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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30267 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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"My ingroup is relentlessly oppressed by the supposedly neutral authorities, who are actually in the pockets of my enemies. The outgroup is highly organized and relentlessly hateful of people like me. If my side loses a battle, that's just further proof that I'm right and the whole thing is rigged. If my side wins a battle, it's also evidence of how right I am because the only way we'd win against such odds is by being twice as correct as the enemies. My side is the victim. It's all a conspiracy rigged against us."

Freddie De Boer recently posted an article on "The Political Era of Paranoid Delusion". It details how both sides have converged on mirroring ideas of victimization and oppression. The names each side uses might be different, but the conclusions are largely similar. It's only 4 paragraphs long, so I'll post the entire thing here:

President Joe Biden was interviewed last night, his first since his much-discussed debate performance. If you check around online, you will find two simultaneous narratives about this interview, passionately held: that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on embarrassing and attacking Biden, and that the interviewer George Stephanopoulos and his employer ABC News were bent on lionizing Biden and papering over his flaws. It was a hit job; it was a puff piece. The questions were unduly harsh; the questions were softballs. They avoided the hardest topics for Biden to discuss, unless they steered directly towards those questions over and over again. Stephanopoulos was too combative, or was he not combative enough? They taped the piece so that they could surreptitiously edit out Biden’s gaffes and stumbles; they designed the lighting so that it would make Biden look sickly and old. And now The Media™ is reacting to the interview by fixating on Biden’s weaknesses, or maybe they’re treating those weaknesses with kid gloves. What both sides are sure of is that, however the fallout from the interview breaks, it breaks because of dirty tricks, because of chicanery, because of a conspiracy against their side. There is no other option, no alternative. If my side loses, ever, the game was rigged. It’s a conspiracy, and they’re all in on it.

If I had to choose between these two tendencies I would obviously have to choose the blue MAGA over the red. Doing so would protect abortion and environmental regulations and the NLRB, among many other things. It’s not a contest, for me. But of course I’d prefer to choose neither. Blue MAGA is very, very real; the paranoid style has spread like a coronavirus from Republicans to Democrats. Put “The New York Times” into the Twitter search bar on any given day and you’ll find relentless, enraged invective coming from Democratic loyalists who insist that the paper of record is on a mission to reelect Donald Trump. They used to laugh at Republicans when they groused about “skewed polls,” but now they do the exact same thing - any poll that emerges that suggests Biden is losing is a conservative op, run by a firm with a well-known Republican bias. Hacks! That Nate Silver, you know, he’s on the Trump payroll. And while this phenomenon is most pronounced on the streets, Democratic elites have embraced it too. Look at Bruce Bartlett, look at Joy Ann Reid, look at Aaron Rupar, look at Josh Marshall, look at Rachel Maddow. They’re all sure: the narrative that we shouldn’t give another four and a half years to Joe Biden, an octogenarian who looks and acts like the 81-year-old he is, can only be the product of corruption. No sincere heart could look at that man on the debate stage with anything but awe and admiration.

Of course, conservatism is now built on a foundation not of Christianity or free markets but on the belief that elites are screwing you, that it’s all a conspiracy against you and your way of life. That is the bedrock. That is the new covenant - paranoia, obsession, revenge. “They’re all out to get you,” says Trumpism, “and I will destroy your enemies.” You don’t even need me to tell you that.

This, it seems, is where we are: two warring political tribes who share the foundational principle that anything that goes wrong for them is the product of a rigged system. Two angry players, too busy working the refs to concentrate on the game, looking for some higher authority to declare that the other side broke the rules. This isn’t fair. They’re breaking the rules. I’m telling the teacher. They’re denying us what we’re owed. Today the parties are united only in their belief that, on a neutral field and playing a clean game, they cannot lose. If a single voter endorses the opposition, their opponents must be cheating. How could it be otherwise? Surely only conspiracy could defeat us. Surely only The Man could pull the wool over the eyes of millions. This was much more of a Republican thing, and I know that people hate any argument that sounds like “both sides.” But both sides, in fact, are now operating this way. The notion that Democrats cannot fail in a clean election, cannot stumble but through illegitimate outside force, is now fully enculturated into the party. They hate Trump so much they’ve adopted his signature contribution to American politics. And I don’t know how you get out of this without violence, at this point. I really don’t.

Any person who supports persecuting people likes to portray his outgroup as paranoid delusionals while dong so.

I don't buy in the self description of liberals who hostile the right and claim to be moderate neutrals.

De Boer is not an outside participant neither, but like many people saying that stuff, someone who dislike right wingers and openly says he agrees with 90% of the woke.

Fundamentally leftists who dislike right wingers and have some heterodoxies, are both denying and supporting the persecution of the right by an establishment that they are much more friendly towards than the neutral observers they try to portray themselves as.

I wouldn't consider leftists who support the left persecuting the right and oppose right wingers opposing thier persecution, or even acknowledging it, as sufficiently distinct with other leftists who claim that the right is actually persecuting the left.

Both the claim that the left and its tribes are persecuted, and that the right, and whites, conservatives aren't persecuted are wrong.

I understand it is convenient for the left to dismiss through claimed both sidesism, the persecution of the right, but it lacks intellectual merit, and is an example of the problems of how partisanship can breed extremism and denial of reality.

I also highly dislike on any faction, the postmodernist irrationalist dismissal of valid ways of discourse. In general this is lacking intellectual merit and promotes sophistry and postmodernist irrationality. Of course, it is presumptuous to assume that any groups claims are false, or true by default. Which can include complaints of mistreatment.

People who have valid reasons to distrust others because they are out to get them, and people who don't but have a continuous culture of doing just that because such culture has given them gains can get things wrong too. The later far more than a first. Plus, in an election, you are going to get people who interpret things through bias.

There is a journolist. There is both coordination, owners of media who fire employees who don't push the line, and journalists, and a lot of groupthink and conformism and people in the hivemind going along with their bias. Not to mention any influence of intelligence services and intelligence agents including of Israeli intelligence officers. There are networks, donors, and a lot more where the direction is comprehensible.

The bias and influence moves in certain directions, and it isn't a direction that is only for the Democrats. It is possible influential zionists might want Trump to win, for example.

It is more messy than just everything being an anti-right wing plot, but on the general sense, the rightist claim is correct based on the facts and that is dismissed by people who are against the right wingers and motivated by such opposition like De Boer. Significant credit must be given to right wing skepticism and opposition towards those who genuinely are hostile to them. While treating them as paranoid and delusional, and demanding they accept that it isn't happening, is a demand that is actually indecent.

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