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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.
You're right. Revenge is bad and unprincipled. I stand ready to applaud your valiant and arduous efforts to convince the Democrats to not seek retaliation or revenge after what gets done to them over the next 3.5-12 years, and to lash them with scathing criticisms for every hypocritical turn.
Just point us to where you're doing that. I'm eager to start applauding.
I've gotten testy on this topic here before. Maybe to you. Maybe to an old alt of yours, or someone else. But I'm going to be real with you dawg. Really, really-real. Ready?
If you want to argue for disarmament and cooperation, you have to already have a plausible commitment from your own side.
That's table stakes. That's the cover charge at the door before you even get to enter the building where the table is. Non-negotiable. Because without that, you're just a fool walking up to an enemy army (while your own stands battle-ready, blades still wet with the lifeblood of wounded POWs) and asking them why they insist on fighting. The audacity is just breathtaking.
And I notice, because of course I do, that no one ever, ever, ever, ever, ever makes this argument at Democrats. That they should just stop fighting, because fighting and defection is bad. None of the examples in this post are Democrats leaning into a revenge narrative. Even though that's functionally their entire pathos at the moment, with the calls to counter-gerrymander even harder and apply nebulous violence to all ICE agents.
Can you draft up a letter to Gavin Newsome, explaining that he's being a hypocritical, unprincipled fool?
Are you aware that you won't even try? I honestly wonder how cynical these takes are. Is this the work of Grimma Wormtongue? Or just Retarded Rose Tico?
Because in the real world of Iterated Prisoner's Dilemmas between actual factions that have their own beliefs and minds and aren't just going to be Jedi Mind Tricked into suicide, tit-for-tat is a generally optimal policy. Revenge is a fully sufficient justification when you don't want people to hurt you again, and you don't have a trustworthy arbiter to seek justice on your behalf.
And the way your faction approaches this instead, is something like insane demon logic. When someone chooses to cooperate, progressives defect against them with savage malice. And when someone defects, progressives choose to cooperate (with other people's money).
Slave Morality risen to halls of power, laureled in madness.
So please, show me any sign that someone on the other side is willing to take an L for the sake of peace. Because if you're not even capable of waving a truce flag when you come make the breathtakingly audacious demand for disarmament, then the response need not be civil.
Wow. First of all that’s mighty quick to jump to “sides”. Democrats aren’t a monolith, nor Republicans, and neither are Trumpists - not even within his own administration.
Second, I think you’re misrepresenting the game theory. It’s been a while, but I’m pretty sure that “generous tit for tat” usually wins in the situation most like US politics (you copy the last move of the other side, but occasionally show forgiveness - note that tit for tat also allows chained cooperation, so it’s not infinite revenge). Of course it’s highly dependent on the situation and population of other players, so you’re overstating your case anyways.
Third, you’re misrepresenting Democrats. “When they go low we go high” was the motto for quite a while. You can make a good case it was never this rosy but many felt that way. In that respect Newsom’s actions are a half anomaly and not universally supported to boot (though anti-gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; even my home state of Utah passed a ballot measure for independent redistricting, though the legislature has tried to nuke it).
A better model of Democrats - at least as far as you can consider them united, as disclaimed - is that they are pro-rule of law or “norms”, but frequently break those norms just a little bit (eg federal judges without 60) and then go all surprised face when Republicans decide it’s open season and blow by whatever excuse/reasoning they gave (eg SC without 60). That is, Democrats are broadly reasonable but also guilty of first small steps, but Republicans are guilty of escalation. Which is worse? Eh. Depends on what you view as the normal population of game theory players! Which is debatable, not fact. Though I’d be interested to hear you actually put some reasoning to your claim.
We do have some polling data that might be helpful. Source. When Democratic voters were asked about how acceptable gerrymandering is, 70% say never (9% in retaliation only, 7% it’s normal, 14% not sure). When asked if they would gerrymander California in response to Texas, 63% say yes (18% no, 14% not sure). With some reasonable assumptions that implies about half of the Democratic electorate are hypocrites.
That’s a little depressing until you recall that this isn’t too uncommon when an abstract principle collides with a concrete example. Affordable housing advocates often turning into NIMBYs, deficit hawks suddenly balking at actual cuts, or Trump supporters who claim to value personal character, the list goes on. Ideally those of us here aren’t actually playing these games and say what we mean while thinking about the implications before blanket claims, but people are people and confirmation bias/selective attention are potent sociopolitical drugs.
The final issue that I think is a latent one lurking behind this disagreement is this: how many politicians genuinely believe what they preach, vs how many are simply milking a character or playing chameleon just to get reelected (or self-enrich)?
I find the answer to that latter question has a very broad spread, and if two people don’t agree on a common answer you get accusations of bad faith or poor reasoning because of the implications of your answer on the political process.
It was a nice thing Michelle Obama said, not something that any Democrat that mattered actually did.
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I would love to hear some specific examples of occasions on which Democrats went high while the Republicans were going low during the Obama administration.
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So, they only broke the norms a bit by removing Trump from the ballot and charging him with a hundred felonies?
Sure, I say only remove half of them from the ballot and charge the Democrats with eighty felonies each. Let's de-escalate this shit!
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Eh, maybe. But like I said, this pricked a bugbear that I've been on about on numerous occasions before.
No, you're correct on the theoretical game theory. I just can't think of a time in American politics in the last few decades when someone has shown forgiveness and it worked.
Yes, that was a line in a speech. What tangible example would you point to when the Democrats ever went "high"?
I actually don't think Newsom's actions on that account are particularly egregious. His own state isn't maximally gerrymandered (only down to 9/50 Republicans compared to 45% voting) and he only has to spit on his state constitution to force an out of cycle redistricting. It's at least cleaner than the solid month of "finding more votes" California had to flip 5ish seats last election.
That is the sane-washed story they tell themselves. In practice, Democrats only hold to norms to the extent that they are winning. Consider the Supreme Court. When the SC was delivering progressive wins, it was an unimpeachable source of restraint and goodness and laws and norms. And then when Trump gave us a conservative majority, they immediately switched to "This SC is illegitimate and it's rulings are illegitimate. We should pack the court when we get back in power."
There was a fun bit of needling a few weeks ago, when conservative shit-stirrers were tossing progressives their own tweets about court packing (because now Trump would be the one appointing them).
Thus always. Except not always. As a pro-choice atheist myself, I was rather impressed with how many conservatives took the double-barrel blast of "demographic implications of abortion restrictions" and just went YesChad.jpg.
And to be fair, there's points on the left where they'll go down with the ship. Importing infinity wife-beating criminals and child rapists. Hating men. Sterilizing and mutilating children.
And all of this is besides the point that these "Don't you know fighting is bad?!" posts always get directed towards the right and never towards the left. It's not a quick jump to sides when every example is one-sided.
I think this is partly down to venue. This site has a broad range right-wingers, and it has a lesser amount of variously heretical left-wingers. This makes it the perfect place for a heretical left-winger to try to get through to representatives of The Right. In contrast, a top-level Motte post directed from a right-winger to The Left would be a pretty hollow exercise: none of the people it's aimed at would actually read it.
The implication of this is that the entire rest of the internet exists as a left-wing dominated space.
And no one ever tries this precious stuff there.
Well, they can't, can they?
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Did they actually go high?
Also, how doesn't everything you said apply to OP's point to begin with?
"When they go low, we go high" was something Michelle Obama said at the 2016 Democratic National Convention during Hillary Clinton's campaign for president. It was about a month later that Clinton referred to the "basket of deplorables".
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