Conservatism
The us against them, Americans versus these other people, with its happily added racism (so Reagan could begin his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi) started so long ago, but was smashed by FDR until, long after his death, a country that had forgotten how it was had, fell for their tricks yet again.
Just read the contemporaneous accounts of the world before FDR and you will see what I mean.
Try this one, for instance, from Arthur Krock in the NYT, Sunday, September 18, 1932, and ask yourself how familiar this territory is to anyone who went throught he Swiftboating of Sen Kerry or the "he's a Muslim" against the President-elect:
Whispering has won more Presidential campaigns than oratory ever has, and the Republicans are eerily skilled in it. No official sanction is given to whispering, of course, but there is a benign attitude at [party headquarters] which "the boys" understand. In 1928 the whisper ran through the South that the Democrats ought to be defeated for nominating a Catholic [in New York Gov. Al Smith]. In 1932, the soft breezes carry a suggestion to New England, New York and Illinois that the Democrats ought to lose because they refused to nominate a Catholic [the same, but now former Gov. Smith]. Industrial workers somehow hear that times may be worse if the Democrats and "radicals" are allowed to check the sure return of recovery, led by the President [Hoover, running for re-election]. Even a Republican Senator did not hesitate to make the sly suggestion that a candidate who had been afflicted with polio...would naturally debate in terms of "Alice in Wonderland."
I wonder if there's anyone doing a doctoral thesis on the corrolation between genetic composition and political party affiliation. There HAS to be more going on than "intelligent" design.
November 30, 2008 4:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
No. That's too scary and brings up all sorts of excuses for genocide and the like. People are definitely influenced by how they are brought up and where, but not by genetics, I think.
But all of these excuses for political thought, dating back to the very beginnings of English society on this continent, where people are shunned because of who they are, has morphed in this country into a political party, or at least a major segment of one. That happened before: the Know Nothings in the 19th century are an example, but this strain is quite insidious and has all but destroyed the Republican Party which nominated General Eisenhower in 1952 or even Nixon in 1960 and 1968. Only because of Bush's incompetence did Sen McCain win their nomination this year and I suspect the Sarah Palins and Tom Tancredos will have much more to say in 2012 than the Susan Collins, Arlen Spector or even Richard Lugar and John McCain types.
November 30, 2008 5:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Genetic correlation? You might be on to something. After all, I'm not the only one who noticed that the crowd in St. Paul this summer pretty much all looked alike: White; Middle to lower class; with aspirations to be $250k/year plumbers; love Bush, but not so much anymore; love McCain, but think Palin cuts a more Presidential figure; etc.
November 30, 2008 9:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Only because of Bush's incompetence did Sen McCain win their nomination this year and I suspect the Sarah Palins and Tom Tancredos will have much more to say in 2012 than the Susan Collins, Arlen Spector or even Richard Lugar and John McCain types."
This is good for liberals because if it proves true the Republican Party will have even less appeal in 2012 than it did in this year's election.
November 30, 2008 5:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
FDR recollected from the 1928 campaign for Al Smith how the Republicans spread rumors in the South to the effect that if Smith (a Catholic) was elected, one of the first things the government would do would be to nullify all Protestant marriages and bastardize the offspring thereof!
Sounds a lot like the conservative rantings nowadays about Obama and reparations, etc.
November 30, 2008 8:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
The puzzle for me, Lux, is just how do the rumors - such as "Obama is a Muslim" or "Cleland is a weak-kneed coward" - gain such traction with these conservatives when they are so easily debunked? I don't think I'm nearly as susceptible to rumors about the "other side," and believe I always speak against such rumors when they arise. What gives?
November 30, 2008 9:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think, SJ, is that there is something akin to the "suspension of disbelief" that occurs when moviewatchers go to see a movie.
Conservatives have a coherent worldview that is reinforced by the kind of absurd rumors you mention. They suspend some of their critical filters on favorable reinforcers and raise their filters to very high, nitpicking levels on negative reinforcers. So for conservatives, as well as liberals, the political worldview is a homeostatic mechanism fairly immune to invalidation from external sources-its not a work-in-progress. Like a religion! Or a UFO cult...
At least that's my take on it. People hear what confirms their beliefs and don't hear what invalidates their beliefs.
SJ, you are the exception to my rule when you show that kind of informational integrity. Cognitive dissonance is a stressor and lots of people try to minimize it.
Is the right more susceptible to negative rumours about the opposition and more credulous than the left? Well, based on educational levels, perhaps so. And also based on age- there may be something to it as well. Assuming the average McCain supporter was 10 years older than the average Obama supporter, there might be a generational "mistake" in authoritative sourcing. Older people may tend to believe that if something is printed, or is repeated on the networks, than it has gone through some kind of merit testing and is more veridical than not. Younger people may be more cynical. So McCain supporters may take Fox Network pundits as more authoritative than Obama supporters would. I don't know.
I do know that there is an enormous subrosa world of internet chain emails that distribute right wing rumors and accusations unvetted and that many many conservative people read these things on a weekly if not daily basis. And perhaps take them uncritically.
November 30, 2008 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
A realistic modeling of political worldviews cannot be implemented on a linear scalar. Politics condensed down to dichotomies invariably lead to illogic dialectics based upon idealised aboslutes unrelated to reality. It is a cause of endless cultural tug-of-war with cement-headed contestants, and serving no purpose, other than the subveraion of creative synthesis. It foments cerebration stunted by polarisation. We need to evolve past the limitations inherent within the fantasised Hegelian plane.
I do not believe there is a good correlation between believing rumours and political mindset. Conspiracy theories have their believers throughout the whole political spectrum. Those who think The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks were a secret plot of the government exist in great numbers on both sides of the political bipolarity. Belief in this must rest upon an absurdity: a level of competence from the product of group-thought that has a probability which can be properly stated statistically as nil. Another common stupidity embraced by those who consider their politics to be on the left-side is the Power of Neoconservatism. Do not misunderstand, I believe that Neoconservatism is a threat to this nation, but it's not from some unseen cabalistic government controlling power; it's because it has proven itself time and time again to be a failure at prediction, and a failure at achieving its stated policy goals. Believing it to be a conspiracy only gives power to imbecility.
December 1, 2008 7:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
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er, yes. I concur.
December 1, 2008 8:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
BINGO!!! The mantra for these folks is that you cannot trust the media. They have this inbred subculture of paranoia about libruls. They are stoked by their self-proclaimed patriotic efforts to expose the innumerable crimes of people on the Left. There is no talking to them, but they have to be taken seriously and there must be a response to every accusation because the Reich is already campaigning for 2012, and any challenge left unanswered will be given some credibility.
December 1, 2008 3:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The GOP's McCarthy gene? Oh yeah, we all know there weren't any Democratic red-baiting a**holes in Congress.
Goldwater never whispered rumours. He had a well-deserved reputation in the Senate for having a loose cannon mouth, and speaking his mind forthrightly without mincing his words. In the 1964 Presidential election it was LBJ and the Democrats who were the masters of that deceit. Texas has a tendency to produce politicians possessing unremarkable intelligence and the political reflexes of rattlesnakes.
Democrats derive political mileage from Nixon's exploitation of racist southerners in 1968, but they fail to accept personal responsibility for Nixon's win. The Chicago Democratic Convention of 1968 is where the Vietnam Antiwar protesters got their heads cracked by club wielding police, on orders from the Democratic Party boss mayor Richard Daley. That convention nomination a gastropod of epic proportions to be the Democratic candidate for President: Hubert Horatio Humphrey, who had his own dirty history of Red-baiting.
The east/west coast dichotomy in conservatism is largely a myth. It is cloaking tool used by new-right extremists wanting to disguise their activism as being conservative in its nature. Person from the American west make up their share of new-rightys, but much of that came aloong with the Reagan Presidency. Three persons who have often promoted this myth offer a bit of illumination when compared to their birthplaces:
I grew up in Nevada, so let me explain something about Texas. Any Texas who can head due soputh from their home an hit the Gulf of Mexico without leaving the state are not living in the West. Anyone who lives east of Lubbock, TX. is stretching the truth claiming to be westerners. Pasedena, TX is clearly a part of the South.
December 1, 2008 6:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
That there were red baiting Democrats in the 1950s is indisputable and not the point. The Republican party embraced McCarthyism until they could not, and then, at the first opportunity nominated Goldwater whose "extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice" is directly related to McCarthy and his defenders.
Humphrey against Nixon. To re-live that election, knowing what we know now, and to continue to explain away Nixon's win as the fault of war protesters, rather than the conversion of the South to the Republican Party, is nothing less than sad.
December 6, 2008 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hoover x LBJ = George W Bush
December 1, 2008 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Conservatives are very tribally oriented. They believe that tribalism (although they rarely call it that) is a natural human inclination. As such, notions of us versus them, either with us or against us, are natural. By natural, I mean that not only do they think it is natural for WASPs to self-aggregate they also believe it is natural for every other ethnic group to do the same.
Their tribal mentality leads to attitudes of ethnic and cultural isolationism; anti-color, anti-immigrant, anti-the other. Pat Buchanan, in particular, can often be heard articulating these notions, but right-wing talk is even more clear about it.
Conservatives DO NOT believe in the American social melting pot. National demographic shifts are triggering feelings of resentment and isolation (the so-called, angry white man). They feel threatened because they view the nation in ethnic tribal terms not in "E pluribus unum" terms. Conservatives have NEVER bought into the American experiment and what that fully means. Contrary to Hannity, whatever else they may be, conservatives are not great Americans.
December 1, 2008 3:41 PM | Reply | Permalink