Recently I discussed the connection between high neuroticism and left-wing politics. In passing I mentioned that the right-wing had its own problems, leading a few of you to ask what those were.
The classic response would be to accuse (credit?) conservatives as being low in empathy. Whether or not you agree historically, that answer does not seem to me to be “of the moment.” Instead, I see the more recent right-wing thinkers as falling into a different camp. The pathology I observe most frequently and most intensely is a kind of reckless anger, directed at some semi-imaginary, hypostatized notion of “elites.” In an almost Pavlovian fashion, you can pump up this group by putting out some “bait” about “the elites” and seeing the resentment fly. To be clear, as with the left-wing, this pathology does not have to mean the right-wing thinkers are wrong on the issues themselves.
This is true, but it's not the equivalent of neuroticism. If we're talking about Big Five personality traits like neuroticism among liberals, the equivalent Achilles' heel for conservatives is their generally low score on openness to experience.
This can be understood more easily as fear of new experiences, and conservative media is absolutely built on this. In fact, this is a common misconception about outlets like Fox News. They aren't especially dedicated to radical politics. They're dedicated to promoting specific issues that engage the amygdala and spur outrage born of fear.
It's no longer enough, for example, to think that high national debt is bad for economic reasons. Conservatives have been trained to be in desperate fear that the national debt will wreck the country. Likewise, they are afraid of immigrants. They are afraid of gay and trans folks. They are afraid their kids are being brainwashed in school. They are afraid liberals want to outlaw Christianity. Etc. They aren't just opposed to liberals, they're driven by intense fear of liberals.
This is what I wish we could change. We all have our pathologies, and there's no cosmic right answer about how much we should fear something. But it's gone off the rails in the conservative movement these days. I swear, if we could kill off Fox News and dial down conservative fear a couple of notches, there's hardly any ceiling to what our country could accomplish these days.
Not sure about all the elements in Kevin's "afraid" list, but saying "they are afraid of immigrants", I think is a mischaracterization. What it is, is they don't like rapid and large demographic change. That's all. What surprises me is the left refuses to accept that as a legitimate concern* and the right invented a theory (replacement) that is functionally incorrect - no entity is removing people from society and inserting a replacement. And that entity is usually a mysterious evil force, often described as globalist.
* virtually everybody on this planet is discomfited by demographic change, it's a matter of threshold. If you were suddenly in a place where the *entire* culture and ethnicity was unfamiliar, you'd be discomfited. Don't deny it.
You haven't watched Fox News or listened to any Republican politician on the subject. They are afraid, very afraid. These are the guys who are so terrified that they feel they have to carry their gun with them when they go shopping at Walmart.
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Agreed on all counts. The social fabric is changing at a super rapid pace and the most conservative among us are freaking out the most. The idea of dudes wearing pearls and skirts is putting them over the edge.
Parents today have next to no control over what their kids are exposed to, that's just a reality. They can ban books, drag queens, and "gay" all they want but they can't control the internet, which is how this stuff spreads. They've lost this battle already and all they are doing now is fundraising. I see DeSantis has another calculatedly unhinged demand that is guaranteed to net him another round of donations.
Cowan doesn't know about OCEAN, in fact probably doesn't even know factor analysis? I'm so terribly, terribly, surprised.
Why Kevin thinks this buffoon is worthy of notice is beyond me.
The basic fear that activates lower-income white voters is fear of the loss of White Christian Supremacy. There are some other specific things that individuals object to, but this the main motivatation. The other things, such as teachers supposedly grooming kids to be trans, are really tapping into this overall reaction which is based on group or tribal identification, and legally institutionalized in the South until less than fifty years ago. They are not afraid of "wokism" - that's just a token or dog-whistle for people who don't want to admit to being racist (which is still most people, even Republicans). And this is fear of a real thing, because liberals keep pushing to eliminate White Christian Supremacy.
Any politicians can tap into this tribalism - it's just waiting to be exploited, not something created by any kind of new organized propaganda. Yes, Fox News does do deliberate propaganda and is now a main tool of Republicans, but if Fox did not exist Republicans could get their message across in many other ways. The big change of direction in American economics came about through the election of Nixon and Reagan, who didn't need explicitly right-wing media. Trump didn't need Fox either - he was initially opposed by Fox.
So no, eliminating Fox or even all the right-wing media such as talk radio would not magically restore toleration and eliminate racism. The racism and religiosity have always been there and are not a creation of any living politicians or any media.
"hypostatized"
"pathology"
"amygdala"
Only elites like Cowen and Drum use words like this.
If Walt Whitman were alive today, he'd write "I hear America clucking. Awk-buk-buk."
Fear that someone is trying to take advantage of them, fear that someone somewhere is getting something they are not getting, fear that someone somewhere is being condescending towards them, fear that other people are having fun in ways they don't approve of...etc etc.
My point of view in this is that conservatives don't fear anything, they want to lash out and harm things, mostly other people, out of anxiety that they're not getting something, intellectual or physical, and other people are, and that builds out of their lack of natural or spontaneous empathy.
Talking about fear is simply their way of promoting their anxiety to motivate their abusiveness. Social conservatism is a medical issue, fundamentally a learning disability.
I just read this,
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-differences-between-liberals-and-conservatives-may-boil-down-to-one-belief/
A study demonstrating that the defining characteristic of conservatives is their belief in the foundational hierarchical order of society and the whole of life.
I completely agree with this, but I would add that this evolves from their learning disability because their understanding stops at the point of the most vividly defining element, and any grey area or iffiness becomes alarming and anxiety provoking.
Take their survey here,
https://myprimals.com/discover-your-primals/
I ended up with Good 3.42, slightly higher than the average American.
The idea that lower-income white voters fear or are resentful of economic "elites", which even many supposedly liberal pundits give credence to, is absurd. When it comes to economics, the Republican party is absolutely the party of "coastal elites" and plutocracy, a fact which is simply of lesser importance to those voters than their cultural identification as white and religious. And actually religion is secondary to tribal allegiance, or they would not vote for such a person as Trump. If anybody was really fooled by Trump's fake "populist" promises during the 2016 campaign, his real allegiance to the plutocracy was made perfectly clear during his Presidency.
Peoples' responses to polls and coffee-shop interviews just can't be taken literally. On some things questions will never get a straight response. Practically nobody now will admit to racism, so there must be excuses for their choices.
Cowen's idea that conservatives are angry at elites betrays his chronically online life. In the real world conservatives have no idea who "elites" even refer to. In reality they live their lives in fear, primarily of scary minorities committing crimes.
The anger is because the constituent parts of the Republican base realize they are in a minority. So they not only want their position to be "the" position, they see they are in a minority, and are, hence, angry about it.
Christian fundamentalists, for example, behave much differently now than they did a few decades ago when going to church was still something that a majority of people did.
Oh to be able to kill of Faux. The bane of humanity.
Religious maniacs --they're the elect, aren't they? They have Machine Gun Jesus, don't they? They must be the elite! But no one respects that, so they're offended.
Kevin - your analysis of Republicans fits many. However, your strawman is too narrow. For example, do you believe Mitt Romney:
- Fears new experiences? Romney is better travelled than 95% of Americans
- Desires to destroy the US credit rating? As a former private equity guy, I doubt it
- Is afraid of immigrants? I went to school with, know well one of Romney's sons. I am CERTAIN this point is not correct.
etc
I my profession and personal experience. not all Republicans are unsophisticated MAGA types...
Okay, so only 95% of them are.
MAGA types don't think he's a conservative for all those reasons, and he voted to convict Trump.
I mostly agree with Kevin here, but I think framing thins around conservatives being afraid of things falls a bit short.
People can be fearful of their own shadow, but that still doesn't necessarily make it a problem to others.
To me the problem with conservatives is that they have a never ending thirst to get even for any perceived offense no matter if it is imaginary or not.
You see this on every single issue. They don't want solutions to any problem or thing they fear, real or not. They want someone to punish.
We see it on the never ending committees they are running right now. We see it in the myriad state laws aimed not so much as protecting anyone, but making sure certain people get punished or suffer from them. We see it on the speeches from most Republicans that focus entirely on identifying a perceived enemy, with little concern for an actual solution. We saw it recently on the need to make the COVID lab leak true to properly punish China. We see it on immigration where the policies being pushed aren't aimed at fixing immigration but at punishing migrants.
No matter the issue, the point isn't to find solutions, it is to find villains.
The more I read of Tyler Cowen, the less impressed I am. Especially after I heard him say crypto would take over because so many smart people are/were working on it. Not sure what the key factors are but he really does not seem on the ball. I mean, really basic stuff he simply doesn’t understand.
I travel through the blog backwards, and so proffered my opinion in the following COVID post that fear coupled to our innate need to find cause for effect, much as KD does here.
Kevin is correct, and Fox exists to amplify fear. Tapping in to a basic human emotion like fear is politically very effective. After all, the human species would not have survived without a strong fear instinct.
If only we had a strong authoritarian leader who would take matters into his own hands, we would be safe and free from fear, right? Isn't that the premise of a lot of Hollywood movies? The "good" gunslinger coming into town and clearing out the bad guys?
When the problem of economic survival and physical well-being no longer is the concern it once was, people have to find new things to be concerned about and afraid of. Otherwise, boredom sets in, and people fear that more than anything. Thanks to Fox, they are spared this fate.
"This is what I wish we could change. We all have our pathologies, and there's no cosmic right answer about how much we should fear something. But it's gone off the rails in the conservative movement these days. I swear, if we could kill off Fox News and dial down conservative fear a couple of notches, there's hardly any ceiling to what our country could accomplish these days.
Unfortunately Fox makes money off this fear (like a lot of money) so there's no reason for to them change. If anything they themselves are fearful if they weren't their "brand" their competition from the right will take it for them.
Kevin wrote:
"if we could kill off Fox News and dial down conservative fear"
It won't work. Fox has proven to the world that a faux news network focussed on stoking fear and anger among elderly whites can be mega profitable. If Fox stops doing it then a dozen other networks will immediately rush to fill that niche.
TV-driven fear is an unfixable component of the US for the foreseeable future.