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Why political revenge narratives don't make sense to me.
It essentially implies the difference between the right wing and left wing argument about things are about morals and not about the effectiveness of policy or economic ideas for the good of our country and our citizens. If "your rules fairly" includes doing things that you think are stupid, inefficient, counter-productive and extra prone to corruption then doing it back would be strange.
Presumably if you hold an idea like "smaller governments are generally better for a country's growth" or "the state taking ownership in companies leads to bad incentives" or "free speech benefits the country's citizens and the country as a whole" then it would make little sense to abandon them once you've taken power if you want the best for the nation.
After all if you care about the country, I would assume you want good and effective policy. If you see the left's policy ideas as bad and harmful to our future, it's not a great idea to join in on the self-harm. Unless you're a traitor and hate the country, you would be pushing for what you think is the best policy. Now people might disagree on what is best for growth, what is best for the people, and what is best for the country but we should expect them to pursue their ideas in the same way if they care about America, towards ideas they think are good.
This is part of why principled groups can stay principled so easily. An organization like FIRE truly believes that free speech is beneficial. Suppression and censorship when their side is in power would be traitorous to the good of the country in their mind, even if done out of a desire for revenge. A person like Scott Lincicome of CATO truly believes that government taking equity of private enterprise is bad policy, and thus it's easy for him to critique it.
They aren't "turning the other cheek", they just actually believe in the words they say and the ideas they promote. They want good policy (or at least policy they think is good) for the benefit of the country. Sometimes you can see this in politicians, like how Bernie Sanders supports the plan to take equity in Intel. He believes government ownership of corporations is good for the country so he supports it even when the "enemy" does it. I think he's a stupid socialist but it's consistent with what I expect from a true believer. And you see with libertarian Republicans like Ron Paul, Justin Amash and Thomas Massie criticizing the Intel buy.
Counter to this, the "revenge" narrative comes off like the advocates never believed the words they were saying. It suggests their stated beliefs don't reflect what they think is good for the future of the US, but rather personal feelings and signaling to their in-group community. If they changed their minds it would be understandable, but if that's the case then the revenge narrative is unnecessary to begin with, they can now argue on the merits.
Good and effective politics necessitates revenge. Total revenge in fact.
This can be easily demonstrated as long as one is willing to admit that politics, as a phenomenon, has instrumentally nothing to do with the enactment of some transcendental moral ordering, and everything to do with the accrual and maintenance of power.
Principled agents are bad politicians: they will sacrifice what is necessary on the altar of their principle, and thus be outmaneuvered by less scrupulous agents. Their principles will be subverted by their enemies and become the instrument of their demise.
This is most famously evidenced by Machiavelli in The Prince, from whom we can draw on the necessity of revenge:
It is timidity you advocate here, a timidity which only causes more bloodshed.
Machiavelli of course had his share of historical examples of this, such as the successful pacification of Romagna which was enabled by Cesare Borgia's cruelty. But we may draw very large numbers of examples from both ancient and contemporary history.
Roosevelt, Mustapha Kemal, Lee Kwan Yew, Peron, Stalin, Abraham Lincoln, Mao Zedong, Charles de Gaulle, Margaret Thatcher, Konrad Adenauer, every successful politician follows a similar trajectory that has them reward their friends and punish their enemies, with what you call "principle" and "policy" being an instrumental concern or a long term vision to rally around rather than the grunt work.
It's the inflexible will to power and the dirty hands that result from it that makes one successful in politics, which is why so many of the people I just listed have "Iron" associated nicknames and quotes.
So if you are genuinely asking yourself what is effective, ideological inflexibility is essentially the first thing to ditch.
Liberals used to understand this, which is why they were very much ready to break their own rules so long as it would enable a larger victory. But you've grown in a world where these people won so long ago that their principles are the background radiation of your morality, much like Christianity was to the people Machiavelli was trying to instruct.
You can either accept that politics is a dirty game and all your fanciful conceptions of rights and liberties and fairness will be muddied if you are to secure anything; or you can lose.
Of course accepting this isn't incompatible with a desire and ability to enact good government that manifests those principles at least somewhat, but none of it will ever be pure, and you have to make peace with that.
Power always corrupts, but that also means the innocent is powerless.
Ok, you still haven't addressed a single actual point as to why doing bad counterproductive and harmful policy to the US makes sense as a form of vengeance, just keep justifying that you want revenge.
That probably has something to do with the fact that, while you have provided examples that you call "principled", you've largely handwaved the "revenge" assertions you've made.
Perhaps provide some more concrete examples in an edit to OP?
I did provide examples of non traditionally conservative ideas. It includes things like government nationalizing various companies (something they are apparently considering doing more), and protectionism.
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I don't want revenge.
In fact I fully understand that it actively degrades the commons and that forgiveness is a higher principle.
I just want you to understand that it is required by "good and effective politics". Without that understanding it's impossible to entertain what forms of reconciliation are even possible.
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The specific context which inspired his post is Trump doing stuff like buying the government a 10% share in Intel and some people justifying this with "your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly". I'm pretty sure this isn't even Trump trying to "use left-wing tactics against them" or anything, it doesn't accomplish anything partisan. Trump just genuinely believes in a bunch of left-wing policy positions like opposition to free trade and government ownership of companies. How does "spend political capital to achieve left-wing policy goals (and take the blame when they fail)" accomplish any of what you're saying?
I've been noticing the exact opposite problem on the internet lately, where people are so eager to throw away principles for the sake of spite that they aren't stopping to ask questions like "Is this just helping the people I'm trying to be spiteful towards at my own expense?". For instance I've seen several cases where SJWs censored something and there were comments kneejerk supporting it as "what goes around comes around" because they somehow misinterpreted which side the censorship was coming from. If you don't have principles besides "oppose the enemy", and also you don't understand what your enemy believes, it's pretty easy to end up supporting the enemy against your own side. After all, people understand their own positions better, so if you treat "this violates our principles" as a sign of insufficient commitment against the enemy you've given up your main indicator and all that's left is understanding your enemy so well that you hopefully notice before you end up accidentally supporting them.
I think it's an ideological move that doesn't help Trump's position, so I don't think it's good politics. It's spending political capital on something that could be better allocated, on my opinion, but far from me to tell Americans how to spend their infinite debt. Exchanging worthless paper for Intel stock might well be a good deal.
I'm commenting on the general idea that ideological principles should guide politics instead of pragmatic coalition building, which is a loser's position by any objective metric. And thus undesirable even to the ideologue, insofar as he's sincere.
People are just growing up from the follies of the 1990s now that the chickens have come home to roost. Awaking from a slumber, if you will.
You'll notice I don't advocare pettiness or impotent spite here. Only total annihilation. Anything less is actually a waste of good lives.
Of course, and the lesson here is that you need to know your enemy and know yourself. Not that principles should get in the way of doing what is right.
Ideological purity is a broken compass that doesn't provide a substitute for true knowledge of one's own tendencies and that of one's enemies. It's not the loss you think it is.
Observe everything, admire nothing.
This is a baffling sentence. How do you define "principle", if not a belief about "what is right"?
It's a paraphrase of Isaac Asimov. But I can elaborate of course.
Pragmatists like Willard Van Orman Quine hold that language is not reality but a model of reality, which makes any logically constructed principle or ideology an inherently imperfect tool to observe, predict and interact with the world.
Principles are a map of morality rather than its territory, insofar as one regards morality to be an inherent property of the world rather than a logically constructed proposition in itself (but then that that opens itself to Nietzschean skepticism).
Correct conduct may therefore be at odds with what is logically prescribed by principle in the real world. We most often call this "paradox".
Well known examples of this often quoted in this utilitarian neighborhood include the mere addition paradox or the paradox of hedonism. But this imperfection is a general property of all theories, not just moral or political ones.
Hence, any reasonable political actor, who actually has to enact his moral ideas in this imperfect real world may have to encounter the difficulties of his ideological framework when confronted with the real workings of the world, and if he is to succeed he will have to make compromises. After immediate collectivization failed, Lenin enacted the NEP even though it's totally against Marxist principles in theory. Yet can we really say that Lenin was not a Marxist?
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