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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.
I submit it's because you subscribe to a revenge framing in the first place, as opposed to a relationship framing. So long as you adopt a misleading framing, you will continue to be misled.
For example, when you give this paragraph-
-this leads off with abstractions ('the country', 'the left'), but no acknowledgement of a relationship. Even the traitor allegation is framing it as treat to the abstraction (hate the country). Even that treats the action as an initiation, as opposed to a response, as if treason is a state of being unprompted at odds with a natural/healthy state of behavior.
This is wrong in the same way that 'the organization decided to do something' is wrong. Organizations do not make decisions. People in organizations make decisions. Political parties do not try to appeal to, or deliberately offend, parts of the population. People within political parties try to appeal to, or deliberately offend, other people in the population. The tolerance / encouragement of such behavior is not conducted by The Party, but by the consent / support of other people within the party.
When people make a series of decisions over time in regards to, and affecting, other people, this connection is a relationship. Sometimes the established relationship is amicable, and sometimes the relationship is hostile.
People responding negatively to a hostile relationship are not traitors. Nor does their response to hostile relationship come off as them never believing the words they were saying.
...unless, perhaps, the only paradigm you can conceptualize for responding negatively to a hostile relationship is 'revenge' against abstractions.
How is "adopt the policies of your political opponents" even responding negatively to them? Whether Trump or Harris gets a 10% government stake in Intel the result is the same, the only difference is which side supports it and what justifications they use. Would it make sense for Democrats to respond negatively to Trump by building the wall?
The only thing that would make it at least somewhat different is if the party doing it used it to somehow dictate Intel policy in a partisan way, but that isn't happening in this case and it would be short-term regardless, since after the next election it doesn't matter who was in power when it happened. It's not adopting left-wing tactics against them, Trump just genuinely believes in a bunch of left-wing policy positions like opposition to free trade and government ownership of companies.
There seems to be a recent tendency I've noticed online where people are so eager to signal animosity by throwing away their principles that they'll do it when it doesn't make any sense. 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.
Nationalising companies isn't the policies of Trump's political opponents. The dominant factions of both parties claim to be against socialism and have done so since the Truman administration. The Democrats have not, in fact, sought to nationalise large companies when they were in a position to do so. The only big American nationalisations of my lifetime (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG) happened under a Republican president, although I don't think this makes George W Bush a socialist given the circumstances.
Biden gave money to Intel with strings attached. Trump made a deal with Intel that changed the strings (it's the same money). I don't see much difference between these two.
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