they were doing something that is wrong. Was the women's movement wrong? Was the civil rights movement wrong? Was affirmative action, the LGBT rights movement, etc. wrong? Conversely, were people wrong in wanting economic security or healthcare or non-discrimination in the workplace? Or were people (often described as college professors because you need it to be 'elites', but they actually take their information from different groups) wrong to discuss their own lives online? So --the right stalked them and used their internal discussions to panic evangelical Christians or whatever. Were they wrong to try and figure out their own lives and share their thoughts with others? Were people wrong to petition their government on matters they considered crucial?
You might as well blame the fact we had a freer society because you're simply blaming people for taking advantage of their freedoms, and using those things that exist within a democracy. And that's what is going to happen if you have a democracy but if you don't like it, on some level you agree that people should suppress their freedom, and not utilize the tools of democratic governance to shape society. You simply want it for yourself and not for others. I wish people would stop taking up rightwing narratives just because they are confused about what happened, and can't believe a wonderful man like Mark Zuckerberg or whomever would turn on them.
Where is the resistance indeed? Even when I introspect, I ask that question. Something has neutralized that spirit in me, but what? Yes, it's demoralizing to watch your own forces collapse, surrender, appease—referring to the ones you've pointed to here. Also demoralizing is the sense that people wanted this. People around me, family and friends, revealed themselves to be less clear-eyed than I thought they were. They abandoned their posts when I believed they shared my resolve. A shocking number of them even defected. After watching this shit for ten years, when it all seems clearer to me than ever, they defected.
After the 1848 revolution, the Second Republic elected Louis Napoleon as president. The politicians expected to go on as usual, but within weeks one of them remarked, “Nous sommes foutus. He knows what he can do and he’ll do it.”
Soon he was made Emperor by plebiscite…
On the other hand, the French had no tradition of democracy and, probably more important, a centralized government. I’m looking to our federal system to hold the line. We’re going to learn a lot this year.
I am starting to believe that a lot of people don't really like egalitarianism. They like hierarchy. They like sucking up to powerful people and getting little favors from them, and they like bullying people below them. The number of people who actually want to deal with other people in an egalitarian way may be pretty small.
About the Vichy analogy: it was kind of understandable that French people did not want to fight the Germans again after all the people they lost in WWI. They lost a whole generation of men, and a lot of towns were destroyed too. But why did the richest, luckiest Americans roll over for Trump? They hadn't really lost anything in the preceding decades; quite the contrary. If he had lost the election, nothing bad would have happened to them. The analogy kind of falls down there. Maybe Americans are really more like the Germans who got on the Hitler bandwagon. It wasn't in their interest but they did it anyway.
Also, why did most American voters feel so angry? Things were actually pretty good: low unemployment, inflation going down, etc. But everybody seemed to think everything was terrible, maybe not for them personally, but generally.
This is a saddening and dawning revelation for me as well. Like I have always known there is a set of people who like being able to boss others around, but it seems they actually like being little toadies in that chain as well. That second part I am only just now beginning to realize. They actually want to be ruled by a king, and get little favors from them as you say.
This was the exact unifying character of the tea-bag party movement. All of the individuals who had internalized this conditioning suddenly found a common popular cause. What we have now is a late-stage manifestation of that desire to be controlled and to control in turn.
Thank-you. I'm irritated at the memory-hole into which the T.P.s have been thrown, largely because D.T. coöpted them perfectly.
It all depends on who the king is, though. The MAGA folks who are happy to surrender to Trump as an open authoritarian do so happy because his king-ship gives them a psychic reward (we have a white father, again, so I am affirmed as a white subject; we have a man's man in charge again, so I am affirmed as a man).
But the same people have shown they will not tolerate the place in a hierarchy if the king looks suspiciously like an enemy of the natural order (the party that has ushered in a Black president, put women on the Supreme Court, made their kids fine with LGBT friends or with being queer themselves, etc.)
I'd guess that the personalities most attached to hierarchy are also the most reactionary against hierarchy "gone wrong."
This is well put. Joshua Greene makes this point in Moral Tribes in challenging what he views as Jonathan Haidt's too-simplistic view of reducing ethics to intuitive value responses: plenty of people who "value authority," or have clear authoritarian tendencies, did not treat Obama's authority as legitimate. Probably most of them, in fact!
I've always thought there was something wrong with Haidt's analysis. I think you put your finger on a big part of it. For him, it's as if every "tribe" is equally benign, although different, and we are being intolerant if we object to authoritarian cultures or something.
I agree. If you think that intuitive value responses are innate, and you're an intuitionist who thinks that ethics *is* just intuitive value responses (e.g., that when we have debates, we're just performing, not meaningfully changing each other's minds), then your ethical views are like the color of your skin, something you cannot help. Haidt views conservatives as a protected class, basically. This puts his "heterodox academy" mission in context: he doesn't want better debates because he can't coherently think better debates would accomplish anything; he wants DEI for right-wingers. Or so I'm convinced.
Weird how a lot of progressives really like him though. Progressives seem a little too eager to be "tolerant" to me, to the point that they're tolerant of intolerance. I have a friend who is in Better Angels. And sure, that's admirable. But he has a hard time saying that the "Reds" are ever wrong, maybe because in Better Angels you don't try to persuade anybody of anything. You just try to understand their point of view.
it's been occurring to me that pretty much EVERYTHING Haidt analyzes stops well short of being adequately explained and accounted for.
It may be that the more you suck up to powerful people, the more you lose any self-respect you once had, and you try to get back some of your "self-respect" by bullying the little people, which is obviously not ideal, but I think it works something like that. I think I under-estimate how much people kind of hate themselves for being suck-ups, but they also can't help themselves.
in Social Work School, this phenomenon was defined as "identifying with the oppressor."
is it THAT simple?
I agree that it's true and important to observe that some people value hierarchy or authority for its own sake -- as well as of course the benefits it affords them -- and view it as a natural state, with egalitarianism as subversive and unnatural. This realization is an antidote to, for example, what I view as naivety among some of my leftist friends who sometimes seem to think that illiberalism can be coaxed into socialism. Yes, these people want government money, but not if it also goes to their enemies -- not if it makes the world fairer, and undermines their relative advantage!
But for what it is worth, I think this view, while consistent among a subset of people, is in the minority. Based on MAGA support, it hovers around 30-40% of people, and from what I understand, this was enough to win an election due to demoralization among Democrats who didn't vote, not people switching sides or converting to this view. This is just to say: the egalitarians can always win over, can always outnumber, those who prize unjustified hierarchy. Without claiming to know what exactly needs to be said or done, I would just say that there is always reason for hope, not cynicism, in swaying *enough* people towards egalitarianism again.
I think kids are instinctively egalitarian. They like it when I treat them with respect, as equals in everything except experience. But the adults I know, even the Democrats, are pretty competitive. In an average conversation, they will subtly bully or troll you for no apparent reason other than one-up-manship. Women do this as much as men. And the same women will NEVER challenge a man on anything, even one of their sons, even if their sons are behaving badly. Feminism to the contrary notwithstanding, they seem to enjoy deferring to men, even when men are wrong. I just don't get it. It's like there's a pecking order that pervades everything.
I think this is some sort of hold-over from European feudalism. I read David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything, and he says that Native Americans did not understand why European soldiers obeyed their "chiefs." The indigenous chiefs held mainly ceremonial roles and could not command unwilling obedience.
Graeber and Wengrow admit that there were some places in the Americas with despotic chiefs, but these chiefs could only terrify people in their immediate surroundings. Most of their "subjects" lived too far away from the chief to have any fear of him. This book is really worth reading for some perspective on our instinctive fear of the Big Man.
The question of nature versus nurture is an interesting one here, to be sure, when thinking about what is to be done. My understanding is that in recent social psychology (thinking here of Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes and related work like Pinker's Blank Slate) there is evidence that our intuited/"System 1" value responses on points like authority/subversion can be genetically inherited, like when comparing adopted children with their adoptive parents -- but even if that's true, that still leaves a lot open. E.g., our intuitive responses are not necessarily our deliberative/"System 2" conclusions, the way we interpret our own intuitions are of course going to be linguistically and culturally relative, and so forth. I would be hesitant to generalize broadly about cultural tendencies toward hierarchy or egalitarianism (the Iroquois Confederacy may have been egalitarian, but the Aztec Empire sure wasn't) but at the very least, I think there's a lot to learn about studying how very different egalitarian societies, like Rojava and Kurdistan movements, form in different contexts.
Yes, Wengrow and Graeber are very much against the idea that native Americans were somehow all more egalitarian or less warlike than Europeans. They do not idealize them at all, and they emphasize the diversity of cultures in N. America at European contact. They reiterate that romantic notions about noble savages are simply false.
However their account of Kondiaronk, the Wendat diplomat, and his debates with French people in N. America makes it clear that the European Enlightenment about equality and liberty drew on Native American ideas. This encounter surprised both sides: Kondiaronk was astounded that French soldiers obeyed their captains without question, and the French soldiers couldn't believe that Wendat chiefs couldn't command the same obedience and yet their society seemed orderly. They literally had no concept of social equality. Likewise, Kondiaronk couldn't understand why French society allowed people to become desperately poor. Wendats didn't do that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondiaronk
Thank you for the explanation and the link. I look forward to learning more. I'm reminded of Scott Pratt's Native Pragmatism, where he argues that the American pragmatists like William James, John Dewey, and Jane Addams (of whom I'm a fan) were influenced by indigenous thinking and politics -- that might be an interesting resource too.
I can't recommend The Dawn of Everything highly enough. It's long but worth it. I will look into the books you are citing here.
Nonstop propaganda?
Yes and yes, and see also my 'Vicarious Absolute Freedom' hobby-horse, first mounted when in quick succession I read someone's 'Fascism is anarchism for one man.' and the speculation that at least some S.&M. 'subs' secretly identify with their 'tops'.
…or, maybe more down-to-earthèdly, there's old work about (non-classical) liberals' and conservatives' Ideal Family structures.
Some of it may be dissatisfaction with being, basically, a consumer and having no sense of mastery, which is easy when everything about you is melting into air. Rigid categories and dependable hierarchy may give security.
Finally (sorry to go on, but you covered wide ground, and well) those with a lot have a lot to lose.
I can't imagine that if Kamala had won, Musk et al would have lost much of anything! Maybe their taxes might have gone up a little. Maybe they would not have been able to pursue AI quite as fast and recklessly, and thus maybe would have made more money a little more slowly.
My impression from reading Ganz and Max Read and other commentators is that many tech titans are in a relatively difficult position: they must keep growing to satisfy their shareholders, but a merely good product cannot sustain such growth, so they must turn to hype and pump valuations with the power of the state (through military contracts, national crypto reserves, and so forth); moreover, after 2020, COVID and the George Floyd protests have radicalized more tech workers, so we are seeing a more clear opposition between tech management and tech workers, with "return to work" being both a way of cracking the whip and trying to get their workers to quit to, again, pump stock valuations. This is not to say that they aren't also merely greedy -- but if this story is right, their vulnerabilities are identifiable. If they're in a race against time, then if we want to oppose them, we just have to slow them down.
They also keep breaking the law, which puts them in jeopardy. A kleptocracy that funnels government money and arranges all things in a way that benefits their position is absolutely necessary for them at this point.
Well said. As just one example: I think if copyright protections are actually enforced on the data they're all seemingly funneling into their LLMs, a lot of these guys are cooked.
Thing is, Microsoft seems to be doing ok, and yet their CEO seems to be keeping a distance from Trump.
I may be wrong, but I think there's a meaningful divide between some Big Tech titans and others in terms of who can grow without Trump's help and who can't, depending on what sort of products they make. I've seen it observed that it is the "attention merchants" who are all over Trump, and less so those who make products that don't depend on social engagement (social media, crypto) or need new government ties (Little Tech surveillance firms like Anduril). That's not to say that a material analysis explains everyone's behavior, but it might make sense of some of the specifics.
Just found out that Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) has been to Maralago and went to the inauguration. He just has a lower profile than the other tech bros it seems.
A comedian observed that if there's one guy not laughing in a large crowd, that's the guy about whom he'll obsess.
Being able to do so much on a whim, any restriction on them feels to them incredibly unjust. Add a Randroid/Romantic view of The Creator's work as the purpose of society, and this gets lifted from a matter of a spoiled child-man's personal pique into the realm of a moral abomination—'Touch ye not the LORD'ʼs Annointed!'.
(This is related to a problem all reformers share: that which has not yet been improved sufficiently looms largest to those it bothers most…and those it bothers most can not usually be expected to have a 'look how far weʼve come' attitude for very long. Soon 'reform' loses legitimacy.)
They're ambivalent though. Many haven't learned to work cooperatively, appreciate the labor of others, or adapt to the people around them so they like hierarchy because they believe we all need some kind of boss to make rules, preferably ones that make life easier for them, and make them believe things are under control. They also want to boss someone. But they don't like being bossed, not really.
That sounds like a spoiled teenager. Maybe most Americans are overgrown spoiled teenagers.
At bottom, yes. I believe it's a lack of maturity. Maturity and adulthood are things are supposed to 'just happen' but they don't, not for everyone. Some people are unable or unwilling to relinquish the fundamental traits of childhood--self-centeredness, narcissism, emotional lability are the negative ones--but these are all normal in children and even teens. They have them for various reasons, and also because of how their brains work. I don't know if it's a specific American thing, but when you read the media about the youth, and the hostility toward the youth, you can see that some Americans don't fully understand the difference between childhood and adulthood. It's as if our media cannot accept that children are children, youth are youth, different from adults--but then they accept certain adults behaving as children, and make excuses for them. It's rather odd, for example, to see all the moral panic about the youth. They don't want the youth to be young and have fun, and as adults, they are resentful that they are not still young. Maybe at bottom our culture encourages people not to accept certain basics of reality and human life. People are perhaps too encouraged to believe they should get everything they want, but and never be satisfied with what they have. It creates a good environment for consumerism maybe? But honestly, I don't understand the causes.
It's a kind of narcissism. As I understand it, people pass through two periods in life when narcissism is normal: age 2-3, and then again as young teenagers. Good parents are able to defuse this narcissism appropriately and not too harshly: they let the child know that although they are loved, they are not the center of the universe, that other people exist as subjects, and that you have to take the feelings of other people into account, and that you can't just expect service from other people as an entitlement. I see a lot of people, especially young men, who seem to be stuck in a kind of entitled-teenager phase. They may be working and making money, but they expect to be catered to in all other areas of life.
This attitude--"I must be served"--can be profitable to businesses, because now consumers can pay to have almost everything delivered to their door. So the idea that you might have to cook a meal or wash a dish seems ridiculous. Roombas sweep the floors. I'm not sure if there's a robot that cleans bathrooms. I'm guessing there are a lot of very dirty bathrooms.
Hah.Interesting! What you describe is basically what I did with my kids. I even remember my own childhood narcissism, and the bizarre things I would believe about how special I was. In adulthood it would seem like a kind of madness, yet there are adults that think like this about themselves! I have seen mature, well-adjusted people show little glimmers of narcissism but nothing that takes them over. Sometimes when mature people become ill, they become more childlike and immature and narcissistic. Once in a while, we see people revert for a bit to earlier developmental stages.
But a big difference I see between people who are very paralyzed and incapable of moral reasoning like the people described here is they can’t see themselves from the outside, at all. They lack some kind of self-assessment capacity—maybe because their parents didn’t aid them in developing it or maybe because there is something different about their minds. But the former seems more likely. I suspect this is why they also behave shamelessly. Having shame requires some self-assessment, and this is not something they ever do. And yes, it’s probably cultural, as you mention. In our culture, it can be an advantage! Which is just nuts! You’re the most vile, cringe, immature idiot, and somehow others of the culture celebrate these traits!
I think it can be cultural. Patriarchy and white supremacist ideology both tell people that they are special by virtue of being born with a Y chromosome or white skin, which is irrational, but it has been going on for so long that it seems normal. Also in America, it seems that narcissism is on the rise, according to some researchers. Whereas formerly young people were taught to be modest and to consider others, now they are taught to relentlessly promote themselves and disregard other people for the most part. (When I was in grade school, we had a grade called “consideration,” that referred to your behavior at school. I often got bad consideration grades because I talked too much or asked off topic questions. In retrospect this was not horrible of me to talk and ask questions, but the teachers thought I was being inconsiderate of them.)
My parents had a friend who was born around 1930. She had the most perfect manners of any person I’ve ever know. In any conversation, she would try to draw out anybody who had not spoken yet. (The opposite of school manners where you are supposed to not talk at all.) This is extremely rare now. (It should be noted that her husband bullied her relentlessly, which is often the fate of very well-mannered people.)
It’s considered old-fashioned now to teach children “manners,” but really what a lot of that teaching was about was how to stop being a narcissistic asshole and remember that other people are as real as you are.
> why did most American voters feel so angry?
Regardless of whether this anger is deserved or not (objectively not, but what is objective reality anymore), the most curious piece of the puzzle is that while America went through periods sometimes much worse and sometimes much better, this time it's democracy that is at fault, we're being told.
This is brilliant. You’ve said it all and you’ve said it powerfully.
Clear, succinct, and powerful. Perhaps the opposition's path crystallized amidst the culminating chaos of Jan. 20, 2025.
There’s a line of skin care products called Vichy and every time I see it I can’t believe they missed the golden opportunity to make “Collaborate with Moisture!” their slogan. Cowards.
Not only is there a beauty brand called Vichy, it's a sub-brand of L'Oréal, whose founder was a supporter of the French fascist group La Cagoule (The Hood). When I wrote about Vichy skincare in 2014 I proposed the tagline "Your Beauty Collaborator." https://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2014/09/name-in-the-wild-vichy.html
Whether it all descends into something worse is an open question, but the mess of contradictions and undisciplined personalities that lead this political formation, plus the impossibility of satisfying the screen-addled, treat-hungry customer service desk fury that brought them to power convinces me that this is going to make Vichy look like the Ming Dynasty in durability terms.
I can easily see a repeated cycle of vaguely adult government when the Monsters From the Id screw-up too obviously, then back to the M.F.t.I.s when the adults fail 0.) to achieve all they promise and 1.) fail to satisfy the Id needs* of that portion of the electorate still in contention, both of which are inevitable.
*e.g., simple, stupid and brutal, solutions, and scapegoats when the solutions aren't.
we should all know by now that "he's not really a nazi he's just trolling" actually makes someone *more* of a nazi
trolling, pulpy edgy memes, cryptogrammatic slang, adolescent puckishness, and autodidactic flirtations have always been the essence of nazi praxis, and larping the provocative aesthetics for the lolz is, as they say, the point
John, if you're talking about institutional anti-Trumpism, like the fricking Democratic Party, then yes, we're in full Vichy mode, but for the suppressed voices of individuals like AOC. In terms of the US left, I'm seeing something different. I may be grasping at straws, but the reason people in my community didn't march with pink pussy hats this time around is a) it didn't work last time (!), b) we're all reading resistance guides that advise against street protests under fascist rule, and c) we're conserving strength and organizing clout for more precise forms of resistance in the coming days.
In my area (greater New Haven) as well as in places like wine country in CA, immigration groups are organizing around the clock to build protections for the undocumented, including appointing guardians for their children in case the parents are deported. It's not getting coverage, and perhaps that for the good.
I share your absolute disgust with the complicity of our institutions. I'm more wait & see regarding popular resistance. Meanwhile, I just want to thank you for your probing intellect and commitment to historical perspective. It's a welcome antidote to the empty outrage on tap from so many right now.
“A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.”
"'They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions,' thought Kutuzov."
-- War and Peace
In short - the left/Democrats/anti-Trump, whatever you want to call it, must not lose their determination and grit, but at the same time, must be patient. If Republicans and Trump want to destroy themselves, they must be allowed to do so.
‘Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake’, was always sound. It still is. Love John Ganz but I’m less pessimistic than he is. Opposition should be trenchant of course, but strategic and targeted at the weakest spot of this farcical and dangerous politics.
The fashion designers are going first, apparently, and it's working--the press gives themselves a convenient pass on this because fashion is politics, but the result yesterday was wall-to-wall coverage of Melania's clothes and crickets about the ol' Seig Heil.
Folks this is why we subscribe isn't it? Best thing I've read on this current nightmare. However, one note I maybe would have gone with "jerk idiot asshole." Finish with "asshole" is all I'm saying. IDK just my two cents.
What’s “funny” is that prior to yesterday, I was deluding myself into thinking that the next four years would be reactionary, spastic, but maybe not the end of the world. But after Musk’s sieg heil, my first question to my wife was if we actually need to move out of the States. The people I thought would be as shocked as I am, seem to still believe some institution will save the day.
I agree what he did was awful, but I’m damned if I would emigrate from my own country on account of a drug addled dipshit like Musk. He will get his. One way or another. He doesn’t have trump’s ’faux populist’ shield. He is very vulnerable to the mob he helped create imo.
I’m happy that I got my passport renewed in time, and that I have the means to leave, but the far right seems to be in ascendancy in Europe too. I am fighting despair. Yesterday’s EOs showed the admin is serious about their shock and awe campaign. I hope we have the courage to fight them.
True, but from afar it seems as though they have a sizable population not cool with letting it all happen. Here, passive progressives seem to be blindly expecting to win the next election by keeping status quo with a “better” candidate.
Or slowly come to the convenient realization that the day doesn’t need saving after all. A more relaxed version of the Musk seig heil.
Completely captured the "mood" of the public that both got us to this point and that is today's reality: "It’s a regime of born exhaustion, nihilism, and cynicism: the loss of faith in the old verities of the republic".
I appreciate the "revolutionay" rhetoric but what we really need to build — and need to insist that our elected representatives in "blue" districts and States function as — is a loyal opposition. Loyal to the founding principles of the republic, alert to their betrayal, and insisting on an honest history of how those principles have worked (or failed to work) in the past. I thought Amy Klobuchar did a great job of setting that up (tho I haven't read a transcript of her remarks yet) — and I was pleased to see that neither she nor my two Senators (Duckworth and Durbin) voted for the Laken Riley abomination.
In the organiser model there's a thing called "checking your power level". Elon's sieg heiling is not just a troll (although it is that), it's also a loyalty test to see how many lickspittles he has that will publicly humiliate themselves by claiming it wasn't a nazi salute. Turns out there are a lot of them, so no wonder he's laughing.
I have talked to multiple friends since the 2024 election who were flabbergasted when I showed them that he tried to get Pence lynched. One of them is trying to navigate the fires out west and doesn't understand why the press isn't talking more about Donald's comments in relation to that and is for the first time understanding what happened during and after Donald's attempt to steal the 2020 election. If this current media landscape won't serve those people who just now want to learn more, then perhaps there is still some media shaking out to do.
"We all saw and knew what he did when we re-elected him." Nope, not even close.
With respect to what people say about the resistance, people need to stop pointing fingers, and blaming everyone for recent events because the ultimate causes are not some people on social media or even some dumb people running things for the Democrats (and yes, there are lots of dumb people). The billionaires were poised to take power. The only way to have stopped this would have been to murder the whole shift in power to them over the last 20 or so years in the cradle. The ultra-wealthy have been working on this project for 50+ years. One major change was when they began to think more like a class, and formed a gang. This was part of what made Trump so disastrous--he made it possible for various clashing interest groups to cohere. I don't say that it would have happened without him--but they did have all the tools at their disposal. (Yes, it still matters that the government in power both failed to stop them, and enabled them. We could have stopped them but the ultimate causes were not a 'disruption in the normal course of events' caused by specific people very recently.)
Another reason it is ridiculous to blame whomever--the left, liberals, certain leftists, certain liberals--is that a) they'd have to be a main cause to deserve the blame. And they've been doing the same things since the 1970s. You really think it's 'identity politics' that is to blame? Something that started in the 1970s? Both of my universities had identity politics protesters shut down classes. And this was not a big deal. It was a flash in the pan. Nothing that is said now was not said then. Or if you blame the leftier Bernie-ish (or more lefty left) this is equally silly. They also always existed, and were up to basically the same things for decades. But more salient is to me is b) We shouldn't be blaming people unless they were doing something that is wrong. Was the women's movement wrong? Was the civil rights movement wrong? Was affirmative action, the LGBT rights movement, etc. wrong? Conversely, were people wrong in wanting economic security or healthcare or non-discrimination in the workplace? Or were people (often described as college professors because you need it to be 'elites', but they actually take their information from different groups) wrong to discuss their own lives online? So --the right stalked them and used their internal discussions to panic evangelical Christians or whatever. Were they wrong to try and figure out their own lives and share their thoughts with others? Were people wrong to petition their government on matters they considered crucial?
You might as well blame the fact we had a freer society because you're simply blaming people for taking advantage of their freedoms, and using those things that exist within a democracy. And that's what is going to happen if you have a democracy but if you don't like it, on some level you agree that people should suppress their freedom, and not utilize the tools of democratic governance to shape society. You simply want it for yourself and not for others. I wish people would stop taking up rightwing narratives just because they are confused about what happened, and can't believe a wonderful man like Mark Zuckerberg or whomever would turn on them.
tl:dr
Where is the resistance indeed? Even when I introspect, I ask that question. Something has neutralized that spirit in me, but what? Yes, it's demoralizing to watch your own forces collapse, surrender, appease—referring to the ones you've pointed to here. Also demoralizing is the sense that people wanted this. People around me, family and friends, revealed themselves to be less clear-eyed than I thought they were. They abandoned their posts when I believed they shared my resolve. A shocking number of them even defected. After watching this shit for ten years, when it all seems clearer to me than ever, they defected.
After the 1848 revolution, the Second Republic elected Louis Napoleon as president. The politicians expected to go on as usual, but within weeks one of them remarked, “Nous sommes foutus. He knows what he can do and he’ll do it.”
Soon he was made Emperor by plebiscite…
On the other hand, the French had no tradition of democracy and, probably more important, a centralized government. I’m looking to our federal system to hold the line. We’re going to learn a lot this year.