May 28, 2020
So the lefties are turning people into conservatives!
That's my reaction to "On pandemics and hippies" at my son John's blog, which has a long quote from Matt K. Lewis. You have to read the whole thing to understand my reaction. I'm sure you can think of various ways that lefties might turn people into conservatives, but this is something about the politics of the pandemic.
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The thing that hasn't changed is that conservative are deeply suspicious of government, and pretty much anything reported in the MSM.
We're not as worried because we don't believe them. With good reason.
Initial estimates of U.S deaths: 2 million.
Hostipals will be overrun: Nope. Not even in NYC
NY needs 40,000 respirators. Nope.
Do not wear masks. Then do wear masks.
Virus is spread via contact with environmental surfaces. Not so much.
GA and FL will be killing zones once they open for business. Nope.
The question might more rightly be, why in the world did lefties believe this crap.
Isn't the natural conclusion that Vox and Matt Lewis analysis are wrong (shocking! I know!).
Maybe these two have allowed their prejudices and judgments to lead them astray.
"So the lefties are turning people into conservatives!"
Nah, it's just the latest prog posturing. In the short run, it's a tool to justify coercion--governmental and social. In the long run, it doesn't matter--when the tool becomes useless, it will disappear. Put a Dem in the White House and most of it goes away.
But prog safety theater is useful to refute the notion that they care at all about "science."
"Some people are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption."
That's one way to describe today's progressive. Warren Meyer (Coyote Blog) suggests another:
Most "progressives" (meaning those on the left to far left who prefer that term) would freak if they were called conservative, but what I mean by conservative in this context is not donate-to-Jesse-Helms capital-C Conservative but fearful of change and uncomfortable with uncertainty conservative.
In fact, here is a sure fire test for a progressive. If given a choice between two worlds:
- A capitalist society where the overall levels of wealth and technology continue to increase, though in a pattern that is dynamic, chaotic, generally unpredictable, and whose rewards are unevenly distributed, or...
- A "progressive" society where everyone is poorer, but income is generally more evenly distributed. In this society, jobs and pay and industries change only very slowly, and people have good assurances that they will continue to have what they have today, with little downside but also with very little upside.
Progressives will choose #2. Even if it means everyone is poorer. Even if it cuts off any future improvements we might gain in technology or wealth or lifespan or whatever. They want to take what we have today, divide it up more equally, and then live to eternity with just that. Progressives want #2 today, and they wanted it just as much in 1900.
http://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2004/12/progressives_di.html
On the other hand, lefties have always believed that the world was about 5 minutes from coming to an end.
Atom bombs
Then nuclear bombs
The bugs are all going to die (Rachel Carson)
Population growth
Too many brown people (Margaret Sanger)
Global warming
Then climate change
The bugs aren't all going to die. Just the bees
WuHu flu.
That study on conservatives and disgust has been debunked. But I still see it cited everywhere.
I lived through some inflationary times. It wasn't hyperinflation, but it was high enough. When money doesn't make sense, it's hard to stay grounded. In some ways hyperinflation is more debilitating than a recession.....I've never particularly worried about disease. This now is a fresh new anxiety. It really puts some top spin on the aggravations of old age.
American conservatives are prudent and bold. It's in the charter.
Let's Sea world War 1 the Spanish flu the great depression and world War II. Compare that to covid-19 fly comparing a hangnail to jumping off the empire State building.
The dirty hippie analogy has nothing to do with the Spain flu pandemic. prior to world War II men wear long hair beards and grandiose mustachios. Gas mask gave us the clean-shaven except Hitler mustache and high and tight. Call about passing the fit test. I'm sure you boys remember that well when exposured to CS gas in that little bungalow above Edson range.
People my age think it's best to avoid land wars in Asia. That includes Afghanistan and Asia Minor.
His comment about people living through the Depression reminds me that you can take one of two roads after going through it.
A. "I'm going to make sure that if it happens again, I'm protected."
B. "I hated being poor, so I'm going to spend my money while I can."
I know people who had those reactions to the same stimulus.
"If you want to be reminded of how powerful a drug partisanship is, consider that it is, ostensibly, conservatives who think fears about COVID-19 are overblown."
Once more, with feeling - The internet is not the real world.
Particularly comment sections and quasi-libertarian sites.
“ Some of my grandparents’ traditions and hang-ups were, no doubt, the result of a lack of education.”
Unlike any of my beliefs!!
The left have been full of conformists for decades
are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption
Difference, color judgment, and divergence.
conservative are deeply suspicious of government
Deeply? Perhaps. That, too, is in the charter.
Exactly how is it being missed that the virus is mostly affecting deep blue areas everywhere in the country? Even the damned outbreaks Louisiana and Georgia were in the blue areas of the states.
If the hot zones were all in red states and red cities, the NYTimes would have it all on page 10, or not cover it at all other than to note the failure of the governors and mayors of such localities.
Additionally, I am not even sure JAC gets it right about the people born just before WW I- those would have been the people who first got to vote as young adults for FDR. They were only conservative on a relative basis to where progressives are today. The people voting against FDR were the people born in the 19th century. Those born in 1911 probably did, eventually, vote for Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush Sr. before shuffling off this mortal coil.
Lewis is right. It's not that hard to see. But people a half century back who were caught up in the generation gap didn't understand the experiences of both sides of the gap well enough to see that each generation was acting on the basis of its own experiences.
Klein has a point too, but often it's people who have been exposed to the most uncertainty and chaos who become conservative, and people who have a more settled and secure background who are drawn to experiment. Maybe they like the new and different because they really don't know the range of human experience and what people are capable of. In other words, they embrace the new because they don't think much could really threaten them.
This may account for some confusion in political identities. If you are a conservative in NYC or SF you may agree with the stay-at-home conservatives in OK or AL, but not have much in common with them. Your world is very different from theirs and you came to your beliefs by a different route. If you are a liberal or progressive stay-at-home in OK or AL you may hate your stick-in-the-mud conservative neighbors, but actually have more in common with them than with New Yorkers or San Franciscans. Perhaps you believe in the same things as the urbanites, but you see those beliefs playing out in a different, calmer, less chaotic environment and don't understand the lengths to which they can be taken.
It also accounts for some of the confusion in generations and sub-generations. Plenty of people born in the Twenties or Thirties were secure enough to become quite experimental and rebellious in later life, but when they had to deal with their rebellious kids, they may have had to rethink just who they were.
If, as I do, one looks at every public statement and action to have been animated by political agenda, it’s not all that difficult to find my reaction. While I don’t necessarily believe that lefties have purposely torpedoed the economy, I don’t anticipate that they are in any hurry to get folks back to work. There are too many benefits to the prog programs to have the multitudes dependent upon gub’ment.
- Krumhorn
Transpolitcals like to get dolled up in flattering outfits to look both more convincing and attractive, forms of expression their old political orientation denied them.
Conservatives don’t seem to fear death as much as progressives.
Might explain why they make up such a high percentage of combat soldiers. A lot of the hippie bulls hit was about not wanting to get killed in Vietnam. They succeeded. Now they are dying in the New York area. From a Virus starred in Communist China.
No one here gets out alive.
I get really annoyed by the sort of patronizing language a lot of these commentaries use for framing the differences between conservative and liberal attitudes.
Some people are innately more suspicious of change, of outsiders, of novelty.
A slightly more neutral way of saying that would be "Some people are innately more skeptical of change and outsiders and novelty." Contrast that with the descriptors of liberals:
Some people are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption.
"newness" and "diversity" as opposed to "suspicious". It's clear which side the author believes is more virtuous.
Conservatives don’t seem to fear death as much as progressives.
Might explain why they make up such a high percentage of combat soldiers.
It's not a lack of fear, but an abundance of faith, commitment (e.g. women and children, country/community), and attendant priorities.
Something my husband sent me.
Marijuana is legal. Haircuts are not. It took fifty years, but the hippies have finally won.
Talked to my son in Los Angeles last night. He thinks the lockdown is an outrage. Couldn't get on the beach Monday because parking was restricted. He realizes how few deaths due to corona in CA. And that the media is just creating fear. He's waking up.
I'm shocked there haven't been major lawsuits in CA.
Yes, I don't think this extended lockdown is working out as intended by its progressive proponents. If they don't manage to get widespread mail-in voting or some other election compromise that increases their returns on fraud, it will be, hopefully, disastrous for its most cynical promoters. They've inflamed neuroses among the neurotic, and turned a large bloc of their electorate into germaphobic shut-ins.
“ Some people are innately more suspicious of change, of outsiders, of novelty. That base orientation will nudge them toward living in the town where they grew up, eating the foods they know and love, worshipping in the church their parents attended. It will also nudge them toward political conservatism.”
“The reverse is true, too. Some people are innately more suspicious of change, of outsiders, of novelty. That base orientation will nudge them toward living in the town where they grew up, eating the foods they know and love, worshipping in the church their parents attended. It will also nudge them toward political conservatism.
The reverse is true, too. Some people are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption. That base orientation will push them to live in big cities, try exotic foods, travel widely, appreciate weird art, sample different spiritualities. It will also nudge them toward political liberalism.
It’s Ezra Klein. What you would expect from him. Self glorifying pablum.
One of the things that he misses is that the electoral center of the Democratic Party is probably just as (little “c”) conservative as the Republican base. Much of it is ethnic and many of our ethnic groups came over here, settled among their own people, in the big cities, and voted Democrat because there was power in political solidarity. This was already the case by the time of our Civil War. Then, over the generations, they ventured out of the big cities, as they assimilated into the general population. And many ultimately became Republicans, while their relatives staying behind in their big cities tended to stay Democrats.
Note to Klein - look in the mirror. Maybe the worst of these ethnic groups for this are your MOT.
Something else drives this too. Yes, “Some people are naturally more oriented toward newness, toward diversity, toward disruption. That base orientation will push them to live in big cities, try exotic foods, travel widely, appreciate weird art, sample different spiritualities. It will also nudge them toward political liberalism.” And much of that is because they are young, without the commitments that come for most of us as we get older, such as having children and raising them. This is older than civilization. Juvenile wolves and lions are pushed out of their pack or pride, when they approach sexual maturity. There is a wanderlust that comes on many of us as we enter adulthood. Humans migrated out of Africa and settled six continents driven by it. That is just the way of the world.
But many who came to big cities with this adult onset wanderlust, who don’t have the support of nearby ethnic communities and extended families, find that these very same big cities that were so enticing when young and unencumbered by commitments, find that they are not nearly as good for raising kids. So, they very often move to the suburbs, with better schools and much safer neighborhoods. And ultimately mired in the conservatism that comes with being encumbered with kids, mortgages, etc. and often become Republicans.
I don't know if they are turning people into conservatives, but they are certainly no longer liberal.
I wasn't too high on Trump's chances for re-election. He's a jerk, the economy is in the sh*tter, etc. But I now think that the pandemic will cause a strong conservative shift. People will embrace Trump to avoid the sort of change and disruption proposed by AOC and Bernie Sanders. People will turn to the GOP to justify existing inequalities such as the higher mortality among Blacks suffering from Covid 19. The Republicans are more comforting than the hysterical creeps screaming about human sacrifice and tens of millions of dead Americans.
Consider, for example, John Bargh's book “Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do.” Mr. Bargh asserted that “you can make liberals more conservative by threatening them and making them somewhat afraid.” Make people think about their deaths or make them feel threatened, and even left-wingers will adopt more conservative values. This is how W. won reelection (even though Bush II was an incompetent degenerate). Maybe this how Trump wins? Maybe the media is playing into Trump's hands...
In a way the hippies stood for threatened or actual transgression of some kind, along with peace. Many taboos were regarded as being always silly or exaggerated, or now obsolete thanks to technology. The boomers were the first generation to benefit so greatly from many medical advances, and they took for granted that this would continue. STDs had been pretty well defeated; the boomers and then later people re-introduced or spread a new witches' brew of STDs. Casual sex is not harmless to women. Drugs were supposed to be much more harmless than the squares said; the drug trade as a whole is certainly not harmless, and both sides in the drug debate conflate pretty harmless drugs with the most dangerous ones. Does covid re-introduce us to the idea that dirt, mingling with strangers, promiscuous sex and other things are actually dangerous? If so, there could be conservative and progressive versions of this reaction. Progressives: thank goodness or thank history the welfare state can save us. Conservatives: no way we're going to trust those pointy-heads.
Conservatives are just more realistic about life. A hundred thousand dead is obviously horrible but it's no worse than previous flu pandemic in the last 70 years. The young today are facing a real depression. For anyone who works for a secure employer like government or government contractors they are not worried financially. They aren't facing economic disaster. But a lot of young Left leaning people aren't in that position and the government simply can't print money in the multiple trillions indefinitely without disastrous consequences. "
To quote an old aphorism attributed to many, "if my son is not a communist at eighteen he has not heart. if he is not a conservative at forty he has no brain". This prog generated hysteria just might be turning the young and unemployed or the ones who now owe a ton of college debt and see now no prospect of suitable employment turn fiscally conservative and pro-growth while still staying socially progressive.
In recent years, there’s been an explosion of academic work on the psychological foundations of our politics. The basic theory goes like this: Some people are innately more suspicious of change, of outsiders, of novelty. That base orientation will nudge them toward living in the town where they grew up, eating the foods they know and love, worshipping in the church their parents attended. It will also nudge them toward political conservatism.
Restated, for as long as I have been alive Liberals have tried to cast Conservatism as some form of mental deficit/disease.
For what it's worth, the most conservative people I know (including myself) have traveled the world extensively for both business and pleasure, eat and drink pretty much anything, and have married across racial/religious/cultural lines. But somehow I'm sure my cultural cohort doesn't matter because reasons.
Ezra Klein and all the academics who think like him can sit and spin on it.
After the Dark Ages, a renaissance appears. After a time of fear and panic an time of exuberance and joy ensues. This is the nature of man.
Get clean for Eugene
At this point the lefties are the reactionaries protecting the status quo.
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