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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   30263 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.

Several months ago, I decided not to renew my paid subscription for deBoer's Substack, having grown frustrated with how thin-skinned and unnecessarily combative he is, and his evasiveness and hypocrisy on specific issues.

Nonetheless, I agree with him here. Election night, November 2016. Trump wins. Almost immediately, there's liberal caterwauling and rending of hair. "There's no way this election result can be legit - it must be Russian interference!" Followed by 3+ years of investigations and vague gestures towards "evidence" ultimately amounting to a whole lot of nothing. Me and everyone else here correctly recognised this for the pathetic cope it was.

Then, November 2020 rolls around. Biden wins. Almost immediately, there's conservative caterwauling and rending of hair. "There's no way this election result can be legit - the Democrats must have hacked the voting devices!" Followed by 3+ years of investigations and vague gestures towards "evidence" ultimately amounting to a whole lot of nothing (as exhaustively catalogued by @ymeskhout).

There were many people who correctly identified "Russiagate" as a cope, but think that the 2020 election was fraudulent. They would surely have rubbished any similar claims about a fraudulent election had the boot been on the other foot. No, it's worse than that - many if not most of these people did rubbish similar claims when the boot was on the other foot four years earlier. If you somehow still think Russiagate was legit, but the 2020 fraudulent election claims were bullshit, you are the person deBoer is talking about in this post. If you still think the 2020 fraudulent election claims are legit, but that Russiagate was bullshit, you are the person deBoer is talking about in this post.

I agree, and when you actually ask ‘2020 was fraud’ proponents here about the arguments, the smarter ones will typically concede the practical points but then argue that there was just a general air of illegitimacy, a kind of stench of it, perhaps due to mail-in ballots or some shenanigans in a few counties, or maybe ‘the media propaganda manipulated people’ into voting a certain way (if that made a vote illegitimate, then no democratic election in history has been legitimate). Of course voter fraud occurred, as it has in every election since 1789. But the evidence that it was much more fraudulent than 1968 or 2000 or 1932 or whatever is very thin and largely self-serving. I’m also curious whether the claims will be retracted if Trump wins this year, since presumably that would be the deep state choosing to allow him to become president again, right?

Honestly I am beginning to drift towards the position you described in your last paragraph. Deep State rigging for Biden in 2020, Deep State rigging for Trump in 2024. I think the Deep State might have decided it’s better to get Trump in the Oval Office to get middle America on board for World War III. They would have to undertake some maneuvers to get Trump personally on board for a war, and to contain his domestic political impulses, but I think they believe they can do that. That might be easier for them to manage than the French Revolution nightmare scenario of a simultaneous existential foreign war plus a hot civil war at home.

I always thought the insinuation that the federal civil service was near-uniformly Democrat was unlikely. Academia? Sure. Journalism? Definitely. But DC is filled with ex-military and other middle aged straight white guys in senior positions in the federal government who live in the suburbs and who, statistically, are at least substantially (say, 50%) Republican. Especially in the CIA, full of Mormons anyway, and in the Pentagon. These people aren’t revolutionaries, probably consider Trump vulgar, but that doesn’t make them Democrats.

https://www.fedsmith.com/2021/02/12/political-donations-and-federal-employees/

Sure, I don’t dispute that, but even that article suggests that in many of the most important departments like State, 30-35%+ of employees are Republicans. Also, since Dems in the federal government are likely more committed than Republicans it doesn’t tell us everything about the ratio of employees.

Also, since Dems in the federal government are likely more committed than Republicans

what makes you think that they are more commited?

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